By the mid 1950’s country music took another sharp turn and steered away from honky-tonk music with what became known as the Nashville Sound.
This new sound did away with the fiddles, steel guitars and distinctly nasal lead vocals of honky-tonk, and replaced them with something altogether smoother. In came string sections, backing singers and crooning lead vocals.
Lush orchestrations and great storytelling lyrics were made for the crooners of the time such as Eddy Arnold, Jim Brown and Jim Reeves. Some say Jim Reeves recording of ‘Four Walls’ in 1957 and shortly afterwards Don Gibson’s ‘Oh, Lonesome Me’ heralded the beginning of the Nashville Sound.
Others point to Elvis Presley’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, released in July 1956, and say this was the first record to successfully use this ‘new’ Nashville Sound, but whichever is true it marked yet another twist and turn in the story of country music.
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