Back in the day, the concert industry wasn’t a Live Nation money pit. And there was no MTV. There wasn’t even a Midnight Special. Or a Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Or ABC-TV’s In Concert, produced by Don (read our “Exploring: The Movies of Don Kirshner” feature for more on Don’s TV and film exploits).

No, for back in those pre-cable and World Wide Web days of yore, in order to see all of those music stars of the radio, you went to the drive-in. You know the films: Alan Freed’s Mr. Rock and Roll and Rock, Rock, Rock in particular, films that had nary a plot and were padded with musical performances — which were the whole point of the films in the first place: for record labels to promote their artists. And since not everyone had TVs yet, the more accessible movie theater was the next best thing. Oh, yes. These flicks were performance-padded rock concerts that masqueraded as dramatic-comedy narratives . . . well, in reality, aren’t they just rock documentaries?

So, just like Alan Freed gathering up the kids and the artists for a big show in those films, here we have a Hollywood studio wanting to jump on the Elvis-inspired country music crazy and make a movie. So they send out Colonel Feetlebaum (Doodles Weaver . . . Oh, you’ll know his face when you see it; we reviewed his exploitative work in Hot Rod Gang, Trucker’s Women . . . and that’s just two of his 150 TV and film credits) to round up Marty Robbins (who produced this as a vanity showcase) along with Webb Pierce, Waylon Jennings, Bill Anderson, Porter Wagoner, and Dottie West. Of course, no county film is complete without Johnny Cash (in his second film: he made his dramatic acting debut in 1961’s Five Minutes to Live, aka the more sensational Door to Door Maniac; he followed up Road to Nashville with 1971’s A Gunfight). Oh, and did you know this is Marty Robbins’s second bow on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack? And did you know he raced stock cars? Marty did, and he made a film about it (with John Ashley of Blood Island fame), Hell on Wheels, which, if you’re keeping track of our Mill Creek Mania at B&S, that flick is also on their Savage Cinema set.

Oh, the brains behind it all: Will Zens, he who gave such drive-in delights as The Starfighters (1964), the aforementioned Hell On Wheels and Trucker’s Women, as well as the redneck romps Hot Summer in Barefoot County and Redneck Miller.

The cinematographer on this? The legend that Kevin Smith eloquently referred to as “a stubborn old cuss,” aka “ornery old cuss” (depending on the story-version regarding their mutual exploits on Jersey Girl): Vilmos Zsigmond. Cuss or no, ornery or not . . . just wow, there’s so many B&S films Vilmos has done (Psycho a Go Go, for one), as he worked his way up to Deliverance (with Burt Reynolds), Scarecrow (with Richard Lynch and Al Pacino), The Deer Hunter (Robert DeNiro), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

You can get Road to Nashville with Mill Creek by way of their B-Movie Blast 50-movie set.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.