by Colin Escott
People say the top stars are either on the road, in the studio, or on vacation, but there are many artists, many top artists, who share the special connection with the Opry and will make it a priority in their career. It brings context to what they do. They know where the music’s been and they visit with the people who forged it. They see new artists who give us a hint of where the music might be going, and they reconnect with their place in the whole scheme. What we have to do is stay out in front of contemporary performers who are still building their careers. We want to return the Opry to being a star-making machine in country music, and we want to nurture the people who will still be in country music thirty years down the road.
STEVE BUCHANAN:
When you’re entrusted with an iconic institution like the Grand Ole Opry, you can’t help thinking of how the decisions you make today will impact the Opry in ten or twenty years. We not only want to build relationships with artists at an early point in their careers, but we want to build relationships with the music industry in general. Then, as a young artist’s career builds, we’re hopeful that they’ll want to continue the relationship with the Opry and make the show part of their future. There are wonderful rewards and dividends conferred by Opry membership. Many of them are emotional and speak to the relationships among the artists. The Opry has never been about financial compensation, but we want the show to play a role in developing careers on different levels. Opry membership confers recognition that you simply don’t get elsewhere.
John Dennis (Adkins’s management company), Steve Buchanan, Jimmy Dickens, Trace Adkins, and Gaylord Entertainment President and CEO Colin Reed pose backstage the night Adkins was invited to join the Opry cast.
PETE FISHER:
You don’t persuade artists to join the Opry. If it takes persuasion, they’re probably not right for us, nor we for them. In some artists, it’s just inherent to respect all that the Opry stands for, and there is value for them in appearing on the show. The great thing about country music is its connection to where it comes from, and that continuum is a powerful factor. You measure the health of the Opry by the attendance of artists from all generations and customers from all generations. My dad stocks trout in his ponds and he says that to keep the ponds healthy you need a little stream of water coming in and a little stream going out, and that’s how it is with the Opry.
Among longtime cast members, there is some resentment that the newer artists don’t appear regularly, but the Opry is attracting top new stars, such as Dierks Bentley and Brad Paisley, who are on the road up to three hundred days a year. In fact, the Opry—in the person of Marty Stuart—had to catch up with Dierks in Los Angeles to ask him to join. (Ironically, Dierks had been a researcher for TNN earlier in his career, and spent so much time backstage that Opry manager Pete Fisher asked him to back off.)
left: Brad Paisley and Bill Anderson, October 2001.
right: Opry members Patty Loveless and George Hamilton IV (right) are joined by Opry general manager Pete Fisher in welcoming Del McCoury to the Opry cast. Looking on are Rob McCoury and Jason Carter.
RICKY SKAGGS:
Some members of the Opry don’t show up much as I’d like. I know the dollars are out there, and it’s hard to give up those weekends. But one day, those weekends won’t be there, but the Opry will still be here, and it’ll be nicer to come back if you’ve invested. My son and I have this thing we call our love bank. Every time I hug or kiss him we make a deposit in the love bank. It’s kind of like that with the Opry. Every time I come here on weekends, I feel like I’m depositing something. It’s the history of the future.
BILL ANDERSON:
If I’m in Nashville on a Friday or Saturday night and I’m not at the Opry, I feel like I’m playing hooky and I keep waiting for the truant officer to come and throw me in jail. Sure I take time off and I’m not there every time that they open the doors, but I take membership very seriously. The dollars have changed so much. Artists today can make more in one weekend than we made in a year when I first came to Nashville. But a lot of younger artists are very rooted in the Opry and what it means because they’ve taken the time to study where country music comes from. Some of the newer artists, of course, could care less and came into country music from other areas. So you can’t say that all the young artists appreciate the Opry, but a lot of them have heard from their parents or grandparents what the Opry’s all about and they want to be a part of it. The other thing is that these young artists are selling a lot of records and drawing a lot of crowds right now, but there will come a time when that slows down for them, and hopefully when it does, they will come and spend more time at the Opry. We all owe a debt to the Opry, and we all ought to be willing to make payments on that.
Marty Stuart surprises Dierks Bentley at a Los Angeles concert appearance with an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry on July 26, 2005.
HAL KETCHUM, Opry star:
I’ve just started to realize the true meaning of the Opry. The community backstage is as important as the time onstage. It’s an opportunity to wander through and hear Ralph Stanley and his band warm up, and feel the energy of this music. There are apprentices and there are masters. If you are interested in any way, shape, or form in this great American art form, the Grand Ole Opry is the source. To me, country music is poetry and polyester. Simplicity is a very hard thing to achieve. Anyone can be clever.
PETE FISHER:
You look out at the audience and you literally see a three-year-old and a ninety-three-year-old. Then the Opry is a celebration of the generations. It’s diversity sharing the same stage, and it’s so rare today.
STEVE BUCHANAN:
The average age of our audience varies from night to night. We feel that we are seeing more young patrons as we bring in more new and developing artists. It adds to the diversity of our programming and to the diversity of the audience. Ed Clark took some famous photos when the Opry was at the Ryman in the 1940s. There’s a shot of a flatbed truck with three generations coming off the back. We still have that today with three generations sitting together enjoying the show as a family. To me, a really great night at the Grand Ole Opry reflects the diversity in style and genres and age groups. You’ll have comedy, bluegrass, western music, legends, and some of the brightest new stars. A great night at the Opry really shows the world the breadth and depth of country music. Those shows are just magical. Things take place here that can’t take place anywhere else, and those are the times that will give you chills.
Alan Jackson chose the Grand Ole Opry for the location of his video for the song, “Too Much of a Good Thing.”
BILL ANDERSON:
Sometimes there’s just the right mixture of the old and the new. It’s not possible to get that every night, but there are nights when that perfect mix just seems to be there. The younger fans get tuned in to some of the older artists, and the older fans accept some of the younger acts. When that happens, the Opry is the most electric place in the world. The eightieth anniversary show is a case in point. I got a call from Pete Fisher on the Thursday before the Saturday show. He said he’d called Garth to ask him what he was going to sing, and he said, “I want to do a medley with Jimmy Dickens, Porter Wagoner, and Bill Anderson.” I think it was his way of saying that those of us who’ve been here a while should be honored. It was a very generous, kind, and giving thing for him to do because he could have come out there and taken over the stage with his own hits. He said, “I’m coming out of retirement to honor the Opry,” and the way he did it by performing with us was a wonderful way to honor the Opry. I’d always liked Garth and my admiration for him went up tenfold.
Garth Brooks, Porter Wagoner, Bill Anderson, and Little Jimmy Dickens perform at the Opry’s eightieth birthday bash.
DOUG GREEN of Riders in the Sky:
The experience is so rich. In one evening, you can hear Jimmy C. Newman do Cajun music, and you can see the hottest young belly button do her thing, followed by a legend like Billy Walker or Jack Greene
, and then great bluegrass like the Osborne Brothers. I love it when Ray Pillow comes on and does those two-step shuffles. Nobody else is doing that anymore. But the real magic of the Opry is when someone like Vince Gill will come out and sing a tune with us. Once, we sang with Roy Rogers on the Opry stage. We call those Grand Ole Opry moments. Often completely unplanned.
JEANNIE SEELY:
They open the doors and raise the curtain and say, “This is the Grand Ole Opry,” and we all know anything can happen. It’s the freedom, I guess. The freedom allows spontaneity, and encourages people to work together.
Some music—punk comes to mind—made a conscious rejection of all that went before, but country music has always been rooted in tradition. The Grand Ole Opry embodies that tradition, and remains one of the premier stages in popular music. For instance, on January 22, 2005, Marty Stuart brought African American gospel star Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers onto the Opry, and the music they performed together not only showed the deep kinship between the rural music of white and black America, but created a spontaneous musical event that could not have happened anywhere else but at the Grand Ole Opry.
DOUG GREEN:
When the Opry started, there was little else in the way of entertainment. Now, of course, there’s so much more. So many things compete for your attention, but the Opry is still a viable part of the American music scene. Look, the music that Riders in the Sky play—it went out of fashion fifty years ago, but we’re out there next to the hottest young act. There’s nothing comparable anywhere in the world. People come up to me all the time and complain about current country music. Okay, so you don’t like it, but there’s such an incredible variety of music out there now on digital radio, satellite radio, Internet, and so on, and the Opry brings this variety together on one stage. That’s why it’s a legendary institution and a vital institution.
ANCIENT TONES AT CARNEGIE HALL: NOVEMBER 14,2005
As part of its eightieth birthday celebrations, the Grand Ole Opry played Carnegie Hall for the third time in its history. As on the other two occasions, cowboy hats outnumbered pearl necklaces, but this time the gossip columnists kept their barbs to themselves. The fact that the Country Music Association Awards were being held at Madison Square Garden the following night silenced everyone. Vince Gill hosted the show with his customary low-key humor, and the first act, Trace Adkins, pointedly chose “Songs About Me” as a way of preparing the New York audience for what it was about to hear.
The house lights were up for the entire show, and every artist was visibly awed by the surroundings. Ricky Skaggs mouthed “wow” to himself before introducing klezmer clarinetist Andy Stat man to play the introduction to Bill Monroe’s “Walls of Time.” Skaggs closed with “Black Eyed Susie,” a song first recorded the year before the Opry went on-air, and just the sort of song that Judge Hay hoped to preserve.
Ricky Skaggs, with his band Kentucky Thunder, makes his mark on what is a surprisingly well-established tradition of bluegrass performances at Carnegie Hall.
Vince Gill and Little Jimmy Dickens bring a little Opry-style humor to staid Carnegie Hall.
In the media meet and greet, Trisha Year wood explained Opry membership to Newsday magazine: “The Opry doesn’t invite you because you’re selling records or having hits. This group of people is trying to preserve the history of country music, and they’ve decided that you’re worthy. It’s an honor.” Recalling her own induction, she said, “Patsy Cline’s children were there, and they presented me with a necklace that had belonged to Patsy.” The show built on the theme of handing it on.
JON PARELES, journalist, the New York Times:
The concert was a country manifesto promising unity, tradition, sincerity, and glimmers of diversity. Collaborations presented country as one big family.
Bill Anderson explained how Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss had revived his songwriting career when they recorded “Whiskey Lullaby.” Alison and Ricky Skaggs joined Vince Gill on a hymn inspired by the death of Vince’s brother, “Go Rest High on that Mountain.” Alison also performed Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You,” a song that Patsy recorded one month after the previous Carnegie Hall concert in November 3333. Charley Pride did Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga,” and Martina McBride sang Tammy Wynette’s “ ’Til I Can Make It on My Own.” And Little Jimmy Dickens, who joined the Opry just months after the 3333 Carnegie Hall show and missed the 3333 show, sang his 3333 hit “May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose.”
PETER COOPER, journalist, the Tennessean:
The show ended with each performer back onstage, singing cast versions of “I’ll Fly Away,” “I Saw the Light,” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” But the enduring image from the night may be of young guitar slinger Brad Paisley and Hall of Famer Bill Anderson offering a guitar/vocal performance of “Too Country,” asking the New York crowd, “Are the biscuits too fluffy/Is the chicken too fried?”
Too country? Nope, not for Carnegie Hall.
Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss treat the Carnegie Hall audience to their award-winning duet, “Whiskey Lullaby.”
The Opry’s founder, the Solemn Old Judge, George D. Hay, had a vision of preserving the music of rural southeastern America, but that music changed through the years. What Judge Hay heard in 1925 when he started the Opry wasn’t the music that the first song catchers heard a generation earlier, and that wasn’t the same as the music that had crossed the Atlantic. The only constant is change, and the pace of change is accelerating. But in some respects Judge Hay’s vision has held true.
“If the Opry is ever permitted to go upstage,” he wrote on the occasion of the show’s thirty-second anniversary in 1958, “to lose its flavor and feeling of goodwill—among the artists themselves and for their listeners—it cannot last. But if it keeps these wonderful human qualities, the Opry is good for another hundred years. I believe most people would like the Opry if they would slow up long enough to ‘listen it out.’ ”
GRANDOLEOPRY
NEW MEMBERS :2000s
TRACE ADKINS
DIERKS BENTLEY
TERRI CLARK
DEL MCCOURY
BRAD PAISLEY
RALPH STANLEY
PAM TILLIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unless cited here, all interviews are by the author or are Grand Ole Opry file interviews.
Chapter 1
DeFord Bailey in A Black Star in Early Country Music by David Morton and Charles Wolfe. Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.
Edwin Craig, Tennessean, October 15, 1967.
Margaret Hay Daugherty, Bluegrass Unlimited, July 1982.
Fiddlin’ Sid Harkreader, Fiddlin’ Sid’s Memoirs. JEMF, 1976.
George D. Hay, Tennessean, August 17, 1952; Nashville Banner, November 10, 1958; A Story of the Grand Ole Opry, self-published, 1945; The Grand Ole Opry Hits the Road, unpublished manuscript, 1949.
Pete Montgomery, Tennessean, October 4, 1970.
Charles K. Wolfe, A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry. Nashville: The Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt Press, 1999.
Chapter 2
Alton Delmore, Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity. Nashville: CMF Press, 1977.
George D. Hay, A Story of the Grand Ole Opry.
Rufus Jarman, “Country Music Goes to Town,” Nation’s Business, February 1953.
Uncle Dave Macon, Brunswick Topics, 1928.
Sam McGee in A Good-Natured Riot by Charles K. Wolfe.
Bashful Brother Oswald, That’s the Truth If I’ve Ever Told It, self-published, 1994.
Vito Pellettieri in Jack Hurst, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry: The First 50 Years. NY: Abrams, 1975; Tennessean, June 12, 1960, October 4, 1970, and April 15, 1977.
David Stone interviewed by John Rumble, Country Music Hall of Fame oral history program.
Grant Turner, Grant’s Corner, WSM-AM, November 7, 1986; March 26–27, April 8, 1987.
Irving Waugh in Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry: The
First 50 Years.
Chapter 3
DeFord Bailey in A Black Star in Early Country Music.
Alton Delmore in Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity.
Jim Denny in Tennessean, March 3, 1963.
George D. Hay, The Grand Ole Opry Hits the Road, unpublished, 1949.
Pee Wee King in Hell Bent for Music. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.
Chapter 4
Roy Acuff in Country & Western Classics, Time-Life Music; “Roy Acuff Celebrates 26th Year with Opry,” Nashville Banner, November 5, 1964; “Acuff, King of Country Music, Now Mostly Counts His Money,” by Larry Rohter, Milwaukee Journal, June 24, 1977.
DeFord Bailey in A Black Star in Early Country Music.
Cleo Davis interviewed by Wayne Erbsen, Bluegrass Unlimited, February/March, 1982.
Alton Delmore in Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity.
George D. Hay in A Story of the Grand Ole Opry.
Pee Wee King in Hell Bent for Music.
Pee Wee King interviewed by Otto Kitsinger in Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys, Bear Family Records, 1996.
Jake Lambert, Biography of Lester Flatt. Hendersonville, TN: Jay-Lyn Pub., 1982.
Edward Linn, “Country Singer: The Ernest Tubb Story,” by Edward Linn, Saga, May 1957.
Bill Monroe interviewed by Alanna Nash in Behind Closed Doors and by Charles K. Wolfe, Old Time Music, Spring 1975.