Who's Got Time To Pick Guitars In Nashville?

Who’s Got Time To Pick Guitars In Nashville?

- jim Young

“I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about the music and the mothers from Nashville.” - John Sebastian

In 1966 there were “thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers” in Nashville. How do I know that? John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonful told me. Well, they didn’t tell me that directly. It wasn’t like John came up to me and whispered in my ear and said “Psst. Hey jim, did you know there are ‘thirteen hundred and fifty-two pickers in Nashville’?” 

It wasn‘t a secret, as the Lovin’ Spoonful babbled it to everyone who bought their records or just listened to them on the radio.

The song “Nashville Cats” was a tribute to the Nashville A-Team. The Nashville A-Team were a group of studio musicians in Tennessee that backed artists like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Jerry Lee Lewis among others. They were kind of Nashville’s answer to L.A.s Wrecking Crew that backed artists from Frank Sinatra and Sonny & Cher to the Monkees, the Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel.

I don’t know exactly how many musicians made up the Nashville A-Team but it’s probably safe to say, those that played guitar in the group were among the “thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville”.

And you know what? These “thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville” (including those that played in the Nashville A-Team) could “pick more notes than the number of ants

on a Tennessee ant hill.”

Wow! That’s like - a lot of notes! Or is it? There are really only twelve notes on a standard six string guitar that any guitar picker can even play whether they are from Tennessee or not. And if you count four octaves of these twelve notes, that’s still only forty-eight.

Does that mean there are only twelve to forty-eight ants on a Tennessee ant hill? The ants in Tennessee seem to be lagging behind ants found elsewhere. Most ant hills found anywhere else in the world have anywhere between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand ants!

So twelve to forty-eight ants on a Tennessee ant hill isn’t really all that impressive, even if the guitar pickers are.

But you know what is impressive? There are “sixteen thousand eight hundred ‘n’ twenty one Mothers from Nashville”!

That’s a lot of mothers even if they aren't all aunts!

And “it’s custom made for any mother’s son to be a guitar picker in Nashville.”

So if every mother’s son is a guitar picker in Nashville and assuming that every mother has only one son each, that would mean that “thirteen hundred and fifty-two” mothers had sons in Nashville leaving a minimum of (16,821-1,352 = 15,469) fifteen thousand, four hundred and sixty-nine mothers in Nashville without sons.

So what?

Well, if a mother has no sons, she must have at least one daughter, giving Nashville a bare minimum of fifteen thousand, four hundred and sixty-nine daughters in Nashville.

Move over Jan and Dean… with a ratio of 1,352 boys to 15,469 girls I’m not sure I’d have had time for much guitar pickin’ in Nashville. 

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