The Grand Ole Opry

by Colin Escott

  For years, Hank’s goal had been to reach the Grand Ole Opry, but after less than three years he came to the conclusion that the Opry needed him more than he needed it. He began to skip the Saturday night Opry and Opry-sponsored shows. The Opry planned to use Hank’s popularity as leverage to secure a prime-time country music show on NBC-TV, but Hank became increasingly uninterested in the Opry’s plans for him. His music was also sometimes not in line with the wholesome image of the Opry. When he performed “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” on the show, he had to change “ain’t got no beer” to “ain’t got no milk.” The mutual antagonism came to a head in August 1952.

  ERNEST TUBB:

  I came in one Friday to get my mail and I heard Jim Denny on the telephone. He said, “Hank that’s it. You gotta prove to me. You call me in December, and I’ll let you know about coming back to the Opry next year.” When Jim hung up the telephone, he had tears in his eyes. He said, “I had to do it. I had to let Hank go.” When I was in the parking lot, I ran into Mr. Craig. He knew, and he said, “What do you think, Ernest?” I said, “Well, I hate it, but I saw tears in Jim’s eyes, and I know it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He told me he was going to try and get Hank to straighten up.” Mr. Craig said, “I’m sure Jim means well, but it may work the other way. It may kill him.” I was feeling the same way.

  JOHNNIE WRIGHT of Johnnie and Jack, Opry stars:

  I was with Hank when he got fired. Jim Denny told him he was going to have to let him go. He had a check coming, about three hundred dollars. He said, “You cain’t fire me ’cause I already quit.” Jim asked Hank if anyone was there with him, and Hank said “Johnnie Wright’s here.” He said, “Tell Johnnie I want to talk to him.” I got on the phone and Jim said, “Johnnie, he’s got a check up here. You come by and pick it up.” My brother-in-law had a Chrysler limousine and Hank had his trailer with Drifting Cowboys written on the side. We put all his belongings in the trailer and his reclining chair in the back of the limousine and put him in there. We got Hank in the car and went up to WSM. Roy Acuff was in Jim Denny’s office. Roy said, “Have you got Hank out there?” I said, “Yeah.” Owen Bradley said, “Let’s go out and see him, Roy.” They went out and I picked up his check. Then we took off to Montgomery. We went out Broadway, and there was a liquor store out there at 16th and Broad, and Hank said, “Johnnie, pull in there and get me some whiskey.” So I pulled in and got him a fifth and cashed his three-hundred-dollar check. The guy that owned the liquor store said, “Is Hank out there?” I said, “Yeah,” so the guy came out and spoke to him. We took him to his mother’s house. We pulled his clothes off, put him to bed and talked to his mother ’til he woke up. Hank acted like he didn’t care he’d been canned.

  Hank had come to the Opry from the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, and in August 1952 he returned to the Hayride, but just four months later, he was dead. Opry artists played at his funeral, and the show reclaimed him in death.

  HORACE LOGAN, emcee of the Louisiana Hayride:

  Acuff was talking about “Hank’s friends from the Grand Ole Opry . . .” Jim Denny was sat in front of me. He turned around and said to me, “If Hank could raise up in his coffin, he’d look up toward the stage and say, ‘I told you dumb sons of bitches I could draw more dead than you could alive.’ ”

  Roy Acuff, Red Foley, Carl Smith and Webb Pierce sing at Hank Williams’s funeral.

  On January 4, 2003, Hank Williams Jr. and his son, Hank Williams III, performed on the Opry, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hank Williams’s death. Hank Jr. introduced the son of Rufus Payne, an African American street musician who’d taught Hank Sr.

  Hank Williams wasn’t the only star who conflicted with the Opry’s zealously guarded “family values” ideals. Red Foley’s private life gave the Opry as much concern as Hank Williams’s no-shows. His wife, Eva, died of a reported heart attack on No-vember 17, 1951, although her death was widely rumored to be suicide brought on by Foley’s infidelities and drinking.

  The following April, Foley was sued for one hundred thousand dollars by the husband of singer Sally Sweet, charging alienation of affection. That same month, Foley made headlines again.

  The Tennessean, May 1, 1952:

  Clyde “Red” Foley, folk singer who was unconscious in Vanderbilt Hospital from an overdose of sedative was described by his physician as recovering in very good fashion. The physician, Dr. Crawford Adams, said the nationally known Grand Ole Opry star suffered acute depression with anxiety state resulting from the death of his wife last November and the filing of an alienation of affection suit against him. It was understood that Foley took a large dose of sleeping tablets at his home on Bear Road at approximately 9:30 a.m. Monday.

  Eva Foley, with Red (left), and their three daughters, including Shirley (third from left), who later eloped with Pat Boone.

  He then called someone at Vanderbilt, presumably his physician, and related what he’d done. An ambulance was summoned. The alienation suit was filed April 16 by Frank B. Kelton, husband of an attractive television singer known professionally as Sally Sweet, charging that she had been lured and enticed away from him by a certain well-known radio star.

  GORDON STOKER of the Jordanaires, Opry gospel group:

  He wanted to do better. He’d quit drinking, join a church, even talk about being a preacher. He really wanted to be a good Christian, but just didn’t have the inner strength. He once said something that’s become quite a cliché now, but back then was the first time I’d ever heard it. He said, “I’m my own worst enemy.”

  In April 1953, Foley stepped down as host of the Prince Albert Opry, but his behavior grew increasingly erratic. An unpublished memo in the Nashville Banner files from city editor Eddie Jones shows how close to the edge Foley had gone.

  Red Foley’s three daughters have left home and have voluntarily placed themselves under full custody of Ernie Newton. Newton is a bass player on the Opry and apparently a clean straight operator. The story I got was that the children were fed up with Foley’s new wife, Sally Sweet, and contacted a lawyer and gave him sufficient grounds. Foley is in New York today and due back in Nashville the middle of next week, after which he says he is going to California to live.

  left: Webb Pierce with fans and his manager Hubert Long (right).

  right: Webb Pierce on the Opry stage with reporter Charlie Lamb. Announcer Grant Turner encourages the audience to applaud, while Jack Stapp stands to the right.

  left: Marty Robbins.

  right: The lore of the Old West always intrigued and inspired Marty Robbins. His father was a Polish immigrant, but he always identified with his maternal grandfather, who’d been a Texas Ranger.

  Hank Williams and Red Foley were gone, but the Opry was still attracting the top up-and-coming stars. Hank had brought Ray Price onto the show shortly before he left, and Jack Stapp and Jim Denny recruited Webb Pierce, Faron Young, and Johnnie & Jack from the Louisiana Hayride, together with Johnnie’s wife, Kitty Wells.

  And out in Phoenix, Harry Stone discovered Marty Robbins and alerted the Opry. Like Jimmy Dickens and George Morgan, Marty had no hits, in fact no records, but the Opry took Harry Stone’s word and gave him a guest spot on the Prince Albert show in June 1951. Marty didn’t disappoint, and Opry made him a full member in January 1953. It was hard to get on the Opry without a hit, but it would never be impossible.

  Acquisition of younger singers like Webb Pierce, Marty Robbins, and Ray Price meant that the Grand Ole Opry still had something for every generation. Singers who would soon revolutionize country and pop music, like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, were listening dutifully every Saturday night. The show was still relentlessly fast-paced and still represented the pinnacle of the business, but the years immediately ahead would bring fresh challenges.

  8

  MAN OF THE YEAR

  Country music was slow coming to records because the manufacturers believed that even if “hillbillies” bought records, they r
eally wanted pop or classical music rather than their own music. Similarly, radio stations didn’t think “hillbillies” would support their advertisers until the Opry helped to prove them wrong. And country music was equally slow coming to television because the signal didn’t reach rural areas . . . and because the sponsors didn’t think that “hillbillies” would buy their products.

  Network television started in 1949, and by 1954 more than half of American homes had a television set. WSM launched its television station in 1950 and produced a country music show for local consumption, but country music didn’t come to network television until 1955. And the first networked country show wasn’t the Grand Ole Opry.

  Jean Shepard sings for the camera on the Purina Opry show, produced by WSM-TV for ABC.

  After Red Foley left the Opry in 1953, he was approached by KWTO in Springfield, Missouri, to host a new radio barn dance, the Ozark Jubilee. From the beginning, the plan was to take the Jubilee to television, and on January 25, 1955, it went out on the ABC-TV network. Its success encouraged ABC to schedule three other television shows, The Pee Wee King Show, The Eddy Arnold Show, and the Grand Ole Opry.

  left: Little Jimmy Dickens observes Tony Bennett, Ernest Tubb, and June Carter.

  right: Buddy Ebsen with Minnie Pearl, Carl Smith, Chet Atkins, and the Collins Kids, Lorrie and Larry.

  Purina sponsored the Opry on ABC-TV, but rather than film the Saturday night radio show, Purina insisted upon staged sets with merry-go-rounds, hay bales, and noncountry guests such as Tony Bennett, Buddy Ebsen, and opera singer Marguerite Piazza.

  The Purina Opry show went out in the 1955–56 season, but didn’t return, while the Ozark Jubilee remained on ABC-TV until 1960. In a high-stakes game, the Opry had lost ground early on.

  In the fall of 1954, the Opry had missed another opportunity. Less than three months after his first record was released, Elvis Presley played a guest spot on the Opry, and could have been signed to the show. Like many rock ’n’ roll singers, he’d grown up listening to the Grand Ole Opry.

  Elvis Presley: October 2,1954

  Elvis Presley’s first single, “That’s All Right”/“Blue Moon of Kentucky,” was released in July 1954, and became enough of a sensation in and around Memphis for his record company, Sun Records, to pull a few strings and get him a guest spot on Hank Snow’s portion of the Grand Ole Opry. “Blue Moon of Kentucky” was a song that Bill Monroe had written and recorded in 1946, and Elvis was worried that his rockabilly version would annoy the legendarily irascible Monroe.

  BILL MONROE:

  He come up to the Grand Ole Opry one time and come in the dressin’ room where I was at. He apologized for the way he had changed “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” I told him, “Well, if it give you your start, it’s all right with me.”

  BUDDY KILLEN, Opry bassist:

  I noticed a young man standing off to the side. He looked fearful and lost, shaking and pacing with his guitar on his back. “Hi,” I said, “I’m Buddy Killen. I play bass on the Opry.” “Hi,” he sort of mumbled, “I’m Elvis Presley. If Sam Phillips would let me leave, I’d git out of here. These people are gonna hate me.” Phillips was his record producer and the owner of Sun Records. “You’ll do fine,” I assured him, and hoped he would.

  SCOTTY MOORE, Elvis’s guitarist:

  They wouldn’t let us do but one song, and that had to be “Blue Moon of Kentucky” because it was a country song. The audience reaction was very slight. They applauded. They didn’t go wild. There wasn’t any booing or hissing. Just polite applause. It wasn’t as bad as people have written it up to be. After we did the song and went offstage, Jim Denny, according to Elvis, made the comment, “You better keep driving the truck.”

  BUDDY KILLEN:

  There was no earthshaking response. He didn’t bring the house down and there was no encore. Years later, there was a motion picture supposedly portraying the event. In the film, Jim Denny suggested that Elvis not give up his day job. The truth of the matter is that Denny did nothing of the kind.

  Before long, the checks for “Blue Moon of Kentucky” made their way to Monroe. “They was powerful checks,” said Monroe. “Powerful checks.”

  Two weeks after his Opry tryout, Elvis joined the Opry’s major rival, the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, and used the show as a springboard to success. In July 1955, he toured Florida with Hank Snow. By then, Eddy Arnold’s former manager, Colonel Parker, was managing Snow through a jointly owned company. Using Snow’s name to impress Elvis and his parents, Parker booked Elvis and eventually took over his management, edging Snow out of the picture in the process.

  Colonel Parker and Hank Snow hired a publicist, Mae Boren Axton, who wrote songs as a sideline. In October 1955, Mae brought her songs to Nashville in search of a music publisher. The publisher usually tries to place songs with artists, but Mae already had an artist in mind for one song.

  MAE AXTON:

  I went to one well-known publisher, and said, “I’ve got a song here that will sell a million.” One of his associates just laughed. That night at the Grand Ole Opry, I saw Jack Stapp. He said, “Mae, you never have offered me a song. Why?” “I’ve got one for you now, it’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ ” I replied. “I’ll take it,” Jack answered. He’s a busy man at the Opry, as you know. I came back in November for the Opry-sponsored disc jockeys’ convention. I saw Elvis in the Andrew Jackson Hotel lobby. I told him, “Elvis, I got a song you are going to listen to right now.” He said, “I can’t do it, I’ve got to go to a meeting.” But I insisted. We went to my room and played the song. He said, “Hot dog, Mae, play that again.”

  Still on Sun Records, Elvis was in Nashville at WSM’s Disc Jockey Convention to showcase his act for RCA. Just a few days after the convention, RCA purchased his contract, and “Heartbreak Hotel” became his first RCA single . . . and first nationwide hit. The Opry made a point of signing the next major star on Sun Records, Johnny Cash.

  Elvis at the 1955 Disc Jockey Convention.

  left: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins.

  right: Johnny Cash signs autographs backstage at the Opry.

  Johnny Cash: July 7, 1956

  BEN A. GREEN, in the Nashville Banner, July 14, 1956:

  Tension gripped the big Ryman Auditorium stage as young Johnny Cash stepped forward to “achieve his life’s ambition,” and sing on the Grand Ole Opry. You could feel the charged atmosphere—some folks in the wings held their breath. All of the Opry people were pulling for this newest member of their family to score big with the 3,800 folks looking on and millions more listening in from coast to coast. He had a quiver in his voice, but it wasn’t stage fright. The haunting words of “I Walk the Line” began to swell through the building, and a veritable tornado of applause rolled back. The boy had struck home. One onlooker told us, “He’ll be every bit as good as Elvis Presley. Probably better, and he’ll last a whole lot longer. He has sincerity, tone, and he carries to the rafters.” Johnny Cash, just 11 months into his career, is one of the youngest stars ever to reach the Grand Ole Opry. What was his reaction? “I am grateful, happy, and humble,” he said. “It’s the ambition of every hillbilly singer to reach the Opry in his lifetime.”

  JOHNNY CASH:

  I remember something Ernest Tubb told me in 1956 the first time I met him. It was a big-deal night. I’d just encored on the Grand Ole Opry, and now I was meeting Ernest Tubb live and in person. He looked at me and he said in that grand, gravely voice I’d been hearing on the radio, “Just remember, son, the higher up the ladder you go, the brighter your ass shines.”

  DOLLY PARTON:

  I waited for him in the Ryman parking lot. A man stepped out of the stage door and walked over to us. There was only me and Johnny Cash. I had never seen a man with such presence. Tall, lanky, and sexy with that trademark voice that cut through me like butter. Now I knew what star quality was. I was just a thirteen-year-old girl from the Smokies, but I would have gladly given it up for Mr.
Cash right there in the parking lot. I found myself blurting out, “Oh, Mister Cash, I’ve just got to sing on the Grand Ole Opry.” I know he must have heard that all the time, but he looked at me as if he was thinking, You know this kid is really serious.

  In spite of the addition of Johnny Cash to the Opry roster, Elvis’s continued success presented the Opry with the biggest challenge it had faced in its thirty-year history.

  WESLEY ROSE of Acuff-Rose Publications:

  “It was a very dangerous time. In all the years I’ve been in the business I’d say it was the most critical time for country music. Elvis Presley broke out. They were playing him on all stations. By playing rock artists on country stations, the country listeners began to tune out, and then the country programs began to disappear. We had six hundred stations playing country music, and it got down to around eighty-five stations.”

  Compounding the Opry’s problems, there was a crisis within management. Edwin Craig and Jack DeWitt saw WSM’s employees starting sideline businesses that relied to a great extent on their employment at WSM. Jim Denny and Jack Stapp owned music publishing companies, and three WSM engineers owned Castle Recording Laboratories. Under pressure from WSM, Jack Stapp gave up ownership of Tree Music, for a while at least. The engineers were offered roles at WSM-TV if they gave up the studio, and they accepted. Jim Denny was offered a pay raise and the job of formally managing the Opry if he gave up Cedarwood Music, and the situation came to a head on September 26, 1956.