NASHVILLE'S UNWRITTEN RULES.

The Nashville country music business - a system more feudal than modern - is closely controlled by just a handful of producers who are responsible for four-fifths of the hits from Music Row. This insider's guide explores all the parts of this byzantine system and its group of tightly knit power players: the producers, writers, artists, publishers, session musicians, studios, labels, and the promotion machine, as well as the deep roots and the promising future of country music and its role in today's culture.

This study of the country-music industry takes a smart look at the business end of America's most popular musical genre. Music journalist Daley divides Nashville's music empire into four fiefdoms: producers (whom he dubs ``princes''), songwriters, publishers, and musicians. Among musicians, the author focuses not on star performers but on session musicians--the professionals who give the music its identifiable sound. With this rule in place, Daley adopts an anecdotal approach to the growth and development of Nashville, calling on his dozens of interviews with major figures to explain what makes the city the undisputed capital of country. Those interviewed range from relative old-timers like Owen Bradley (who, with Chet Atkins, helped to establish many of the unwritten rules of Daley's title) to the newest musicians to join the A-list of session players selected to cut records by producers. Daley painstakingly details such unwritten rules as ``Thou shalt live in Nashville,'' which refers to the industry's disapproval of anyone daring to commute between the main hive and the outlands. Indeed, if producers are the princes of Nashville, then the twin villains, observes Daley, are the swaggering provinces of New York and Los Angeles, whose expatriates are treated with no small amount of suspicion when they arrive on Nashville's Music Row, purportedly threatening the local industry's ``rigid, familial, and benignly feudal structure.'' Rigid as this parochial prejudice against outsiders and commuters may be, it has also, as Daley points out, helped to keep country music authentic and has led Nashville to spectacular success in sending its music all around the nation. A solid plumbing of the forces driving a dominant and uniquely American industry. (16 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Producer, songwriter, and journalist Daley has written an insider's book that hits the nail on the head: country music is a big money maker, with Nashville as the focal point, but to succeed you must follow some "unwritten rules." Daley points out that in spite of dollar signs everywhere, Southern qualms about social propriety dictate that you don't talk about money, you just make it. To this end, successful songwriters, producers, music publishers, and musicians in Nashville have learned the rules he sets down here. Those wanting a country music career in Nashville would do well to read this insightful book; Daley claims that even outsiders can learn to play this game. A valuable study of the Nashville music business that nicely complements Jimmy Bowen and Jean Jerome's Rough Mix (LJ 5/1/97); recommended for public and academic libraries.?Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.