At 04:33 PM 2/23/99 -0600, James wrote:
>Except for the fact that those snazzy string arrangements and (totally
unnecessary) background singers were NOT added for artistic reasons, nor
were they added to grab the attention of the working class and rural
audiences who already listened to country music. In every
article/interview I've read about Atkins/Bradley, etc., they've made it
very clear that those elements were added for one reason - to make country
music more palatable to middle class urban and suburban audiences and by
extension to broaden record sales.
This seems to be making two assumptions (correct me if I'm wrong) that I
don't buy. First, that deciding to go after a wider audience would
inherently be a bad thing, as if artistic success and commerical success
are somehow mutually exclusive goals--you can go after one or the other but
not both; you can only choose one of them at at time. Second, it seems to
be assuming that once the decision to go pop has been made that there
wouldn't be a whole litany of other artistic choices still to be made about
what would make the records GOOD records.
> Please don't tell me that the "Nashville sound" was some kind of artistic
>advancement in country music.
I don't think anyone told you this. I can't imagine anyone on this list, in
fact, ever telling anyone this, not even me <g>. But: Please don't tell me
that the Nashville Sound was some kind of artistic decline in country
music, either. --david cantwell
