Nashville country music drew many performers, songwriters, and producers from nearby Mississippi, including Jimmie Rodgers, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride, Moe Bandy, Faith Hill, Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bobbie Gentry, Marty Stuart, Hank Cochran, Mac McAnally, Johnny Russell, Craig Wiseman, Paul Overstreet, Bob Ferguson, The Poe Sisters, and Pete Pyle. Drawn from mostly small-town and farm backgrounds by the sound of the Grand Ole Opry and the chance for stardom, they came even before Nashville became the center of country recording studios, publishers, and managers. In 1932, Jimmie Rodgers played a midnight show on the Hollywood showboat docked at the Cumberland River, while among the Opry’s early vocal stars were The Poe Sisters and Pete Pyle, who later sang with Pee Wee King and Bill Monroe and formed the Mississippi Valley Boys. As Nashville boomed in the 1950s and 1960s, Mississippi-raised artists often arrived ready to fill multiple musical roles. Bob Ferguson managed Ferlin Huskey, wrote “Wings of a Dove,” and became a key producer at RCA Victor Records in the Nashville Sound era. Conway Twitty built a career in rockabilly before becoming one of country music’s leading balladeers, solo and in duets with Loretta Lynn, while Johnny Russell wrote “Act Naturally,” became a publishing executive, and later established himself as a singer. Mississippi transplants often brought Deep South soul shaped by Delta blues, Southern gospel, and rhythm and blues into country music, most famously in Elvis Presley’s genre-defying career and also in the classic country of Tammy Wynette and Charley Pride, the music of Bobbie Gentry and Marty Stuart, and the hit songwriting of Hank Cochran, Mac McAnally, Paul Overstreet, and Craig Wiseman. In songs of longing, love, loss, and nostalgia such as Rodgers’ “Miss the Mississippi and You,” Pride’s “Mississippi Cotton Picking Delta Town,” Gentry’s “Chickasaw County Child,” McAnally’s “Where I Come From,” Stuart’s “Let There Be Country,” and Hill’s “Mississippi Girl,” Mississippi remained a lasting presence within Nashville country.
