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Tennessee Quarter – Thematic TrioThe Tennessee Quarter is the 16th coin in the 50 State Quarter Series of the US Mint.This is rather a different coin than those of all the preceding states. It doesn’t directly reference a major event in history or a significant natural wonder or architectural achievement. On its face (actually, its reverse) it’s all about music – the music of Tennessee. The design includes three musical instruments: a fiddle (violin if you’re a Yankee), a guitar, and a trumpet. There’s an intentional association of each of these with one of the three regions of the state, and the musical and historical roots of each. FiddleThe fiddle refers to the Appalachian beginnings of East Tennessee, the first part of Tennessee to be reached by westward moving American colonials from Virginia and the Carolinas. Solo fiddle players sounded the early strains of folk, bluegrass, and mountain music so familiar to this region.GuitarMoving further west into Middle Tennessee the mountains of the east give way to rolling countryside well matched to the needs of permanent settlement and farming.This countryside gave us country and western music, whose plaintive laments and easy going ballads are played on guitars like the one on the Tennessee State Quarter. TrumpetThe blues tradition in music has deep roots in the city of Memphis in West Tennessee. Trumpet playing bluesmen playing tunes grounded in an African-American musical idiom flourished along the Mississippi River.The fusion of blues, western swing, and boogie-woogie engendered the first stirrings of rock and roll and later, a hybrid sound known as “rockabilly”.
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