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Review by Edward Morris
Few businesses lend themselves so readily to analysis by anecdote as the country music industry. Tell enough stories about how the main players got to be where they are and you've pretty much explained how the whole system operates. This is trade journalist Dan Daley's approach in "Nashville's Unwritten Rules."
Essentially, Daley assigns himself two tasks: to show how country music is created and brought to market and to speculate on why Nashville has become -- and remains -- synonymous with country music. No other form of popular music, Daley notes, is tied so tightly to a single city. Can this Edenic village way of doing things continue, he wonders, when it's confronted by the technology that has now helped decentralize all the other forms?
In drawing his picture of the industry, Daley uses four groups as his models: record producers, songwriters, publishers and studio musicians. He rightly alludes to producers as "the princes" of the country music business -- not only because many of them are also top executives at record labels but because they may function additionally as songwriters, publishers, musicians and studio owners. While it is common for artists in other musical formats to be their own producers, this is much less the norm in country music. Thus, a handful of producers still exercise a make-or-break power over acts.
Having established his main categories of inquiry, Daley then details briefly the careers of people who work within those categories. He begins his narrative with such country music pioneers as Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins -- each of whom was a record executive, performing artist and innovative producer -- and then traces the generations of influential figures who have followed in their well-marked paths.
By demonstrating the knowledge of an insider and exhibiting the wonder of a novice, Daley speaks distinctly to two separate audiences. Those of us who've spent time in the industry are treated to some fascinating new stories and made to see more clearly how the all the pieces of the business dovetail. Those who aspire to work in country music are made aware of the clannish nature of Nashville's "Music Row" and the absolute necessity of networking.
"Nashville's Unwritten Rules" is personal without being gossipy and instructive without being dull. It should give everyone who loves and/or lives by country music a lot to think about -- or, at least, to talk about.
Edward Morris is a Nashville journalist and a former country music editor of "Billboard."
©1997, ProMotion, inc.