Craig Havighurst

In Air Castle of the South Craig Havighurst, a writer, editor and producer (his company, String Theory Media, produces music documentaries), lays out the symbiotic relationship between the Opry, it’s home station WSM and the city of Nashville as it rose together to create the Music City we know today.

Beginning in the early-1920s, the story of how WSM came into being is an interesting study in the early experimentation of a nascent technology. Under the watchful eye of National Life and Accident Insurance Company, the station went live in 1925 with a program of music that appealed to the general listening public of the time. Country music, or hillbilly as it was known more commonly then, didn’t make its first appearance until later in the year with the introduction of the radio barn dance. Under the guidance of the Solemn Ole Judge George D. Hay and Edwin Craig that program would become the flagship program of the growing station.

Although now the Grand Ole Opry and WSM are nearly synonymous, in the beginning, country music played only a part, often a small part, in the development of the stations’ early success. Artists such as Beasley Smith and Frances Craig brought big band and popular sounds to the airwaves, a sound that most Nashville residents found more suitable to the image of their city, the Athens of the South.

Havighurst does a wonderful job culling old programs, newsletter and news clipping to assemble a detailed narrative telling of the stations creation and early growth. His writing is easy going and he possesses the ability to let his readers come to know the people he who populate the history by allowing their personalities to show through.

In a book of 250 pages it would be hard to get into every detail of the station and its daily operation. There are a couple of curious omissions that Havighurst either felt weren’t important or he simply ran out of space. The first being Red Foley replacing Roy Acuff on the Prince Albert portion of the Opry, that portion which was broadcast over the NBC network, in 1946. There is a brief mention, but from it you wouldn’t know that Red Foley was one of the most popular singers, country or otherwise, at the time and was wooed away from one of WSM’s chief competitors, WSL in Chicago. The second story also involves Red Foley and his move in 1953 to Springfield, Missouri to host the Ozark Jubilee. From this radio show grew the first networked country music television show of the same name (later called Jubilee, USA). It was the Jubilee that prompted many of the Opry stars and supporters to question why WSM wasn’t yet in the television business.

One of the most important sections of the book falls in the last couple of chapters where Havighurst discusses the fall of the Opryland complex and its replacement by a mall. He draws a distinct line in the purchase of the division by Ed Gaylord and the eventual actions of Gaylord Entertainment, sans Ed Gaylord, and what it has meant to the city of Nashville. With Ed Gaylord no longer involved Gaylord Entertainment shuttered and demolished Opryland and built Opry Mills mall, essentially an conglomerate of outlet stores designed to be a destination for tourists. They also sold off TNN, which the division had built up to be a showcase for all types of country music programming.

Also during this time WSM had to deal with its own problems as Gaylord wanted to move from a country format to a news/talk format causing an uproar not only locally, but internationally.

Havighurst ends the book with a question: “What will, or should, become of WSM and the Grand Ole Opry in the twenty-first century?” It is a question with many scenarios, for some easily answered, for others, it involves the history of the entire country music recording industry. It is a question to which Air Castle of the South gives us an in-depth background with which to form our answer. A question that Havighurst provides a splendid answer for in the 200-some pages prior to its asking.

Artist Name: Craig Havighurst Album Name: Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City Website: http://stringtheorymedia.typepad.com/ Record Label: University of Illinois Press Release Date:

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