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© 2004 John Partipilo, The Tennessean Introduction Essay for Tennessee 24/7 Songs of Tennessee By Larry Daughtrey It's a soft spring day at a log cabin on a Tennessee ridge. In a hollow down the way, a turkey gobbles, hopeful. Out back, a dainty whitetail doe licks the salt block, storing nutrients for the spotted miracle that will soon emerge from her swollen belly. A satellite dish hangs off the cabin's eaves jarring the pastoral peace with images all too modern. An hour away is Nashville, Tennessee's capital city. More than a million people cluster within the 30-mile radius of its international airport. On Music Row, multinational corporations spin out the latest country music twang, a faded echo of sturdy tunes that migrated into the hills with the people of Scotland and Ireland. Cosmopolitan Nashville remains vaguely embarrassed to be branded as Music City, USA. No Nashvillian would approach a country legend like George Jones in the market for an autograph. The city is, by private contribution, building a dazzling symphony hall that will dwarf the touristy home of the Grand Ole Opry, a radio staple for more than 75 years. The city prefers to think of itself instead as the home of great universities (Vanderbilt and Fisk); imposing medical complexes; finance, insurance and publishing empires; the NFL Titans. Flat, depleted cotton fields pave the way to Memphis, perched on a bluff above the churning Mississippi, 200 miles to the west. It is a city still edgy with a racial mix that's half black, half white. But it is coming to terms with a culture that blends blues and barbecue with FedEx and AutoZone. Six hundred miles to the east, foothills rise into the misty peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tucked into the hills is a secretive complex called Oak Ridge, which produced the components of America's first nuclear bomb and every one since. A few nearby congregations still handle poisonous snakes in their worship. Newer poisons also lurk in the hills. Makeshift, clandestine methamphetamine laboratories have replaced copper stills. Redneck crack. The new moonshine. A scourge for a young generation of rural Tennesseans. Tennessee is of the south, but isn't. It was the last state to leave the union and the first back. Civil War wounds have not lingered as they have in other states, with angry, racially tinged debates over the Confederate flag. A vibrant, combative political system has emerged instead. The last half century has produced a bipartisan parade of presidential candidates-Estes Kefauver, Howard Baker, Al Gore, Lamar Alexander, and maybe Bill Frist in 2008. The governor is a Harvard-educated New York native, Phil Bredesen. He drove a Volkswagen van to Nashville and invented a multimillion dollar health care business at his kitchen table. The legislature supports the near-est thing to universal health care in America, and no Tennessee child is uninsured. It also made it legal for us to collect and eat road kill. Down the gravel road from the log cabin is a village named Temperance Hall. On Friday nights, construction workers and aging farmers who can't read a musical note gather to fiddle the ancient songs abandoned by Music Row. No smoking, drinking or cursing, please. For more than 40 years, LARRY DAUGHTREY has been a reporter and columnist for The Tennessean in Nashville. Though not born in a log cabin, he lives in one near Lancaster. Browse    View All    Songs of Tennessee    Hearth & Home    Tennessee at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 125 Photographers: 32 Towns: 34

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