We skirted the town of Knoxville celebrated back in the mists of time in the old Appalachian murder ballad, The Knoxville Girl, reputed to have roots in Wexford. The Carter Family, Wilburn Brothers, Louvin Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys and a host of other acts recorded the song in America over the years.

Trees were everywhere on the rolling hills and mountains of eastern Tennessee and the changing colours burst forth like a glorious embroidery pattern of nature as the fall of the year took hold.

Noon passed and Nashville drew closer, a place with an almost mystical outreach to those from around America and Canada and across the seas who were raised on the songs and stories from childhood days, famously referred to in a song as “a country boy’s Hollywood”.

The Opryland Resort and Convention Center was where I laid my head for the next four nights. It is an incredible place with 2,888 rooms and nine acres of indoor gardens, making it the largest non-casino hotel in continental US.

I have never seen anything like it and probably never will again in the line of places to stay. For better or worse, country music has come a long way from the cabins in the hills of Caroline.

Tour planner Deirdre Grant from Letterkenny had told us the RCA Studio B one-hour visit on Friday would be special. She was right. The studios, in the heart of Music Row, now preserved as part of the heritage of Nashville, is contained in a small purpose-built building which completely owes its status to Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley who are credited with inventing the Nashville Sound.

The addition of background vocals and strings broadened the appeal of country music and turned it into an international genre. It was hard to believe we were standing in the very same room where superstars like Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride, Bobby Bare and a host of others recorded some of the most enduring songs in music history.

There is an x on the spot on the floor where Jim Reeves and many others stood when singing as it was the area which allowed engineers capture the best sound. It was hugely emotional to stand on that exact spot where history was made between 1957 and 1977, when this studio turned out more hits than any place else in the whole wide world.

Elvis recorded over 200 songs in this room, many after midnight when the cares of the day were over and the quiet of the night touched his soul. He would ramble in and play some tunes on the piano, the very same one that is still here in the room as The Jordanaires waited to accompany him. Elvis, in so many ways, owed his heart and soul to his religious upbringing and his roots in country gospel. It gave him a spirituality that enabled him to speak the language of the soul while in the depths of depression and connect with human nature around the world.

It was here late one night he recorded his classic, Are You Lonesome Tonight. He tried a few “takes” but was not happy with the lighting. He was about to call it a night when the producer suggested they turn out the lights.

And there in the dark with his heart and soul in unison and the ache of lonesomeness in his spirit, he reached for heaven and found the Promised Land in what is regarded as one of his greatest songs.

Michael Commins with Natasha Magee from Coleraine, co-host of the Phil Mack Show on the Sky 376 Keep It Country channel, beside the rocking chair where Johnny Cash for his last ever show at the Carter Family Fold in Virginia.

Jim Reeves recorded a vast amount of his classic songs here too. Chet Atkins transformed Reeves into an international superstar by getting him to change his range from tenor to baritone. It was a stroke of genius and the velvet voice of Jim soon went around the world.

A sample of songs recorded in Studio B include Is Anybody Going to San Antone and Kiss an Angel Good Moring (Charley Pride), Detroit City and 500 Miles Away From Home (Bobby Bare), Coat of Many Colours, I Will Always Love You, Jolene (Dolly Parton), Only The Lonely, Crying (Roy Orbison), All I Have To Do Is Dream (Everly Brothers), Oh Lonesome Me, Sea of Heartbreak (Don Gibson), Honey (Bobby Goldsboro), Stop The World and Let Me Off (Waylon Jennings), Please Help Me I’m Falling, Country Hall of Fame (Hank Locklin) and Floyd Cramer’s classic Last Date which he played on the same piano in the corner.

Later in the afternoon we visited the Country Hall of Fame, an amazing museum and exhibition centre which celebrates the lives of so many names who have graced the country scene since the early years to the present day.

Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Buck Owens, Jim Reeves, Tom T Hall, Don Williams, Loretta Lynn, Reba McIntyre, Elvis Presley, Bill Monroe, the Osborne Brothers, Bobby Bare, Hank Locklin, Waylon Jennings, the old-time bands, and walls and walls of golden discs and tons of memorabilia, they are all here for the world to see and celebrate.

There are also great quotes on display of some of the best word-smiths in the business. One stands out from the great Tom T Hall from Olive Hill, Kentucky: “When I first got to Nashville, somebody said that Kris Kristofferson and I were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands.”

My coverage of visits to the legendary Mother Church of country music, The Ryman Auditorium, a Friday night show in the Grand Ole Opry, a Saturday trip to the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville as well as Churchill Downs in Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby, and a Sunday Morning Service in the Nashville Cowboy Church, along with a journey to downtown Nashville and a visit to some of the honky-tonks near Opryland will have to wait for another issue around Christmas as space has caught up with me this week. But for now, as they say down in the southern states, hope y’all enjoyed my reports from Tennessee over the last two weeks with another heading your way during the festive season. Ya’ll comeback and keep it country.