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Drivers, artists set for Sprint Sound & Speed
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Kyle Petty joked that his musical debut at Ryman Auditorium on Friday night would be his "first and (his) last."That can’t be said for his appearance at Sprint Sound & Speed presented by SunTrust, which benefits his beloved Victory Junction Camp and the Country Music Hall of Fame. More than 40 drivers and artists will appear at Nashville Municipal Auditorium on Saturday.
For Petty, NASCAR’s resident renaissance man and third generation representative from the first family of stock car racing, this "Celebration of Music & Motorsports" has a similar feel to the old Winston Preview fan fests that were held in Winston-Salem to kick-off the season -- but with a twist or a twang if you prefer.
He knows all too well that Nashville and country music fans are NASCAR’s "core base" too.
"If you go back to the beginning of the sport, if you go back to the Martinsvilles and the Wilkesboros and the Bristols and the Columbia, South Carolinas and Daytona, all those places -- NASCAR is a southern sport. It can be a national sport, but it is a southern sport.
"And country music is a southern genre. When you look at where it came out of -- Bristol and then ended up in Nashville -- with the Carters and all that stuff. There’s so many parallels. When you look at the Carter family and the France family, you look at different legacies -- Hank Williams and Hank Jr., Dale Earnhardt and Dale Jr. That was the idea for this -- to reground what our sport was but also take country music and say, 'Hey, these NASCAR fans are your fans. And there’s tons of them out there. You need to connect with those, fans too.' So it was beneficial to both parties."
Certainly, the marriage between NASCAR and country music is a long one. Petty made reference to the late Marty Robbins during his Grand Ole Opry gig. Petty was a guest of the singer/racer for his first visit to Ryman Auditorium. And when Petty was planning his Cup series debut in 1979, he had to ask Robbins and Cotton Owens’ permission to use the No. 42.
"Marty was a real good driver," Petty said. "He ran out here at the (Nashville) Fairgrounds. A lot of people don’t remember that but that was a time when people weren’t locked in and crucified for doing multiple things. Everybody did stuff.
"Marty loved racing. A lot of people in the music industry would come out to the (Nashville) Fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds were always a fun place for everybody to come."
Petty says the original idea for Sound & Speed was a collaboration between Richard Childress and his friend Brian Williams, who was a Sr. VP with SunTrust before an accident claimed his life in 2006. Petty says the pair hoped to take the original idea of the Winston preview, "build it and make it bigger."
"You come to Nashville and you bring in the music industry and you bring in the race industry and you bring in fans that come in from Ohio or Michigan or wherever they come from," Petty said. "That’s a big deal. That was part of their thing from the beginning."
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