There's a saying in Nashville that "It all begins with a song." Well, not quite. What music really begins with is an outlook, a belief that life's most vivid moments can be captured and conveyed in three short minutes of melody and words. That's not as simple as it sounds. Novelists and playwrights expend thousands of words to get the same point across. Even so, few of these longer works stay as close to the heart as a song does. If you are a performer, you need to have an ear for picking songs that lift spirit and resonate the soul. That's where Arthur Blanch moves to the head of the class. A master song craftsman himself, Blanch knows how to find and polish the treasures. 

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Edward Morris

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Former country music editor of Billboard