Light reading for music lovers of all ages
August means vacation (or staycation). These three books can help us unwind and understand the Grand Ole Opry and MTV, and how music is intertwined with American history.
100 Years of Grand Ole Opry: A Celebration of the Artists, the Fans and the Home of Country Music, by Craig Shelburne, Harry N. Abrams 2025, 352 pages
Nashville, Tennessee, resident Craig Shelburne’s first book underlines the iconic role of the Grand Ole Opry on the American music scene.
The Opry started in 1925 on WSM 650 AM in Nashville as a venue for an insurance company’s ads. George Hay, its radio host, recoiled from canned music; every Saturday night, Barn Dance (which Hay renamed the Grand Ole Opry) staged live shows. Sometimes the required Saturday night performances sometimes kept stars from joining or shortened their tenures.
Shelburne presents chronological chapters on the Opry’s eras, from its relocation to a historic former church and un-airconditioned Ryman Auditorium to its current Grand Ole Opry House (at whose opening Richard Nixon appeared). We learn of the expanding repertoire and costume innovations, along with vagaries of diversification: a theme park, television station and museum.
The book captures the stories of members who realized their dreams listening to WSM or watching TV, from Black musicians DeFord Bailey and Charley Pride to the Jewish group The Isaacs. Best of all, the book contains a chapter on the fans, the main ingredient.
Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu, by Tom Freston, Gallery Books 2025, 320 pages
This month, the 45th anniversary of the launch of the music television channel MTV, we have the pleasure of reading an inside account straight from the horse’s mouth: MTV co-founder Tom Freston, 80. His engaging memoir contains a travelogue of Asia and Africa as well as business insights.
Both a flower child and straight arrow, Freston excelled in business school while absorbing the 60s revolution. After quitting his traditional job, he moved to India to find himself and ended up inventing a global supply chain from Asian craftsmen to American department stores.
When protectionism returned, Freston, with his innate people skills, talked his way into a job at what became Warner Communications at the dawn of cable television. There, he pushed two brilliant insights: “narrowcasting” (targeting demographic and geographic submarkets) and music videos.
Acquisition of MTV by Viacom’s narcissistic, authoritarian Sumner Redstone in 1987 led to Freston’s departure. The author provides a vivid, enjoyable account of Redstone and other personalities, Viacom’s business failures and the threat streaming poses to cable. He maintains honesty without settling scores.
Now retired and living in New York and Los Angeles, Freston retraces some of his youthful travels and compassionately describes his current charitable work.
On the Record: Music that Changed America, by Anna Harwell Celenza, W. W. Norton & Company 2026, 352 pages
As part of a larger cultural history, Johns Hopkins faculty member Anna Harwell Celenza charmingly details how the wives of prominent politicians pushed to censor lyrics. In turn, their husbands forced record companies to attach warning labels, with mixed results for artists.
Celenza traces this tradition back to the founding of the Republic. Who knew that a drinking song became John Adams’s campaign melody and the tune for the “Star-Spangled Banner”? Its martial spirit competed with more benign compositions for the national anthem. On the eve of U.S. entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson chose the song as the anthem by executive order.
We learn how introvert Charles Ives’s musical ruminations inspired post 9/11’s “Migration of Souls;” George Gershwin’s absorption of New York culture became “Rhapsody in Blue” and how Duke Ellington responded; Aaron Copland’s evocation of an idyllic past spurred humanitarianism; and the U.S. government’s role in popularizing jazz globally.
Sadly, she points out, Leonard Bernstein’s laziness in creating West Side Story contributed to mistreatment of Puerto Ricans.
Celenza ends the book on a happy note: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rap musical Hamilton emerged as a force to unify America.
