The Grand Ole Opry

by Colin Escott

  Copyright © 2006 by The Grand Ole Opry®, Gaylord Entertainment

  Front Cover photo: Grand Ole Opry member Trace Adkins receives a standing from the Opry audience, 2005. Copyright Grand Ole Opry®. Photo by Chris Hollo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

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  First eBook Edition: November 2006

  ISBN: 978-1-599-95248-2

  CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Foreword by Vince Gill

  Introduction

  1: THE AIR CASTLE OF THE SOUTH

  2: EARLY DAYS... EARLY STARS

  3: “GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH FOR THE MONEY”—THE OPRY HITS THE ROAD

  4: THE STAR SYSTEM

  5: COAST TO COAST

  6: STAR TIME

  7: DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS

  8: MAN OF THE YEAR

  9: SURVIVING NASHVILLE

  10: “A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF MINE IS A FRIEND OF OTT DEVINE”

  11: “ALL MY HIPPIE FANS”—THE BLUEGRASS REVIVAL

  12: “THE OPRY WAS A COMFORT”

  13: OPRYLAND

  14: WHO’S GONNA FILL THEIR SHOES?

  15: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

  16: FACING THE FUTURE

  Bibliography

  Photographer Credits

  A NOTE FROM THE GRAND OLE OPRY

  The Grand Ole Opry has always had that special something that separates it from every other form of American entertainment: its people.

  This book is dedicated to the dreamers who, for going on a century, have made their way to the Opry stage, aspiring to lend their voices to the Opry’s song. Country music’s home has been built upon their dreams, their performances, and their undying commitment.

  This book is dedicated as well to those in the pews, cars, and living rooms around the world who have dropped by or tuned in over that same course of time, sharing in the Opry dream while laughing and clapping along.

  Indeed, the Opry is set apart by its people. Good people.

  FOREWORD

  by Vince Gill

  People call the Grand Ole Opry a “family show,” and that’s exactly what it is. A lot of my deep appreciation and reverence for the Opry is attributable to my parents, and the generation of my family that came before me. My mom was born the year the Opry started, 1925. My dad taught me how to play guitar and my mom played the harmonica, and my grandmother played the piano in church. That was the generation that sat around the radio on Saturday night listening to the Grand Ole Opry. Even though that era was disappearing by the time I was born, all the records I heard were by Opry stars. Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Chet Atkins, and so on. Respect for the Opry and all it stood for was bred in me.

  Thankfully, I got to know several of the performers who carried the show from the 1930s and’40s until quite recently: Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, Grandpa Jones, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Dickens, and Hank Snow. Every opportunity I got to sing with stars like Roy Acuff was a moment of pride for me because those were the heroes of my parents and my family. There’s something so much deeper in my connection with those artists than the fact that we’re all singers. I feel that I’m respected by the generation of Opry performers that came before me because I have reverence for them, and I back it up by being at the Opry every chance I can.

  When you bring as many artists onto a stage every Saturday night as the Opry does, it’ll never be right for everybody all the time. I hear people saying that the show isn’t what it used to be, but you’ve got to take the long view. History alters what we think of as country music, and that’s why the Grand Ole Opry is so important, because it’s every era of country music together on one stage. You can even make a case for saying that “country music” as we know it didn’t come along for maybe twenty years after the Opry was born. Before that, it was string bands, and those of us who love string band music and have some of that in our style—Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, myself—owe the Opry a debt of gratitude for keeping that music alive through some pretty lean years.

  In these pages you’ll find the story of the Grand Ole Opry in the words of those who were there. As you’ll see, it wasn’t always smooth sailing, but if the Opry had always been perfect and well-oiled, I don’t think it would have lasted. The turmoil and struggles made people fight to keep it alive and keep it vibrant, and those struggles are the way in which every generation redefines what the Opry is.

  There are so many lessons that every artist can learn from the Grand Ole Opry. I started out as a picker, and I already knew the backup musicians there, and I saw at once that it wasn’t all about the stars. That’s why you treat everyone the same. Artists, musicians, backstage people. It takes a village, and the Opry taught me that.

  The Opry also helped me understand the difference between what’s really important and what’s trivial when it comes to making music. These days, our culture has become disposable. What’s the hip, cool, and groovy thing right now? The engaging thing about the Opry is that it doesn’t buy into that theory, and I don’t think it ever will. You can go out there and see fifty years of what’s truly important in country music history. What our music has been and what it is today. That’s a great way to spend an evening. Then there’s the unpredictability of the Opry. Jazz singer Diana Krall came out and sang with me, and no one expected it. Some nights there’ll be giant train wrecks. Someone will say, “Hey, come out and do a number with me,” and it just won’t work, but then you’ll get those moments that only happen at the Grand Ole Opry... and there have been so many. One night I remember in particular came toward the end of Roy Acuff’s life. He couldn’t see too well, so he’d get right up np1 to you while you were performing. He loved my song “When I Call Your Name,” and asked me to sing that, and he had a big tear running down his cheek. I still choke up thinking about it.

  It hurts me to see country artists who think they don’t need the Grand Ole Opry. On one level, I get it. Things are different today than they were sixty years ago. But the Opry can and will stay relevant because enough people have reverence for it and care about its future as much as its past. I had an afternoon with Roy Acuff many years ago and he shared things with me that I’ll probably never tell anybody, but he said, “I was a real big star back in the forties. Hollywood was after me, but the Opry needed me.” That stuck with me. I thought, “That’s what it takes sometimes. Somebody willing to set aside their best interests, and do something for the good of the cause.” When I do the Opry, they give me Mr. Acuff’s dressing room. I think it’s because I always leave the door open.

  Vince Gill at the Grand Ole Opry.

  For the Grand Ole Opry’s eightieth anniversary, we took it back to Carnegie Hall. The Opry had been there twice before, in 1947 and 1961, and people asked us how it felt to stage the Opry there. I’ve always found that people respond to great music wherever they are, but I was so proud to see our music in that venue. Carnegie Hall has an amazing weight to it. Even the few country LPs recorded at Carnegie Hall are landmark recordings. When you think how derided and looked down upon this music was at the time the Opry was born, it makes you realize how far we’ve come, and it makes you realize the Opry’s role in getting us there.

  Even today, the Grand Ole Opry is the first thing people think abo
ut when they think of country music. It conjures up the history of our music. In this book, you’ll hear the words of those who went before us, and the words of those who make the Opry what it is today. When you step onto the Opry stage or sit in the audience, you feel the presence of those who went before and created the music that we’re carrying on. I embrace the ghosts. If they’re hanging out in the rafters, they’re most welcome.

  INTRODUCTION

  There wasn’t an empty seat at the Grand Ole Opry’s eightieth birthday celebration in October 2005. Among the cast members onstage that night, there was one—Little Jimmy Dickens—who’d first appeared on the show in 1948. Back then, he’d mingled with veterans of the show’s earliest days. At the eightieth, he stood backstage with Opry stars from the last fifty years. In the half-light, they formed a ragged, unbroken circle.

  Today’s Opry members coexist happily with the ghosts. No one who plays bluegrass can forget that Bill Monroe introduced the music from the Opry stage. Today’s Opry members know that the torch has been passed to them, and that they in turn must pass it on. Away from the Opry, today’s top stars can play to stadiums full of fans; at the Opry, they play to four thousand people, some of whom have little idea who they are. They have just a few minutes to win over the crowd while artists from the last fifty years watch from the wings. That’s what makes the Grand Ole Opry one of the premier stages in American music.

  Through the years, the legends of the Grand Ole Opry have become known by one name. Cash, Acuff, Hank, Patsy, and so on. At the eightieth anniversary, Garth was there. He emerged from a brief self-imposed retirement, and, in case he, or anyone else, was wondering, he’s still the most powerfully iconic presence in country music. Before joining Steve Wariner for some duets, he went onstage as the fourth member of a quartet alongside Little Jimmy Dickens, Porter Wagoner, and Bill An-derson. Backstage, every hand was shaken and every photo taken. Old-timers used to call it “shake and howdy,” and it’s a tradition that has almost disappeared. Garth, though, seemed genuinely pleased to carry it on. Ernest Tubb, who personified shake and howdy, would have smiled his big benevolent smile and approved.

  Country music venerates tradition, and the Grand Ole Opry embodies it. There is nothing remotely comparable elsewhere in music. No show covers all the bases, from street-corner blues to hip-hop or from rockabilly to heavy metal, but every night at the Grand Ole Opry four thousand people of all ages can hear the broad sweep of country music from the back porch to the stadium. No one performs more than a few songs per segment, so the show isn’t trapped in one time period. It’s breathlessly varied and fast-paced, faster and more varied by far than the very first show when Uncle Jimmy Thompson played the fiddle for one hour to the sole accompaniment of his niece.

  Brad Paisley, one of the current stars who has made a sustained commitment to the Opry, has a vision for the show. “Ideally,” he said recently, “people will come hear Porter Wagoner or Bill Anderson on a night I’m singing and walk away saying, ‘I like that new guy, too.’ And maybe there’ll be people who come to the show because they’ve heard my songs on the radio and they’ll say, ‘Boy, I didn’t know Bill Anderson wrote “City Lights,” or I didn’t know Jimmy Dickens’s “Bird of Paradise” is so funny. I need to go get their CDs.’”

  The Opry came into a world with few entertainment options; now, of course, there are so many. Every era had its unique set of problems, though. In its earliest days, the Opry’s managers had to contend with Nashville’s old-money crowd, who believed that the show brought disgrace to their community. Today, as the interstates approach Nashville, the offi-cial road signs say “Metropolitan Nashville, Home of the Grand Ole Opry.” The Opry has made Nashville synonymous with country music, and the country music business no longer has to trumpet how much it contributes to the city and its economy because the evidence is everywhere. Those entrusted with the future of the Grand Ole Opry contend with different problems, but the show will survive because too many people want it to survive. True, there are complaints that it isn’t what it used to be, but it never was. If it was what it used to be, it would have been fin-ished by 1930.

  So much has happened in eighty years, and here for the first time the story is told in the words of those who witnessed it. Some were in front of the microphone, some behind the curtains, and some in the back office. Some observed and some participated. Everyone was there. Occasionally memories conflict, but that’s as it should be. No two people have ever remembered the same event the same way.

  For help in preparing this book, I’m deeply indebted to Brenda Colla-day, curator of the Grand Ole Opry Museum and the vast archive that the Opry has accumulated along the way. The photo selection here is the tip of the iceberg. Brenda also compiled the list of Opry members by decade and assisted in many other ways. Thanks also to Melissa Fraley Agguini, vice president of Brand Development at the Opry’s parent company, Gay-lord Entertainment; to Gina Keltner, who helped arrange the interviews; and to Alex Smithline, whose idea this initially was. Finally, thanks to Steve Buchanan, president of the Grand Ole Opry Group, and Pete Fisher, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, who are steering the Opry into the twenty-first century with a vision that would appeal to those who originally conceived the show.

  COLIN ESCOTT

  Nashville, February 2006

  1

  THE AIR CASTLE OF THE SOUTH

  One hundred years ago, country music as we know it today didn’t exit.Depending on wher you were, you’d hear Gaelic fiddle tunes,old English pending on where you were, you’d hear Gaelic fiddle tunes, old English ballads, new American ballads, bawdy cowboy songs, hymns, or minstrel songs. Undocumented and ignored, it was called folk music because it was the music that the people of America sang and played for themselves. You’d hear it at weekend hoedowns and barn dances, when families who would rarely see another family all week would come together to share a meal and play music. The barn dance would be in someone’s barn with hay bales for seating; the hoedown might be outside or in a church hall or in someone’s front parlor. It would probably be on bath night, and the women would have curled their hair with curling tongs heated over the flame of the coal oil lamp.

  As the nineteenth century ended, few could have foreseen the impact that two recent inventions, radio and records, would have upon the music played at rural get-togethers. When commercial radio became popular in the 1920s, local music suddenly wasn’t local anymore. All the pieces of American folk music came together to make country music, and if there was one stage where it happened, it was the Grand Ole Opry.

  Edwin Craig: “I just wanted everybody in this community to have access to this new medium.”

  The Grand Ole Opry was one of the first radio barn dances. An old idea in a new era, the radio barn dance was a Saturday night hoedown staged in such a way that folks listening at home could share the fun and excitement. A night at the Grand Ole Opry has almost always included dancers, older stars, new stars, traditional groups, and comedians. That’s the way it has been for eighty years. Performers came together on the Opry stage from very different places and very different backgrounds to create a new American art form, country music, from traditional folk music. The Opry has not only come to define country music but personify the values of the millions who listen to it.

  Nashville Banner, October 4, 1925: “WSM can proudly boast that it is stronger than eighty-five percent of all broadcasting stations in the United States. The National Life & Accident’s field force of more than 2,500 working in as many cities and towns in twenty-one states are elated over the great station, and they are telling thousands daily of the station that is destined to put Nashville on the international radio map.”

  Country music was first performed on radio in 1922; the first country music recordings were made in 1923; and the Grand Ole Opry was launched in 1925. The Opry began as just another show on Nashville’s WSM radio, but the station’s owners, National Life and Accident Insurance Company, soon realized that it would help the
m reach a largely untapped rural audience. When National Life Vice President Edwin Craig launched WSM, it wasn’t Nashville’s first radio station, but, unlike the earliest stations, it had solid financial backing and the steadfast commitment of its owners.

  left: The National Life Building. WSM was on the fifth floor and called itself the “Air Castle of the South.”

  right: Engineer Jack DeWitt (second from left) with a group of Scouts. DeWitt was later awarded seven patents.

  Once Edwin Craig had secured the funding to start WSM, he bought state-of-the-art equipment. His love of radio and belief in its potential had already led him to engineering genius John H. “Jack” DeWitt, who would become a key part of Opry history.

  PETE MONTGOMERY, WSM engineer:

  Even before WSM went on the air, Jack DeWitt and I experimented with radio in Nashville. We built a transmitter for Ward Belmont College, and they gave it to us when the dean decided that it used too much electricity. Then we set up in the parlor of the DeWitt home, and anybody could come and broadcast, but DeWitt’s mother decided she didn’t like all those strangers traipsing through her house. We moved to First Baptist Church, where they gave us studio space in exchange for broadcasting the Sunday sermon. We joined WSM when National Life bought a commercial transmitter. I met Edwin Craig, liked him, and decided to work for him.

  JACK DEWITT, WSM engineer:

  Edwin Craig was the son of one of the founders of National Life, Cornelius Craig, and got interested in radio just by listening to it. He had a good receiver and he loved to listen to distant radio stations. He wanted to leave the company and start a radio station. His father said, “You may not leave the company, but if you wish to put in a radio station, do it here.” So he went ahead, and got the license for WSM, which was National Life’s slogan, “We Shield Millions.” Those call letters had already been assigned to a ship [the S.S. Fair Oaks], but Edwin Craig wanted “WSM” and pulled some strings. We went on air with a onekilowatt Western Electric transmitter. It had a radius of maybe one hundred or one hundred-and-fifty miles. I think Craig’s goal was to reach the states that National Life operated in.