Fortunes, Fiddles, and Fried Chicken: a Nashville Business History.

By Bill Carey. (Franklin, Tenn.: Hillsboro Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xii], 500. $34.95, ISBN 1-57736-178-4.)

Fortunes, Fiddles, and Fried Chicken is a study of the many industries and businesses that developed as a result of the entrepreneurial abilities and efforts of the residents of Nashville, Tennessee. The author, Bill Carey, a journalist and Nashville resident, used many different sources in his research, including newspapers, books, photographs, and personal interviews. Many of the episodes he describes read like business case studies, and they provide specific insights into what went right or wrong in a given situation.

The industry discussed by Carey that might be of most interest to readers is the rise of country music, particularly the Grand Ole Opry and its origins in two other industries, insurance and radio. For many years Nashville was the center of the insurance industry in the South, and when radio became popular in the 1920s, the National Life and Accident Insurance Company founded radio station WSM to use as an advertising vehicle to reach its customers. A popular form of radio entertainment at that time was hillbilly music, and in the mid-1920s WSM began to broadcast the Grand Ole Opry. Successful from the beginning, hillbilly music evolved into what is now called country music. Because Nashville was the home of country music, it became both a recording center and later a major tourist and convention destination, especially after the construction of Opryland, an amusement park and hotel complex with a country music theme.

Although the many stories in Fortunes, Fiddles, and Fried Chicken are certainly interesting, Carey might have been better served by more judicious editing. At nearly five hundred pages, the book covers a lot of ground. Although the index and endnotes are evidence of the tremendous amount of research undertaken by Carey, the end result can be confusing. It is difficult to keep all the characters straight, since the author has the habit of introducing individuals in one part of the book then referring to them again in other contexts. As a result, the reader must constantly go back and forth between sections in order to understand the many interrelationships that Carey describes.

Nevertheless, Fortunes, Fiddles, and Fried Chicken is recommended reading for anyone interested in Nashville history or in business history more generally. Readers outside Nashville will recognize many features of the city's business landscape that are still familiar to the average consumer today. But Carey also helps us to understand how successful businesses in a particular geographic area feed off one another's successes, thus creating a commercial environment that encourages other businesses to develop and thrive.

BEN WEEKS
Saint Xavier University