Tennessee Culture and Arts

It is only fitting that Tennessee has seven official state songs, since the state is known so widely for its contributions to popular music. Its capital, Nashville, home to the Grand Ole Opry at Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Opryland amusement park, is fittingly nicknamed "Music City USA." So much music in a variety of genres is produced here that since the 1960s Nashville has ranked second behind only New York City as a music recording center.

A few hours to the East, Memphis claims an impressive musical heritage of its own. Long before Elvis Presley made Graceland a favorite destination for rock and roll pilgrimages, Memphis had Beale Street, home of the blues. Made famous by African-American musical pioneers like W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters and B.B. King, among others, Beale Street is now a national historic landmark.

Tennessee Economy and Industry

Despite its musical legacy, and the tourism it generates, modern Tennessee's economy relies heavily on manufacturing and services. The Volunteer State now ranks 4th in the U.S for production of automobiles, since major plants were built in the 1990s by Nissan (Smyrna) and General Motors/Saturn (Spring Hill), and Nissan North America relocated its headquarters to the Nashville area in 2006. Other major corporations based in TN include Federal Express, AutoZone, International Paper and Hospital Corp. of America (HCA), the nation's largest operator of private for-profit hospitals.

A stronghold of conservative Christianity, Tennessee is home base to several Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist Church and Southern Baptist Convention, as well a number of Christian colleges, giving Nashville another nickname: "buckle of the Bible Belt." Just south of Nashville is Dayton, location of the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925, when a local school teacher was prosecuted for violating a state law against teaching the theory of evolution. Tennessee's anti-evolution law, the Butler Act, was not repealed by the legislature until the 1960s.

But TN has not rejected science. During the Great Depression, when Appalachia faced severe economic hardship, a New Deal agency called the Tennessee Valley Authority constructed dams on the Tennessee River, and later nuclear power plants, which ultimately produced enough power to supply more than 8 million customers today. TVA, based in Knoxville in East Tennessee, is the nation's largest public utility, and its mission has expanded to include economic development and environmental management in seven Southern states from Virginia to Mississippi.

Plentiful electricity supplied by TVA allowed the federal government to establish an atomic weapons plant at Oak Ridge, east of Knoxville, recruiting researchers in the 1940s to work on the Manhattan Project. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, now managed by a subcontractor for the Department of Energy, currently employs more than 4,000 scientists and engineers. Not surprisingly, in a community with so many highly educated residents, the public schools in the town of Oak Ridge are considered some of the best in the U.S.

Tennessee Demographics

As of 2006 the population of Tennessee was estimated at 6,038,803. Of this total, 80.7% were white, and 16.8% were black. 3% of the population is comprised of Hispanics.

Tennessee Real Estate Information

Real estate prices in Tennessee are generally low by national standards - all three major cities have a median home value below the U.S median. However, affluent suburbs are more expensive: homes in Franklin (Nashville), Germantown (Memphis) and Farragut (Knoxville) were nearly double the median price within those city limits. Low interest rates and stunning scenery contribute to a strong housing market.