1 Heritage Worth Preserving
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G k D OLE OPKy Since LYS GRAND OLE DOYS 1 Heritage Worth Preserving From its humble beginning in the style to the "grand opera" that preceded the barn dance nation's tallest radio tower. Then, in 1939, the Opry secured over the feed from NBC in New York. "For the past hour, its first national sponsor, the Prince Albert Tobacco Corn - middle of the Roaring '20s to its potent we have been listening to the music taken largely from pany, which let a portion of the show go out over the NBC Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the Grand network. Thus, when country music spiked in popularity star- making muscle during radio s Ole Opry," deadpanned Hay. as a result of migration and the mixing of Northern and Ole The show was loose, friendly and a little wild from the Southern troops during World War II, the Opry was in golden age and beyond, the Grand beginning-for the audience and the performers alike. For- prime position to be the nation's country-music showcase. Opry's contemporary challenges and mer WSM engineer Aaron Shelton remembers Grandpappy George Wilkerson leading the Fruit Jar Drinkers in their BRIDGE- BUILDING MINNIE triumphs often mirror those faced by theme song "with an abandonment that undoubtedly was Of course, the Opry wouldn't have been able to win over generated by their nipping from their fruit jars." Shelton the hearts of millions of American from North and South if its creator and other former adminis- also vividly recalls the appeal of the Opry's first major star, it hadn't been for the striking personalities and talents of trators. On the job about one year, cur- Uncle Dave Macon, a banjo player who drove a wagon team the pre -war and war years. Chief among them was Acuff, a in his home of Murfreesboro, Tenn. In an unpublished fiddler and singer from Maynardsville, Tenn., who joined rent Opry manager Pete Fisher says, memoir, Shelton wrote that "Uncle Dave had a mouth full the Opry in 1938. On the strength of his hits "The Wabash of capped teeth, long sideburns and hardly any other hair Cannonball" and "The Great Speckled Bird," he became "What makes the show tick is also its except a well- trimmed goatee, which he pulled with one the anchoring personality for the Opry well into the 1980s. greatest challenge." In reflecting upon hand while twirling his banjo with the other, as he jumped And he introduced the world to the Opry's leading comic up and down invoking the audience to respond with claps, and female personality, Minnie Pearl, a Nashville native the Opry's monumental heritage, Fish- whistles and shouts of approval." whose real name was Sara Ophelia Colley and who built The Opry broadcast from WSM's studios from 1925 to many social bridges between the Opry's hillbilly musicians er says his job is to "facilitate diversity," 1934, when a larger venue became necessary. The show and Nashville's polite society. Acuff and Minnie Pearl were a diversity that has kept the revered moved four times over the next eight years, from the his- together memorialized in bronze in the lobby of the restored institution in a glorious state of flux since the first fiddle lick hit the air- waves some 75 years ago. BY WADE JESSEN and CRAIG HAVIGHURST The Grand Ole Opry may be the most influential and inspirational program in the history of American music. Through its nationwide reach, its 75 continuous years of broadcasting and its always extraordinary levels of musical and comic talent, the Opry sparked not only the sale of millions upon millions of records but the imagination of countless young fans who heard Roy Acuff or Uncle Dave Macon or Ricky Skaggs and said to themselves, "I can do that; I've got to Everybody went wild: Hank l4 illiams Social engineering: Minnie Pearl Class of '89: Alan Jackson do that." Today's Opry stars are yesterday's Opry fans, and it's been that way for generations. toric Hillsboro Theater (still in operation as the Belcourt Ryman Auditorium. The origins of the Grand Ole Opry are familiar to almost Theater near Vanderbilt University) to a wooden taberna- There were many others too: Arthur Smith and the Dix - every country-music fan. Nashville's National Life And Acci- cle in East Nashville, to the War Memorial Auditorium and ieliners, the Vagabonds, Curly Fox, Pee Wee King and the dent Insurance Co. launched radio station WSM as a pro- finally to the famed Ryman Auditorium around the end of Golden West Cowboys, Sam and Kirk McGee, Bill Monroe, motional venture and hired renowned broadcaster George 1942, though the exact date has eluded historians. Ernest Tubb, Eddy Arnold, Bradley Kincaid, Grandpa D. Hay from Chicago to be WSM's first host and program Jones, Red Foley and, of course, Hank Williams, who made director. Hay, a lover of folk and old -time fiddle music, put HOW ACUFF ROSE his thrilling Opry debut June 11, 1949. An Opry cast mem- several local string bands on the air soon after taking the Nashville's middle and upper classes, while they were avid ber since 1948, Little Jimmy Dickens recalls Williams' first station over in October of 1925. The Opry's first broadcast listeners to WSM's weekly fare of light classical music and appearance. "`Lovesick Blues' was already at the top of the is generally acknowledged as having occurred Oct. 25 of jazz, often disdained the Opry as an uncultured blot on the charts," he says. "Nobody knew much about this boy or how that year, when a 78-year -old fiddler named Uncle Jimmy city's "Athens of the South" image, but working and farming - he would do, but when he hit that stage and started singin' Thompson played for an hour on a Saturday night. class people from Tennessee and surrounding states claimed and movin' and bucklin' those knees, everybody went wild." the Opry as a culture of their own and kept letters pouring FRUIT JAR DRINKERS into the station. Opry artists like Little Jimmie and Asher HONKY TONKIN' The WSM Barn Dance, as it was known for its first year Sizemore sold thousands of songbooks by mail order over The dawn of the 1950s touched off one of the Opry's most or so, became a Saturday night fixture, originating from the air, hinting at the business opportunities that were to prodigious periods for signing new talent. Honky tonkers WSM's Studio A on the fifth floor of the National Life flow from the regular appearances of increasingly popular were in great demand, particularly during the first half of Headquarters. Drawn by the radio broadcasts, listeners stars such as Roy Acuff, who acted on response to his own the decade. Hank Snow made his debut in January of 1950, began turning up in ever larger numbers at the WSM stu- songbooks-eventually forming Nashville's first music - Lefty Frizzell visited for the first time the following summer, dios to watch the show through a hallway window. Hay, rec- publishing company. WSM even set up an Artists Service and Webb Pierce and Marty Robbins came along in 1953. ognizing the vibrancy a live audience brought to the show, Bureau to book road shows for Opry stars, and those per- Elvis Presley's only Grand Ole Opry performance came and moved into a larger studio and began dressing up his bands sonal appearances further bolstered the show's appeal. went in the autumn of 1954, and The Louvin Brothers in rustic costumes and lending them quaint names like the The Opry solidified itself as a national institution in the debuted in early 1955. Others who associated themselves Possum Hunters, the Gully Jumpers and the Fruit Jar 1930s, when radio became a national balm for the agonies with the Opry during the 1950s include Jim Reeves, Jean Drinkers. Hay also gave the Grand Ole Opry its name one of the Depression. WSM boosted its own power in 1932 to Shepard, Johnny Cash, Jimmy C. Newman, George Jones, evening as a witty commentary on the show's contrasting 50,000 watts, the legal maximum, over what was then the Continued on page 48 46 BILLBOARD SALUTE BILLBOARD JUNE 17 2000 www.americanradiohistory.com.