Around The World

We got off to a pretty slow start again today. We got down to breakfast around 11:15 am. The hotel’s restaurant was busy so we sat at the bar, which was nice. We went for a slightly less extravagant breakfast today.

After breakfast we headed upstairs to get organised to go out for the day. We headed out about 12:15 pm and walked down Demonbruen Street (named after Timothy Demonbreun, a French-Canadian fur trader, who first travelled to the springs near the Cumberland River around 1769 and is often referred to as Nashville’s “first citizen”). We passed the Gibson Garage (on the corner of 10th Avenue and Demonbruen Street), which is the flagship store for Gibson Guitars after their relocation from Memphis a few years ago).

We continued down Demonbruen Street to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. We enjoyed walking around the museum but it’s probably fair to say that we’ve now heard enough country music, and seen enough sequins, boots, and cowboy hats, to keep us going for quite a while!

After wandering around the museum for about an hour and a half, we stopped for a break (and a coffee for Keith!) before heading off on our next activity, a tour of the famous RCA Studio B in Nashville’s historic Music Row district.

RCA Studio B was built in 1956 in Nashville by RCA Victor. Originally known simply as “RCA Studios,” Studio B (along with the larger and later RCA Studio A) became known in the 1960s for the development of the production style and sound engineering technique known as the “Nashville Sound”. More than 47,000 songs were recorded at RCA Studio B, many by legendary performers. Elvis Presley recorded more than two hundred songs at Studio B.

The tiny Studio B was a lot less flashy than the huge, multi-storey Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. But we enjoyed it far more. We sat in the studio and listened to Elvis recording “Little Sister” (including out-takes) and then “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”. Even though “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” was one of Elvis’s biggest hits, we were told at the studio that Elvis did not want to record it. The song was recorded in the dark to create the mood, and this is how we sat in the studio and experienced it. It was very moving and it felt like we had been transported back in time as we sat in the dark and listened to it. We learned two interesting facts about the recording of the song. The first was that someone (possibly Elvis) bumped into a microphone in the dark during the recording that was used as the master and this “bump” can be heard on the released version. The second fact was that Elvis didn’t quite nail the last word of the song on what he said was the last take that he was going to do so the engineer, Bill Porter, convinced him to just re-sing the last word (“tonight”) and he’d splice it in using a razor blade, using the “to” from the main recording and the “night” from the extra recording (which is why, in deference, the song title is sometimes written as “Are You Lonesome To-night?”).

After the fascinating Studio B tour, we walked back up Broadway to soak in a bit of the atmosphere.

Our next destination was Centennial Park, a walk of about 45 minutes. On the walk we saw a very cute VW Kombi drive by (and we ended up seeing the owners later and chatting to them about how cool their van was, which they told to us was a present from their children).

It was late afternoon by the time we got to Centennial Park but there were still plenty of people in the park. In the centre of the park is the seemingly out-of-place replica Parthenon building, built to honor Nashville’s status as “The Athens of the South”. A bit odd, really!

After walking around the park for a while, we ordered an Uber and headed back to a lovely Italian restaurant near our hotel. We had a very nice meal, but we did over indulge!

We’re now back at the hotel and will be heading to bed shortly. We may do a bit of shopping and looking around Nashville in the morning. In the afternoon, we’re flying to Chicago, where we are very much looking forward to catching up with our friends, Earl and Sue.