by Colin Escott
ROY ACUFF to the last house at the Ryman, March 15, 1974:
Certainly there are memories of this old house that will go with us forever. Not all of them are good. Not all of them. Many of them are. But some of them are punishment. Punishment in the way we ask you to come visit with us and then we sit you out in the audience here and in the hot summer we sell you a fan for a dollar. You do your own air-conditioning. And some of you, we sell you a cushion to sit on because the seats are just not the most comfortable they can be. But out in Opryland when you come see us, we’ll furnish the air-conditioner. We’ll furnish the cushion seats.
HAIRL HENSLEY, Opry announcer:
George Morgan, Lorrie’s father, was the star of the last portion of the Opry from the Ryman. The last song was his theme song, “Candy Kisses.”
After “Candy Kisses,” the entire cast assembled to sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Garrison Keillor, then an arts columnist for the New Yorker, was in the auditorium that night. As a child, he’d heard the Opry in Minnesota.
GARRISON KEILLOR:
The best place to see the Opry that night, I decided, was in the [broadcast] booth with my eyes shut, leaning against the back wall, the music coming out of the speaker just like radio. That good old AM mono sound. The room smelled of hot radio tubes, and, closing my eyes, I could see the stage as clearly as when I was a kid lying in front of our giant Zenith console. It was good to let the Opry go out the same way it had first come to me, through the air in the dark. After the show, it was raining hard, and the last Opry crowd to leave the Ryman ran.
Inspired by the Grand Ole Opry, Keillor returned to Minnesota, and, on July 6, 1974, launched A Prairie Home Companion on Minnesota Public Radio. Like the Opry, it ran on Saturday evening and featured a mix of comedy and music. It was later syndicated via NPR.
JEANNIE SEELY:
When we moved, a lot of people asked me, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose something?” Well, of course, leaving the Ryman was sad, but I believe very much in a torch being passed and a responsibility being passed along with it. It was our responsibility to make the new building mean what the people before us had made the Ryman mean.
BILL ANDERSON:
I felt instantly at home. I felt like this was where we were meant to be, and where we were going to be for the next many, many years. I appreciate the Ryman. I loved everything that was down there, but if you were ever there on a hot night in July with thousands of people blocking the entranceway to the building, and the temperature about 950 degrees backstage and no air-conditioning, then you appreciate what we’ve got at the new Opry House.
Invitation to the Opry House opening.
JEAN SHEPARD, Opry star:
We done the Friday night Opry from the Ryman and the Saturday night Opry from Opryland. That Saturday night it sounded like an Apache raid on a Chinese laundry. The sound was terrible. I come off the stage, and someone said, “Jean, how do you like the new building?” I said, “I don’t like it at all.” But it’s gotten an awful lot better, it really has.
HAL DURHAM:
The last show at the Ryman was a matter of people grabbing up souvenirs and whatever they could find to remember the building. The thought then was that it would be torn down. We got to the new building on Saturday and realized that we knew nothing about it. We didn’t know where the restrooms were or the backstage was, and the first show involved a visit from President Nixon. Of course, television was there, and the national press. Roy Acuff and his group opened the show, then we got to the part where he invited the president to come down, and then we invited Opry members to come onstage.
President Nixon sat down at the piano and played “Happy Birthday” and “My Wild Irish Rose” to his wife, Pat, and then tried to yo-yo with Roy Acuff.
PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON, on the Opry stage, March 18, 1974,to Roy Acuff:
I’ll stay here and try and learn to yo-yo, and you go be president for a while. Friends, country music speaks of family, our faith in God, and we all know that country music radiates love of this nation, of patriotism. Country music, therefore, has those combinations that are essential to America’s character at a time when America needs character. Your music makes America better, and we come away better after hearing it.
left: President Richard Nixon gets yo-yo lessons from Roy Acuff.
right: While many sitting presidents have visited the Opry, only Richard Nixon has actually played the Opry.
ROY ACUFF to President Nixon:
He is a real trouper as well as one of our greatest presidents.
BILL ANDERSON:
I was standing onstage when Mr. Acuff and the president were out there playing with the yo-yos. I was next to Ernest Tubb, and I thought, Well, here’s a man who’s been at the Grand Ole Opry since 1943, and I turned to him and said, “Ernest, did you ever think you’d live to see the day when the president of the United States would come to the Grand Ole Opry?” He looked at me and said, “No, but I wish it had been another president.”
The Opry crowd was quite possibly the last friendly audience that Richard Nixon encountered during his term in office. He had been named a co-conspirator in the Watergate break-in by a federal grand jury the day before his appearance at the Opry. On August 8, he announced that he would resign.
President Nixon waves to the Opry audience.
HAL DURHAM:
You’ve probably seen those pictures of President Nixon playing piano, and all the Opry people backstage, but when I look at that photo I see many non-Opry people with no connection to the show who somehow got into the group. The first show ran forty-five minutes late. It was a cold night in March, and the second-show crowd was waiting outside to come in. We finally just ran the show straight through, emptied the house, and let the second-show crowd come in without actually having an intermission. The show ended that night about an hour and twenty minutes late.
Among those performing the first show at the new Opry House were Sam McGee, who, with his brother, Kirk, first performed on the Opry in 1926.
SAM MCGEE:
There’s people here now, I tell ’em how it was back in the early days, and they don’t even believe me. There’s only seven or eight of us original members left now. We had no idea when we started that [the Opry] would make such a go of it. I felt for a while that when our music was over, when we were gone, why that’d be the end of it. But it seems lately that people are getting interested in our music again. This Opry House is fine. It’s the finest thing that could happen to the Opry. It’s a place to show off. You can’t sell barbecue without setting it out and saying, “That’s barbecue, folks.”
Among those returning to the Opry in the months after the move was DeFord Bailey. On the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday in December 1974, he was brought onstage by Roy Acuff, who had worked with him in the late 1930s.
The move to Opryland was more than justified by the increased attendance. In 1974, the Opry drew 482,178 people; in 1975, attendance reached 751,546. The cost for National Life had been more than anticipated, but WSM president Irving Waugh reasoned that the Opry was still a benefit to National Life in its battle with bigger insurers.
The move had been exhausting, but once the Opry was installed in its new premises, the question remained of what to do with the Ryman Auditorium. Early on, the prevailing opinion was that it should be demolished. National Life brought in a consultant, Jo Mielziner, who’d staged a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Ryman in 1935. Mielziner told the board that the Ryman was “full of bad workmanship and contains nothing of value as a theater worth restoring. In its latter life as part-time housing for theatrical presentations, there is absolutely not an item of true value because of the total inadequacy of this structure for this kind of operation.” Only a few benches and signs should be saved, concluded Mielziner, and perhaps after the Ryman had been torn down, a modern concrete hall could be built to stage theatrical productions.
Roy Acuff to DeFord Bailey, December 1
6, 1974: “I guess DeFord traveled with us about six or seven years. I used him whenever I wanted to draw a crowd. DeFord would play and then I’d go on and try to hold their attention.”
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE, the New York Times, May 13, 1973:
In the name of reasonableness, the company [National Life] has sponsored studies that have come up with the not surprising news that preservation is “economically unfeasible.” [But] there was probably no landmark rehabilitation that was not called economically unfeasible before it was successfully done. The latest study is by Jo Mielziner, who is not the most qualified expert on old building renovation, to put it mildly. . . . Destroying the Ryman is more than demolishing a touchstone of Nashville’s past; it means abandonment of a neighborhood that needs help, and speeding the death of downtown. That’s fine for the kind of redevelopers who wait like vultures to produce sterile new urban pap.
ROY ACUFF:
The Ryman’s going to fall down anyway, so why not tear it down, then people wouldn’t go down to that part of town. The old Opry house attracts persons who become potential customers for the massage parlors and other adult businesses. It might be sad to some to tear it down, but I’m not that way. It would be a wonderful idea to take the bricks and build a chapel or church at Opryland. If they did that, I’d start going back to church. That plan would show the most respect for the building and Christianity. The Ryman served its purpose and served it well, but if they want to restore it, I’m doubtful anyone could get it done before it falls down. You can’t heat it. I’ve stood on that stage doing a matinee, and you could see the sky. It’s a fire hazard and the bricks are falling off the walls. Some crank or fanatic could throw a firebomb in there, and it would be gone in an hour.
DEL WOOD, Opry star:
The Ryman is the Carnegie Hall of country music. That’s the problem with this country. Anything old is discarded to make way for the new. The Ryman is part of our heritage. To keep it doesn’t take anything away from the new Opry House.
SKEETER DAVIS, Opry star:
I was one of the people who fought, and I will say fought, because we went to the historical boards, people like that to save the Ryman. Two people who raised their voices to save it were Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I really didn’t want to go to the new building in the middle of a park. I still love the old Ryman, and I’m glad we saved it. Neil Young used to be in the wings of the Ryman when no one knew who he was. Andy Warhol came. I remember sitting there talking to him, and later Roy Acuff asked me, “Who was that freak?”
At one point, National Life officials proposed using some of the bricks and pews from Ryman to create “The Little Church of Opryland.” The idea really never made it past this sketch, perhaps in part because of the ridicule from theNew York Times: “First prize for the pious misuse of a landmark, and a total misunderstanding of the priciples of preservation. Gentlemen, for shame.”
And so the National Life board deferred a decision on the Ryman Auditorium. It sat empty for years, long enough for downtown Nashville to be reborn around it.
Ryman public hearing notice, March 12, 1974.
GRANDOLEOPRY
NEW MEMBERS: 1980s
BOXCAR WILLIE
ROY CLARK
JOHN CONLEE
HOLLY DUNN
PATTY LOVELESS
MEL MCDANIEL
REBA MCENTIRE
LORRIE MORGAN
RIDERSINTHE SKY
JOHNNY RUSSELL
RICKY VAN SHELTON
RICKY SKAGGS
MELVIN SLOAN DANCERS
B. J. THOMAS
RANDY TRAVIS
THE WHITES
14
WHO’S GONNA FILL THEIR SHOES?
Hal Durham managed the Grand Ole Opry from 1974 until 1993. He was the first to allow a full drum kit on the Opry stage, and he relaxed the number of performances needed to retain membership. But even with the vastly increased attendance at the new Opry House, Hal Durham and Bud Wendell knew that there was a problem on the near horizon: the show’s stalwarts, Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb, and Little Jimmy Dickens had joined the Opry in the 1930s and ’40s. Even the lead announcer, Grant Turner, had been there since 1944. When John Conlee was made an Opry member in 1981, he was the first new member since Larry Gatlin joined five years earlier.
HAL DURHAM:
We must face the fact that some of the present members of the Opry will either want to retire, quit, or whatever. We, like any business, can’t close the door to young entertainers who want to join. Right now, we have 55 members and about 40 show up on Friday and Saturday nights. A lot of people tend to regard the Opry as something that’s the same as it was in 1950 or 1935, but the truth is that the Opry has changed through all these years, and now the Opry must reflect what’s happening in country music today.
Hal Durham welcomes Ricky Skaggs to the Grand Ole Opry.
When Hal Durham expanded membership in 1982, it was to newer artists rooted in traditional music, Ricky Skaggs and the Opry’s first “alternative” country group, Riders in the Sky. New artists might have been a necessity, but Hal Durham was always conscious of the Opry’s audience and heritage.
RICKY SKAGGS:
When I worked with Emmylou Harris, I had an album called Sweet Temptation. It was on a smaller label, Sugar Hill Records, but a song from that album, “I’ll Take the Blame,” was number one for six weeks on KIKK radio in Houston. They sung my praises to Columbia Records, and Columbia signed me. I came out to do a couple of guest appearances at the Opry, but I hadn’t had my first number-one record. Then I got the phone call from Hal Durham. He wanted to take me out for the big lunch. About midway through the salad, Hal said, “Son, you’re settin’ the woods on fire. What would it mean to you to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry?” I about swallowed my fork.
DOUG GREEN of Riders in the Sky:
I guess we were the first purely western group on the Opry. The Willis Brothers dressed western, but they did all those truck driving songs. And of course Tex Ritter was a member before us, and half the stuff Marty Robbins sang on the Opry was cowboy songs, but we were the first western group. We didn’t have a hit record or the ghost of a chance of having one, but Hal Durham probably thought that we were refreshing and funny, and we had a different sound. We were acoustic but we weren’t bluegrass. He saw value in what we did as curators of a tradition and creators within that tradition. The cast made us welcome. We didn’t feel like the new freaks on the block.
Ernest Tubb (right) and Hal Durham (second from right) become born-again cowboys with Riders in the Sky.
Another sign that the Opry was relaxing the way it did business came when Hal Durham allowed Marty Robbins to make the last portion of the show into a personal concert that very often ran overtime. His squabbles with the Opry long forgotten, Marty became one of the show’s mainstays, but his passion was stock car racing, and he would often compete before coming onstage.
BUD WENDELL:
What happened was that none of the artists wanted to do the 11:30 show, ’cause it was late at night. But from a clear-channel radio standpoint, the signal was the strongest. The later at night it was, the stronger the signal and the greater the reach. Marty realized that, so he wanted to do the 11:30 show whenever he did the Opry. Typically, Marty would arrive at the Opry from the racetrack dirty and smelly. On at least one occasion when he was leading a race he just pulled his car off, parked it, and jumped in his automobile to make sure he did the 11:30 show, so it worked well and he built up that tradition. Even when we split the Opry into two shows, we never asked him to do the first show, because he wanted to race and he wanted to do that 11:30 show when nobody else wanted to do it. Ultimately, it turned out that he was pretty smart to do that 11:30 show. Other artists asked to be on his show.
HAL DURHAM:
He began to take liberties with time. Instead of running over five minutes, he’d run over fifteen minutes. When he started closing the show, we were still doing live c
ommercials with jingles provided by our artists. The sponsor for that last segment was Lava Soap, and the Willis Brothers did their jingle, so when Marty ran late they’d have to wait around to sing that last commercial. Finally, we put the commercials on tape.
A BRAND-NEW BAG
One of Hal Durham’s bolder moves backfired, and proved that the Opry cast and audience would only tolerate just so much change. On March 33, 3333, he brought soul music star James Brown to the show. The idea was Porter Wagoner’s, but the fact that James Brown embraced it shows that the Grand Ole Opry’s influence went far beyond country music.
PORTER WAGONER:
If James Brown was on the Opry, I thought we could get worldwide attention. Once in a while that’s helpful, even if you’re Coca-Cola or the Grand Ole Opry. You can be like Old Man River, just rolling along, but it’s nice to have a shot in the arm every once in a while.
GRAND OLE OPRY audience survey:
Among the audience sample, country music rated the widest approval. Soul music was top of the “Do not like at all” rating with classical and rock running close behind.
CONNIE SMITH, Opry star:
When James Brown was on the Opry, and he said that when he was in Atlanta, he used to shine Little Jimmy Dickens’ boots. He said from that time he always wanted to be on the Grand Ole Opry.
