tn_nashville01

Dear Mum,

I’m in Nashville with my friend Richard and we’re having a ball.

On Monday we went round to his friend Buddy’s house. Buddy has a studio in his living room and records top TV stars as well as big soul acts like Solomon Burke – I think even you might have heard from him.

You’ll be pleased to know that we also went to church. It’s right in the centre of town and it holds thousands of folk. It’s called The Mother Church of Country Music and we got our picture taken on the very spot where Mr Williams was asked to return 6 times. The people in the church seemed to like Mr Williams but the elders at the church apparently asked him to leave as he was behaving badly.

Later we had a walk down a street called Music Row. We bumped into a very nice lady called Ms Connie Smith who showed us round an old studio called RCA Studio B. It seems Elvis Presley  (I think you’ve heard of him) made all his records there and it’s just along the row from RCA Studio A where Mr Chet Atkins recorded lots of records along with Owen Bradley. The Bradleys had us round for tea too and told us stories of how Patsy Cline made the song Crazy with the help of Owen’s brother Harold, who played the guitar he told us.

We’ve had some great food too and Richard has taken his crazy microphones round everywhere and recorded everything. He’s also taken pictures of all the folk we met and he says he’s going to post them on Facebook. Here he is buying a T Shirt or too at The Bluebird cafe…. ( He said it was for a friend)

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Before we left Richard took us to a real record studio called Third Man Records. There they make the records upstairs with real musicians and record them too. They put them onto vinyl records then send them out all across the world from their warehouse downstairs. Richard said he saw the man who runs the whole place, Jack, going into his office there. Everyone had to wear a uniform and we heard a band playing very loudly in the front store before he had to leave. Richard says that all the music that’s made in Nashville is not country music…I don’t think you would have liked this group.

You’ll be pleased to know we took a picture of the statue of Dr Billy Graham which stands downtown. I think Richard might put that photograph up on his Facebook too.

BillyRichard says he’s going to put all of our adventures into a Radio Programme for the good folk who listen to Another Country. It seems that will be on air this Tuesday and next week too. You’ll need to tune your gramophone.

Looking forward to coming home and eating some real food like mince and potatoes.

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