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Beginning in 1974, the Ryman sat idle for some 20 years, slowly deteriorating. But the commitment of such visionaries as Minnie Pearl, Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris, whose reputations were made on that stage, spearheaded the movement to save the Ryman. Gaylord Entertainment stepped up with some $8.5 millions to renovate the "Mother Church" in 1993. Today the Ryman is not only a museum and testament to the past, but sought-after concert hall 200 nights of the year and one of the best business decisions Gaylord ever made. The marriage of music and technology continued to propel Nashville and business. In 1925, National Life & Accident Insurance Company established the radio station WSM and launched the broadcast of what would be later called the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry further secured Nashville's renown as a musical center and sparked its durable nickname of Music City. On clear nights, the station could easily reach ten states beyond Tennessee, pushing the message of Nashville and music, and luring another kind of commerce, tourism.  The Ryman Auditorium is the Mother Church of country music and well portrays the city's commitment to its long heritage. The Opry, still staged live every week, and now owned by Gaylord Entertainment, remains America's longest-running radio show, in continuous production for more than 80 years. The show ignited the careers of hundreds of country stars and lit the fuse for Nashville to explode into a geographically located center for touring and recording. The modern-day empire of Music Row, a collection of recording studios, record labels, entertainment offices and other music-associated businesses, lines the area around 16th and 17th Avenues South. Without that union of the Opry and WSM, the neighborhood may have been very different. Three WSM engineers founded Castle Records, Nashville's first recording studio. But the business of recording truly bloomed and boomed in Nashville when Owen and Harold Bradley opened their studio in an old house on 16th Avenue South in 1955. They later expanded the studio with the addition of an old US Army Quonset hut behind the main building. The legendary Quonset hut kicked off the recording careers of Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard. Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash all recorded at the Bradley brothers' studio. Even the janitor at the studio eventually made it in the music business – Kris Kristofferson. As the decades moved on, the opportunity for musicians to perform, publish and record in Nashville created its own kind of gravity, drawing more and better songwriters and recording artists all the time. Willie Nelson got his start in Nashville writing songs for Patsy Cline and Farron Young. Dolly Parton worked as a songwriter before she got her first major record deal, and she was singing in the honky tonks long before she could drink the favored beverages. Today Nashville is home to more than 80 record labels, 130 publishers, and at last count, more than 180 recording studios – from the big guns of Sony and BMI to the small independent labels. On any given night, more than 100 live music clubs perform every genre of music. Nashvillians just don't write songs, they make the instruments too. Gibson guitars are made in Nashville, and the company recently purchased Baldwin Pianos and brought the headquarters to Music City. Gruhn Guitars, a Broadway landmark since the early 1970s, is the purveyor of the finest rare and vintage instruments in the nation. The founder and owner of the business, George Gruhn, still cannot control his guitar habit.
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