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Nashville Musical History Tour, Nashville, TN (2026)

06/03/2026

Before it became Moby Dicky's Hendersonville 155 Sanders Ferry Road was Morningstar Sound Studio. Twenty-five No. 1 records were made between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s at the place on Old Hickory Lake now owned by Dicky Moran. On June 2, 2026 — forty years to the day after the release of Randy Travis' debut album "Storms of Life" — the state of Tennessee added it to its Music Pathways program with an official marker at the lakeside walkway near the front door.

The building Kyle Lehning and Tony Gottlieb acquired around 1979 didn't look like much. It was a 26-by-28-foot concrete block structure — Gottlieb described it as "only slightly larger than a two-car garage." They started out calling the business Funky But Music. That name didn't survive long. Someone tried calling directory assistance for the number and got hung up on, so they renamed it Morningstar.

They doubled the building's footprint when they added on, tore out the back wall when the addition turned out to be half the size they needed, and did it again. The Bösendorfer grand piano — the kind that ran about $150,000 — belonging to Tony's dad ended up in what Lehning cheerfully called "a shack." Drums, bass, and piano were tracked in a room that was basically a rectangle. Acoustic guitars went in a back shop. Dan Seals sang in the bathroom.

That was Dan Seals — England Dan of England Dan & John Ford Coley — who'd had soft rock hits with "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" in the mid-1970s, then spent years clawing his way back after the duo split. Lehning had produced England Dan & John Ford Coley's hits at Lee Hazen's nearby Studio by the Pond before he and Gottlieb opened Morningstar. He worked with Seals on his early country recordings there, and Morningstar was where Seals recorded "Bop," the biggest single of an eventual run of 11 No. 1s.

Then in walked Randy Travis.

Lehning tells the story of the day they recorded Travis' first vocals for "Storms of Life." They worked through five songs in about two hours and called it a day. When Travis left, Gottlieb looked at Lehning and said: "That guy better sell some records, because we're making no money on studio time."

"Storms of Life" came out June 2, 1986. It eventually went triple platinum.

The hits kept coming. At a later session, Paul Overstreet was at Morningstar to sing background vocals on "Forever and Ever, Amen" — his co-write with the late Don Schlitz. His partner in the session was supposed to be singer-songwriter Paul Davis. But Davis spotted a rod and reel, grabbed a rubber worm, walked out to the lake, and never came back inside to record, according to Overstreet. Lehning cut Travis' vocal on the song anyway. It became Travis' third No. 1 and one of the most-played country songs of the decade.

On the anniversary, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development Commissioner Mark Ezell unveiled the Music Pathways marker outside the building. Lehning and Gottlieb were there, along with Randy and Mary Travis, members of the Seals family, Warner Records Nashville chair and president Cris Lacy. The city of Hendersonville marked the occasion as well, officially naming the waterfront point near where the studio once stood Point Amen. Then songwriter Paul Overstreet performed "Forever and Ever, Amen" on the site where Travis recorded it.

06/02/2026

You probably know Tootsie Bess, but do you know Big Jeff Bess? NewsChannel 5 Nashville's Forrest Sanders takes a look at the life of a major local music figure during the 1940s and '50s — and asks the Nashville Musical History Tour to show him a house.

05/16/2026

Doc Cheatham may be the most significant jazz musician ever to come out of Nashville.

Born Adolphus Anthony Cheatham in 1905, he played trumpet professionally across seven decades — from the early jazz era into the 1990s. Many people thought his finest work came at the very end of his life. He won a posthumous Grammy in 1998 for “Stardust,” recorded with young trumpet virtuoso Nicholas Payton when Cheatham was 91. He died just eleven days before his 92nd birthday, two days after his final performance.

Before Chicago, before New York, before international acclaim, he grew up in Nashville, the son of Marshall and Alice Cheatham. Marshall owned a downtown barbershop across from the Stahlman Building. Alice worked as a laboratory technican and teacher.

Cheatham studied trumpet with Fisk University professor N.C. Davis, played in a band at Meharry Medical College — where the nickname “Doc” stuck — and worked in the pit band at the Bijou Theater, backing touring stars like Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters. He moved to Chicago and, by the early '30s, New York and never really returned.

This house at 1011 15th Avenue South became part of the family story in the mid-1930s when Marshall and Alice bought it after years of living elsewhere. Doc’s name was added to the deed at some point, though he never lived here.

At the time, Cheatham was already playing lead trumpet in Cab Calloway’s orchestra, one of the premier jazz bands in America. When the band played Nashville’s Hippodrome in September 1934, two hometown musicians were onstage: Cheatham and guitarist Morris White.

After Marshall Cheatham died in 1942, Alice stayed here for nearly two more decades. She died in the house in 1959. The family sold it the following year.

05/15/2026

Jerry Byrd was a defining steel-guitar voice during Nashville's early recording years. He played on sessions with Hank Williams, including “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Lovesick Blues,” and worked on sessions with Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Red Foley, and Marty Robbins. "Guitar Player" magazine later named him one of its “20 That Mattered,” writing that “Jerry Byrd is the standard by which all steel guitarists must be measured.”

In April 1958, Byrd and his wife, Thelma, bought a house at 4849 Aster Drive in the Highview Acres subdivision. By then, he was deep into Nashville’s session world—working as a recording musician for Monument Records and soon moving into publishing, where he would spend much of the 1960s and early ’70s at Newkeys Music, Combine Music, and Acuff-Rose.

At Combine Music—Fred Foster’s publishing arm tied to Monument in Hendersonville—Byrd worked with staff writers, scheduled demos, and helped place songs with producers and artists. It was there he crossed paths with Roy Orbison, who co-wrote an instrumental with Joe Melson titled “Memories of Maria,” recorded for Byrd and becoming the highest-charting single of his career, reaching No. 74 on the Billboard Hot 100.

That same orbit brought an encounter Byrd later recalled in his autobiography: a teenage Dolly Parton and her uncle Bill Owens visiting the Combine office to play songs. Byrd says he brought the material to Fred Foster and urged the label to take notice—an early glimpse of what would become a defining career.

At home on Aster Drive, Byrd kept a hard line between work and personal life. He rarely played his recordings at home, and only used the instrument there to work out arrangements or compose—often late at night, and unplugged. The music business, he wrote later, stayed largely outside the walls of the house.

By the mid-1960s, the strain was visible. In the early 1970s, Byrd met Kaleo Wood, a pediatric nurse from Hawaii. He left Nashville in 1972, eventually settling in Hawaii, where he and Wood later married.

The Aster Drive house passed to Thelma in 1977 after their divorce and was sold following her death in October 1985. Byrd, the first inductee into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, died April 11, 2005, in Honolulu at age 85.

05/14/2026

Reba McEntire threw up here.

She was seven, maybe eight, years old, in from Oklahoma with her family to see the Grand Ole Opry. This was before the Opry moved to Opryland — back when it still lived at the Ryman Auditorium.

Somewhere during the show, Reba started feeling sick. She found her mama and said she wasn't doing well. Her mama, without taking her eyes off the stage, said, "Go find a bathroom."

"I did, and I got lost," Reba recalled years later. "I was meandering around everywhere, and I found the front door. And right on the steps of the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium, I vomited."

A stranger walked over and handed her his handkerchief. Reba wiped her mouth and tried to give it back. He told her to keep it.

She told the story again from the Ryman stage in 2017, when she played her first full show there — and again during the 2020 Save Our Stages benefit. Each time, she asked the audience: "Did y'all walk in that way?"

05/13/2026

Curly Putman and his wife Bernice bought the house at 4880 Jonquil Drive in November 1966. That same month, Tom Jones released his version of Putman's "Green, Green Grass of Home." By December, it was the Christmas No. 1 in the UK. By February, it had reached No. 11 on the U.S. pop chart. Putman's song was being recorded all over the world.

Over the next two years at this South Nashville address, Putman's songs kept landing. "My Elusive Dreams," co-written with Billy Sherrill, went to No. 1 for David Houston and Tammy Wynette. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," co-written with Bobby Braddock, did the same for Wynette solo.

The Putmans sold the house in September 1968 and moved to 2001 June Drive in Donelson — a glass-walled house on a bluff that had previously belonged to Billy Sherrill, the same producer with whom Putman had co-written "My Elusive Dreams."

05/13/2026

Jonathan Cain had been to Nashville before. In 1969, Buddy Killen signed him to a singles deal on Dial Records. Cain was a teenager from Chicago going by Johnny Lee, and his dad flew down with him to sign the paperwork — Jonathan's first plane flight. A couple of 45s came out of it, nothing more.

Forty years later, Cain came back. He and his wife Elizabeth had been visiting Nashville since around 2000, writing with people in town, making friends. In March 2009, they bought a house at 311 Granny White Pike for $1.66 million. The family — Jonathan, Elizabeth, daughter Madison and twins Liza and Weston — relocated from the Bay Area.

"It is cool," Cain told Boomerocity around the time of the move. "It's a different way of life. I find people here are accountable citizens for people who live here. It's like a welcoming spirit."

Part of the draw was the schools. Part of it was the writing community. Part of it was Madison, a singer and songwriter herself, trying to get a foothold in the industry. Cain also built a studio in Berry Hill — Addiction Sound, at 506 E. Iris Drive — with producer David Kalmusky. He'd have more to say about that studio later.

Meanwhile, Journey kept touring. Cain played 72 shows in 2009, 89 in 2011, and 64 in 2012. The band released Eclipse in May 2011 — parts of it produced by Cain and Neal Schon in Nashville after producer Kevin Shirley ran out of time. The house on Granny White was home base for a guy who was rarely there.

During a therapy session with Elizabeth, Cain confessed to having had multiple affairs during his years on the road with Journey. The marriage shattered. He moved into an apartment above Addiction Sound.

"I used to joke about the apartment to people, telling them, 'If Liz ever kicks me out, I'll have a place to crash,'" he wrote in his memoir, “Don't Stop Believin': The Man, the Band, and the Song That Inspired Generations.” "People would laugh, but now it wasn't a joke."

The Cains sold 311 Granny White Pike in August 2014 for $2.985 million. The couple divorced at the end of that year.

"As it turned out, Nashville would be welcoming, but not a place where our dreams would come true," Cain wrote.

05/12/2026

When Bill McElhiney bought the house at 1319 Burton Valley Drive in May 1963, he was 48 years old and in the middle of a remarkable spring.

He had just released his first album for MGM, “Instrumental Golden Giants,” featuring his takes on "Tequila," "Green Onions," "Night Train," and other instrumentals. That same spring, he had arranged two pieces for the Nashville Symphony's annual benefit concert, an Opry-themed show held at the Ryman Auditorium: "Symphonic Fantasy on Opry Themes" and "An Orchestral Tribute to Hank Williams." And in March, Johnny Cash had walked into a studio and recorded "Ring of Fire" with McElhiney and Karl Garvin playing the trumpet lines that would make the song iconic.

By July, McElhiney had released a second album, “New Sound in Bluegrass! Bluegrass Banjo with Strings,” pairing his arrangements with banjo player Bob Johnson.

A New Orleans native, McElhiney had come up through the big-band circuit in the 1930s before landing at WSM-AM radio in the 1940s. He played in the station's staff orchestra, served as the longtime leader of the "Waking Crew" band, and performed in WSM-TV's "Noon" show band. In 1965, he was named WSM-AM's musical director. That same year, he produced “Connie Francis and Hank Williams Jr. Sing Great Country Favorites.”

But it was as an arranger that McElhiney left his deepest mark. Owen Bradley brought him in to create lush string arrangements for Patsy Cline. He arranged Brenda Lee's No. 1 hit "I'm Sorry." He helped establish the sound of Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass. He handled the orchestrations on Dolly Parton's 1975 album “Dolly,” which included the No. 1 single "The Seeker." At the 1972 Billboard Country Music Awards, he was named Best Arranger of the Year.

McElhiney sold 1319 Burton Valley Drive in July 1985 and moved to Mississippi. One of his last major credits came in 1988, when he arranged k.d. lang's “Shadowland” album.

05/12/2026

In the summer of 1963, John D. Loudermilk and George Hamilton IV started Nashville's first bus tours for fans who wanted to see the homes of country music stars. The tours left from Ernest Tubb's Record Shop on Broadway.

At the time, Loudermilk was living here, at 1029 Noelton Lane, at the corner of Noelton and Granny White Pike. He and his wife Gwen had bought the place in June 1961. The original house on the lot had been built by the Anderson family on what was known as the Noel property. A later owner, Fount Smothers, added a wing built of poplar logs from five houses and two cribs in Perry County. A 1956 Tennessean feature noted that the entire lot was bordered by a split rail fence, and that scores of redbuds bloomed there every spring.

Loudermilk had moved to Nashville from Durham, North Carolina, in 1958. He'd already written "A Rose and a Baby Ruth," a Top 10 pop hit for George Hamilton IV in 1956. He co-wrote "Waterloo," a No. 1 country hit for Stonewall Jackson in 1959. Before he came to town, his cousins Ira and Charlie Loudermilk had found fame in Nashville as the Louvin Brothers.

By the time he bought the house on Noelton, Chet Atkins had signed him to RCA, hired him to screen songs for the label's Nashville artists, and was using him as a session musician and backup vocalist. He'd also signed on as a staff writer at Acuff-Rose.

"I'm looking for the most different thing I can find," he told The Tennessean in March 1961, a few months before buying the house. "Everybody's writing 'I love you truly.' You've got to find something new. I talk to drunks at the bus station, browse through kiddie books at the public library, get phrases from college and our babysitter. You've got to be looking all the time."

Whatever he was finding, it was working. The Everly Brothers' "Ebony Eyes" — a death ballad about a plane crash — hit No. 8 in the U.S. in 1961. Sue Thompson had back-to-back Top 5 pop hits with "Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)" and "Norman." Bobby Vee charted with "Stayin' In." Connie Francis recorded "(He's My) Dreamboat." Loudermilk wrote "Windy and Warm" for Atkins, and while it was never a chart hit, it became a fingerstyle-guitar standard — Doc Watson, Tommy Emmanuel, and Brad Paisley are among the many guitarists who've recorded it.

His own RCA singles charted, too: "Language of Love" reached No. 32 in the U.S. and the Top 20 in the UK, followed by "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Callin' Doctor Casey," and "Road Hog." That last one later became a huge hit in Brazil as Roberto Carlos's "O Calhambeque."

In 1963, two Loudermilk songs were back-to-back No. 1s on the country charts: "Talk Back Trembling Lips" for Ernie Ashworth and "Abilene" for George Hamilton IV — his partner on those bus tours.

During this same stretch, he also wrote "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye," which didn't become a hit until the Casinos took it Top 10 in 1967. Eddy Arnold took it to No. 1 country the following year.

The Loudermilks sold the house in April 1964. They spent the summer in the Myrtle Beach area and told a local newspaper they were building a new home in Nashville. A few months later, a British band from Surrey, England, called the Nashville Teens took Loudermilk's "To***co Road" — a song he'd written and recorded back in 1959, before any of this — to No. 14 in the U.S. and No. 6 in the UK.

Nashville Musical History Tour

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