Night train to Music City

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Little Richard, Aretha Franklin and B.B. King played in the same Nashville nightclubs where guitarist Jimi Hendrix and saxophonist Hank Crawford cut their musical teeth.

James Brown, Etta James and a parade of other black singers recorded here, often using country music's top session musicians. Meanwhile, white disc jockeys at the powerful radio station WLAC were broadcasting black music across much of the country after dark.

In the years after World War II, Nashville was a hub of rhythm and blues -- but the scene has been largely forgotten, eclipsed by the long shadow of country music.

This buried history is celebrated on a new two-disc CD set called "Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970" and in an upcoming exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

"Nashville was a city where everything was popular -- jazz, blues, country, R&B," said Crawford, who attended Tennessee State University before joining Ray Charles' band in 1958.

Crawford recorded his first song here, "Christene," around 1956. Written by piano player Roy Hall, the tune was originally a country song, but Crawford and his group, Little Hank and the Rhythm Kings, recorded it as a swinging R&B number.

'We all knew each other'

There was a more fluid relationship between country and R&B in those days, Crawford said.

"The R&B musicians and the jazz musicians and the country musicians sort of knew everybody," Crawford said. "In a way, we all knew each other."

Another song on the compilation, "The Chokin' Kind," was written by country songwriter Harlan Howard and was a hit for Waylon Jennings in 1967. Two years later, soul singer Joe Simon took it to the top of the R&B charts.

Most of the 18 tracks on "Night Train to Nashville" were recorded here by local singers for local R&B labels such as Bullet and Excello.

But some songs were cut elsewhere by artists with strong ties to the city. Bobby Hebb's 1966 pop smash "Sunny" was recorded in New York, but Hebb is from a well-known musical family in Nashville, where he played in Roy Acuff's band as a teenager.

The CD collection also includes Little Richard doing a Royal Crown Hairdressing commercial for WLAC's Gene Nobles, a DJ who pioneered the station's R&B programming. In the ad, Little Richard sounds like a carnival huckster as he shrieks, "Even Long Tall Sally uses it." There's also a 1950s jingle for White Rose petroleum jelly performed by Earl Gaines.

Early R&B was one of the prime inspirations for the British Invasion musicians -- two songs on the CD were later covered by British groups.

The South in the 1950s and '60s was a place of segregation and discrimination, but Crawford said music helped overcome the color barrier. He remembers playing to mixed audiences, sometimes in clubs that featured both country and R&B music.

"Sure, there was a little bit of segregation, but the entertainers never really got into that," he said. "It wasn't as obvious."

The accompanying museum exhibit opens March 27 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and runs 18 months with concerts, panel discussions, lectures and films.

Hall of Fame Director Kyle Young says it's not such a stretch for a museum devoted to country music to be highlighting R&B.

"All of this great music was happening alongside the growth in country music," Young said. "We're showing how all of this was connected. There's always been borrowing across genres and cultures."

Among the many artifacts in the exhibit, most of which were lent to the museum by the artists or their families, is footage from two local R&B television shows that predate "Soul Train" by several years. A black-and-white clip from one of them, "Night Train," shows a young Jimi Hendrix bobbing and swaying with his guitar behind a duo called Buddy & Stacey.

Hendrix was stationed at Fort Campbell in Clarksville in 1961 where he met bass player Billy Cox. In 1962 and '63, Hendrix and Cox lived in Nashville and spent nights playing music in the clubs. Cox would later join Hendrix's Band of Gypsies in the late 1960s and perform with him at Woodstock.

Hendrix's music is not included on the CD because there is no documentation of him ever recording here. But his presence in the exhibit is large, with the TV clips, a well-worn green-and-gold stage vest, newspaper clippings and photos.

"He certainly was very active in the R&B scene here in the early '60s and was one of the key figures," said Michael Gray, an associate editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and co-producer of the CD set.

"And he went on to such stardom that we thought it was important to represent him in the exhibit. Before he was a star he learned his trade of being a working guitarist in Nashville. His first professional gigs were here in town."

By 1970, Nashville's status as an R&B center had faded. Urban renewal projects and an interstate highway had destroyed the black businesses and neighborhoods that were the core of the entertainment district.

"By no means did it all end in 1970," Gray said. "But we had to choose a certain period to look at, and that first quarter-century after the war was when Nashville was emerging as a major recording center. We wanted to show the important role that R&B played in Nashville becoming Music City."