The Grand Ole Opry

by Colin Escott

  Surviving Nashville. Bill Monroe on WSM-TV with host Smilin’ Eddie Hill to his left.

  RICKY SKAGGS:

  If it hadn’t been for Bill Monroe and his tenacity, bluegrass music might have died. He set his face like flint. He kept it alive. Flatt and Scruggs took the music onto television, but Bill Monroe’s hang-in-there-like-a-rusty-fishhook attitude really kept the music alive. He survived rock ’n’ roll, and he survived Nashville.

  In the late 1950s, few would have given good odds on the survival of bluegrass; it was hard to find on the radio and on records. But it not only survived; it found an entirely new audience, an audience that most Opry stars hadn’t even thought about.

  RALPH EMERY, WSM deejay:

  Sonny Osborne told me that there used to be eleven thousand bluegrass fans in the United States. I asked him how he knew, he said, “We recorded bluegrass for years and we sold eleven thousand copies every time out.”

  Look magazine, August 27, 1963:

  Serious students of folk music, always seeking genuine ethnic sources, are rediscovering the spirited “Blue Grass” style, which is perhaps closer to the majority of Americans than any other musical form.

  DOUG GREEN of Riders in the Sky, Opry stars:

  I was in college in the sixties, and we played bluegrass. There was something so plaintive and approachable about it. When you’re nineteen, you haven’t seen your share of honky-tonks and broken hearts. The country music experience you find in those kind of songs is remote, but songs about the mountains, missing home, and the straightforward honesty of the emotions resonated with a lot of college-age kids.

  SHARON AND CHERYL WHITE of the Whites, Opry stars:

  The kids weren’t about materialism. They looked for something honest and real, and bluegrass was it. You can’t help but be drawn to it. The purity of it. Louise Scruggs managed Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and she was the one who began booking Lester and Earl into campuses. They said it couldn’t be done, but she was right.

  D. Kilpatrick was still in charge of the Opry in 1959 when Louise Scruggs called him because she’d received some interest from college campuses. Opry stars had never played campuses; in fact, never even thought of playing there.

  D. KILPATRICK:

  Louise told me that Davidson College in North Carolina had called them and wanted to schedule a performance on campus, and she wanted to know if they should do it. I said, “What do you mean whether?” She said, “Well, we don’t want anyone laughing at us.” I said, “They’re not going to laugh at you.” It wasn’t three months and they were over at Duke University. Then before long that Esquire magazine article came out on them.

  Lester Flatt (left) with Louise and Earl Scruggs.

  The Esquire article by folklorist Alan Lomax appeared in October 1959. Lomax coined the phrase “folk music in overdrive” to describe bluegrass. Late the previous year, the Kingston Trio had taken an old mountain song, “Tom Dooley,” and made an international pop hit out of it. “Tom Dooley” ignited a folk craze on campus, and Lomax’s article refocused interest on bluegrass as a repository of American folklore. At first listen, bluegrass appeared to have been unaltered for hundreds of years; in fact, of course, Bill Monroe had formulated the style just fifteen years earlier. Some of the songs were ancient, but many more were modern. Flatt and Scruggs sensed an opportunity, and on LPs like Folk Songs of Our Land, began tailoring their repertoire to their new audience. For one thing, college students bought LPs, not singles, and quite suddenly bluegrass LPs didn’t sell only eleven thousand copies anymore.

  Bill Monroe felt slighted, and when Ralph Rinzler, then a student at Swarthmore College, asked him for an interview, he snapped, “If you want to know about bluegrass, ask Louise Scruggs.” But Rinzler persisted and eventually took over Monroe’s management.

  RALPH RINZLER:

  Recognition for bluegrass and for Flatt and Scruggs as its significant exponents began with Scruggs’ 1959 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, followed by Flatt and Scruggs’ joint appearance in 1960. It was February 1963 that Bill made his first college appearance at the University of Chicago Folk Festival, followed by his first New York concert appearances and his first folk club date at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Bill Monroe became the patriarch of bluegrass just as his rural and urban followings began to come together at festivals and concerts, united tenuously by their love for his music.

  SHARON WHITE of the Whites:

  Those festivals started, and you could tell that there were many bluegrass groups that Bill wasn’t approving of. It worried me. I thought, If he doesn’t let go of this music, he’ll choke it to death.

  RALPH RINZLER:

  That he didn’t smile on LP jackets is wholly consistent with his personality and symbolizes the degree to which he held himself apart from those around him, musically, socially, and personally. A man more easily persuaded would likely not have succeeded in so formidable an undertaking as bucking the rushing cultural and economic tide of the country music industry.

  Flatt and Scruggs’s career received a considerable boost from the television series The Beverly Hillbillies. They backed Jerry Scroggins on the show’s theme song, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” and their version became a hit single. The show’s writer/producer later brought them onto the show for cameo appearances, boosting their profile yet again.

  LESTER FLATT:

  That song wasn’t our favorite, but we learned to love it when it hit number one on the trade charts. Working with Beverly Hillbillies is different from what we’re used to. On our own TV show for Martha White, we cut three or four shows as fast as we can. Out there, it takes them a week to cut a thirty-minute film.

  Lester Flatt with Granny in a Beverly Hillbillies publicity shot.

  A new record producer wanted them to record Bob Dylan songs and other contemporary material. Scruggs embraced the challenge; Flatt did not. Success had enabled Flatt and Scruggs to set aside their artistic differences . . . for a while.

  PAT WELCH, journalist, in the Tennessean:

  On the night of February 22, 1969, when [Flatt and Scruggs were] supposed to perform at 10:15 on the Grand Ole Opry, Flatt simply walked out without consulting Scruggs. Since that occasion, Flatt has not spoken to Scruggs, and the next information Scruggs had concerning him was on February 25 when he was advised that Flatt was trying to obtain bookings through an agency in violation of his contract with Scruggs Talent Agency. Scruggs charged that Flatt lived on his [Flatt’s] farm in Sparta, Tennessee, since 1960 and devoted a minimal amount of time to the business of the partnership. On some occasions, Scruggs said he had to use tapes on road trips to familiarize Flatt with the new material.

  After Flatt and Scruggs broke up, Earl Scruggs formed a revue with his sons Gary (left) and Randy (right).

  After the rift, Lester Flatt returned to traditional bluegrass, and, in 1971, set aside longstanding differences with Bill Monroe. Although they both played on the Opry, they had managed to avoid speaking to each other since 1953, but backstage at the Opry one night Monroe sent his son, James, to ask Flatt if he would play at Monroe’s Bean Blossom Festival. Marty Stuart, who had joined Flatt as a thirteen-year-old mandolin player, recalled the historic reunion.

  MARTY STUART:

  Bluegrass festivals were becoming a big thing. You’d see the Woodstock generation, mom and pops, bikers. Bean Blossom was a major event, and Lester played there in 1971. Everyone knew there had been a row, but then Lester came out and did a duet with Bill Monroe on “Will You Be Loving Another Man.” The crowd went berserk. John Hartford told me he watched it and bawled like a child.

  Lester became a rock star. We started working college campuses a lot. The first show was Michigan State. Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris opened for us. The Eagles were out touring with “Desperado” then, and Bernie Leadon wanted to meet Lester. Lester said, “Aw, this ain’t gonna amount to nothin’.” But it did. I don’t really know what Lester thought about that crowd. He and Earl had pla
yed for a lot of hippies in the sixties. It wasn’t brand-new to him. The hippies loved him. He didn’t get what they were about, but he understood applause and he understood ticket sales and he understood encores.

  Lester Flatt with Marty Stuart and the Osborne Brothers, 1975.

  Ten years passed without much, if any, communication between Flatt and Scruggs.

  MARTY STUART:

  Spring 1979, Bob Dylan was playing Nashville. When I was introduced to him, he said, “Aren’t you the kid that plays mandolin with Lester Flatt?” I said yes. Dylan asked, “How is Lester, anyway?” I said, “He’s dying.” He wondered if Lester and Earl talked anymore. I told him I didn’t think so. He said this was sad because Abbott and Costello were always going to speak, but they never got around to it before one of them died. Dylan kind of left it at that, but I went up to a payphone and called Earl and asked him if I could come talk with him. When I got there, I told him that the end was real soon for Lester and I wished he would consider going to see him one last time. Scruggs did, and that’s just one more reason why I love him.

  The bluegrass revival broadened into a revival of traditional country music. At the forefront of this revival was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s three-LP set, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, which paired the rock ’n’ roll band with traditional artists and songs. Although Bill Monroe pointedly refused to be a part of the album, it succeeded in reconciling rock musicians with heritage artists like Roy Acuff. At the same time, there was a growing acknowledgment of the Opry’s role in preserving and showcasing vintage country music. Most nights at the Opry, fans could still see the entire history of country music represented.

  Other older artists—often to their surprise—found a new audience within the counterculture.

  ERNEST TUBB:

  When the hippies first started coming up to me, I was a little apprehensive, but they’ve turned out to be some of my biggest fans. These kids are looking for down-to-earth realism. They’re looking for something our country’s lost over the years. They’re sincere, and they could be more right than a lot of the rest of us. I don’t mind long hair as long as it’s clean, and all my hippie fans have been clean and well-behaved.

  GRANDOLEOPRY

  NEW MEMBERS:1970s

  JERRY CLOWER

  LARRY GATLIN AND THE GATLIN BROTHERS

  TOM T. HALL

  DAVID HOUSTON

  JAN HOWARD

  BARBARA MANDRELL

  RONNIE MILSAP

  JEANNE PRUETT

  DON WILLIAMS

  TAMMY WYNETTE

  12

  “THE OPRY WAS A COMFORT”

  Often, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed as if the nation was polarized to the point that it might disintegrate into civil war. An institution such as the Grand Ole Opry had to take its stand. In November 1969, President Nixon made a televised speech about Vietnam. Concluding, he called upon “you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,” and the Opry would entertain that silent majority. It would conjure up images of a more harmonious time and place, and its adaptation to social and musical changes would be measured.

  BILL ANDERSON:

  The Opry wasn’t cutting edge. It wasn’t designed to be cutting edge. The Opry was comfort. It took people’s minds off protests and riots. It was a refuge for people who weren’t caught up in the upheaval that was going on.

  Charley Pride at WSM’s forty-first birthday celebration in 1966.

  MINNIE PEARL:

  In an insecure world, the Opry doesn’t change. Our jokes, many of our songs, and the customs we portray stay the same. People like it because it gives them a sense of security, a happy recollection of the way they were told things used to be in the good old days.

  Nevertheless, change made its way to the Opry’s door. Charley Pride became country music’s first African American star since DeFord Bailey, and several groups, including the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers, blended sixties’ rock with traditional country music. Just as Elvis gave the Opry audience of October 2, 1954, a sneak preview of rock ’n’ roll, so the Byrds provided the Opry audience of March 15, 1968, with a preview of country rock. No one in the audience or even onstage could have foreseen it, but the Byrds and Burritos would influence the Eagles and many southern-rock bands, and those bands in turn influenced country music in the 1990s and beyond.

  In March 1968, the Byrds were in Nashville to record what many regard as the first country-rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. They asked for a guest spot on the Opry, believing the audience would embrace their music.

  ROGER MCGUINN, leader of the Byrds:

  [Group member] Gram Parsons figured we could win over the country audience. He figured that once they dig you, they never let you go. So we were shooting for the Opry. We even played there. First rock group ever to do so. Columbia Records had to pull some strings to get us on the bill.

  Opry band members Jimmy Capps and Hal Rugg observe as the Byrds—Kevin Kelley, Gram Parsons, Roger McGuinn, and Chris Hillman—make their Opry debut.

  EMMYLOU HARRIS, Opry star and Gram Parsons’s duet partner:

  Gram wanted to be a country artist. He really wanted to bring country music to his generation and he wanted to be accepted. There was that country boy yes-ma’am, no-sir about him. I think he wanted to be accepted by the Grand Ole Opry because it meant a lot to him. But he never got accepted. They were just too rock ’n’ roll.

  RANDY BROOKS, journalist, in the Vanderbilt Hustler:

  The Byrds of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and “Eight Miles High” fame were in last minute preparation for their Grand Ole Opry debut. An unidentified man suggested that, for the sake of public relations, they use the current number one song, “Sing Me Back Home,” for their encore. The boys had other ideas, and even after the MC introduced that song, guitarist Graham [sic] Parsons began to play “Hickory Wind,” a very pretty and very country tune. In performance the Byrds were a far cry from their earlier days. The unbearable volume of amplified instruments, which has impaired the hearing of stalwart Byrds fans in the past, was gone. In its place was the lazy twang of steel guitar and three very pleasant voices, actually audible over the accompaniment. Both “Hickory Wind,” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” drew polite but unenthusiastic response from an audience which only minutes before has cheered heartily for the Glaser Brothers and displayed unabashed adoration for Skeeter Davis. Following their appearance at the Opry, the Byrds came to Vanderbilt. The studios of WRVU were crowded with onlookers as each member of the group played disc jockey and answering service during an informal interview conducted by Gary Scruggs and Speed Hopkins. In reply to a telephoned question, Parsons said that he feels that the next sound in pop music will be an “exploitation of country music.” One caller who accused the Byrds of being “dirty Commies” turned out to be group member Chris Hillman phoning from downstairs.

  Less than one month later, Opry audiences were forced to confront the turmoil of the late 1960s head-on. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was killed and riots erupted spontaneously in 130 cities.

  The Tennessean, April 6–7, 1968: Opry to Miss 1st Live Program in Past 43 Years

  The 7 p.m. curfew imposed by Mayor Beverly Briley interrupted the normal routine for thousands of the city’s residents, and brought complaints from both negro and white. Several persons who phoned the Nashville Tennessean complained that they were frightened to go home from work because police officers were given the authority to stop anyone on the street for questioning. One man called to say that the closing of bars and taverns put him on the wagon for the weekend. Briley proclaimed a civil emergency existed in the city as a result of scattered violence in North Nashville. For the first time in 43 years there’ll be no live Saturday night Grand Ole Opry. Instead of a live show, radio listeners will hear tapes of past performances. The Opry would have performed for the 2204th consecutive time tonight.

  Of course, the Opry had been canceled or preempted several t
imes in its history, but this was the first and only time it was canceled because of civil unrest.

  BUD WENDELL:

  Nashville was closed down. You just were not allowed out. The streets were to be cleared. I called [the mayor] and I said, “I understand all this, but you must mean for everybody except for us,” and he said, “No, you’re included.” So we had no alternative. We couldn’t get artists together, bands together, even if we had wanted to do something. There was no way for people to get out. So we did the best thing we could. It was during that period of time that we had bomb scares. People would call schools and businesses and say a bomb was going to go off in ten minutes, so we had a standby tape that we made ahead of time, and we played that tape. It was a sad night, but we survived it.

  Roy Acuff addressed the fans, many of them from out of town.

  Friends, can I have your attention a minute. There’s something I’d like to say. We all know there’s a curfew on in Nashville. It starts at seven o’clock, and there’s not going to be an Opry tonight. It seems a shame that so many people have come in from out of town and won’t be able to see it. Let’s see if we can’t find a place and give them a show.

  Roy Acuff brought the crowd to his museum on Broadway. Upstairs in a square dance hall, Acuff’s impromptu Opry started at 2:00 p.m.

  At a time when many believed that the country was drifting toward anarchy, the senselessly brutal slaying of Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw star David Akeman, known as Stringbean, on November 10, 1973, seemed to bring the era’s troubles inside the Opry House itself.

  BUD WENDELL:

  String and Estelle had been there on Saturday night. I had coffee with them sitting around some of those little ol’ drugstore tables I had put in there. These guys were out there ransacking the house and listening to the Opry knowing that they weren’t going to get caught because they could hear Stringbean pickin’ on the show. I remember one thing String said. He and Grandpa Jones were discussing their hunting expedition, and String looked at me and he said, “How y’all gonna make it around here next week with both of us gone, Bud?”