Customer Reviews

Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken : A Business History of Nashville

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Ever wonder how the "Grand Ole Opry" came to exist? (It was developed as a marketing tool to sell insurance!) Bill Carey shares this story and many more in a most entertaining style. This is a must read for anyone who lives, has lived, or has ever done business in Nashville. Carey does a great job explaining the development of Nashville's major industries complete with interesting, and in some cases, little know facts about the people behind those industries.

Many of the companies discussed no longer exist, but you'll no doubt recognize the names that currently adorn many Nashville buildings, roadways and bridges as those of the early business leaders.

During my read, I often found myself marveling at how little I really new about the history of my home town. Enjoy!

Perhaps every American city harbors as many untold stories of hustlers, visionaries, scoundrels and larger-than-life characters as Nashville does -- but few other cities have had the stories of their business lives told so vividly. Carey's research lays aside long-held misconceptions, punctures the PR-myths of current and former Nashville institutions, and holds surprises on nearly every page. Business people all over Nashville are talking about this book, and the conversations always seem to begin with "I've been in [real estate, health care, banking, what have you] for 35 years, but there are things in Carey's book that I never knew about...."

Not originally from Nashville I often feel I need a score-card or a flow-chart to keep track of who is related to whom, who started what, and why so and so is somebody that everyone talks about. For a city of its size, Nashville seems to rival Byzantine Constantinople in terms of intrigue, personal connections, and "inside baseball" type politics.

Bill Carey does an admirable job of breaking it all down for those who are interested. In general I found it very interesting and actually useful in my line of work. Unfortunately, it is also at times dense and tedious. Especially with the older histories he probably had only limited sources to rely upon and so some of the narrative reads like the minutes of a board meeting or a shiny prospectus.

Nonetheless, for anyone in business, law, or politics in Nashville or anyone who is interested in Southern History I'd recommend the book.

There is a new printing of the book, which can be found around Nashville. I won't say where so as to not offend Amazon.

As a longtime former resident of Nashville, I found this book entertaining and thorough, as well as being--with a few exceptions--accurate and well-balanced in its painting of portraits of some very outsized and colorful (and controversial) business and civic leaders. As a lawyer and a reader generally interested in how the commercial life of a locale can affect it and its citizens at large, I was captivated. Anyone interested in either of these themes owes it to himself or herself to read this well crafted and highly readable work.