Tin Pan Valley

"Stand by. Nashville 1283-- Take One,"* said the man in the control room.

A young man in slacks and sport shirt planted his stocking feet beside the microphone, began bleating plaintively, picking a lackadaisical guitar. At his back were five other musicians -- pianist, bass fiddler and three more guitarists -- all working without written music. Sang the fellow in stocking feet:

I knew my lonely heart was blue,

I knew that it was yearning for a smile;

But how was I to know that one from you

Would start my lonely heart to running wild?

"That's good," said the man in the control room as the music plunked to a finish. "What'll we call it?"

Said the singer: "Call it My Lonely Heart Is Running Wild. Plain Lonely Heart sounds awfully weak."

Thus in Nashville, the Broadway of "country" music, another hillbilly tune was sent on its way last week. The singer, Tennessee-bred Carl Smith, 24, Columbia's latest country star, was cutting a few sides to follow up the three (Let's Live a Little, Mr. Moon, If Teardrops Were

Pennies) which now rate him high on the nation's folk and western bestseller lists.

More Nickels. On the heels of Nashville 1283 came Nashville 1284. The arrangement took three minutes, 25 seconds --a bit too long ("The jukebox operators like them short--they get more nickels that way"). So the recorders dropped one verse, picked the off-the-cuff title Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way. Then they casually continued their session.

Casual is the word for Nashville's principal contribution to contemporary U.S. culture. Ever since 1925, when Grand Ole Opry got started, young men with guitars have been lounging into town to seek their fortunes on the sprawling, leisurely 4 1/2hour broadcast of mountain and prairie specialties. Among those who found fame: Opry Alumni Eddy Arnold, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley and Roy Acuff, all of whom now boast six-figure annual incomes. Citified publishers and record companies--realizing that in the wide-open spaces of the U.S. a good barnyard ballad can outsell a bistro blues every time--have been making tracks to the source.

More Dollars. Nashville is neither much surprised nor much disturbed. The Tennesseans have welcomed such pop singers as Margaret Whiting, Evelyn Knight and the Andrews Sisters, who have hurried on down to the folk-singing capital to ply their trade. Nashville even furnishes the visitors local side men to give their Tin Pan Alley products the authentic Nashville flavor. Meanwhile, the local boys keep right on plugging their own songs and singers.

Nashville's plugging has so far raised Smith's income to nearly $1,500 a week, promises to push it even higher. Says WSM Program Director Jack Stapp, the Rudolf Bing of Grand Ole Opry: "He's going like wildfire." Says Smith in his soft Tennessee drawl: "I'm very well pleased."

* Record makers' equivalent of Hollywood's ready-to-shoot command: "Quiet!!!"

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