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The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly Saturday night country music radio program
broadcast live on WSM radio in
Nashville, Tennessee. It is the oldest continuous radio program
in the United States,
having been broadcast on WSM
since November 28, 1925. It is also televised and promotes live
performances both in Nashville and on the road.
History
The Grand Ole Opry started out as the WSM Barn Dance in the new fifth
floor radio station studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company
in downtown Nashville. The featured performer on the first show was Uncle Jimmy
Thompson, a fiddler who was then 77 years old. The announcer was program
director George D. Hay, known
on the air as "The Solemn Old Judge." He was only 30 at the time and was not a
judge, but was an enterprising pioneer who
launched the Barn Dance as a spin-off of his National Barn
Dance program at WLS
Radio in Chicago,
Illinois. Some of the bands regularly featured on the show during its early
days included the Possum Hunters, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the Crook Brothers and
the Gully Jumpers. They arrived in this order. However, Judge Hay liked the
Fruit Jar Drinkers and asked them to appear last on each show because he wanted
to always close each segment with "red hot fiddle playing." They were the second
band accepted on the "Barn Dance." And, when the Opry began having square
dancers on the show, the Fruit Jar Drinkers always played for them.
In 1926, Uncle Dave Macon, a Tennessee banjo player who had recorded several songs and toured
the vaudeville circuit, became its first real star. The name Grand Ole
Opry came about in December, 1927. The Barn Dance followed NBC Radio
Network's Music Appreciation Hour, which consisted of classical
music and selections from grand opera.
Their final piece that night featured a musical interpretation of an onrushing
railroad locomotive. In response to this Judge Hay quipped, "Friends, the
program which just came to a close was devoted to the classics. Doctor Damrosch
told us that there is no place in the classics for realism. However, from here
on out for the next three hours, we will present nothing but realism. It will be
down to earth for the 'earthy'." He then introduced the man he dubbed the
Harmonica Wizard — DeFord Bailey who played his classic train song
"The Pan American Blues". After Bailey's performance Hay commented, "For the
past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From
now on we will present the 'Grand Ole Opry.'" The name stuck and has been used
for the program since then.
As audiences to the live show increased, National Life & Accident
Insurance's radio venue became too small to accommodate the hordes of fans. They
built a larger studio, but it was still not large enough. The Opry then
moved into then-suburban Hillsboro
Theatre (now the Belcourt), then to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville and
then to the War Memorial Auditorium, a downtown venue adjacent to the State
Capitol. A twenty-five cent admission began to be charged, in part an effort to
curb the large crowds, but to no avail. In 1943, the Opry moved to the Ryman Auditorium.
On October 2, 1954, a teenage Elvis Presley made his first (and only)
performance there. Although the public reacted politely to his revolutionary
brand of rockabilly music, after the show he was told by one of the organizers
(Opry manager Jim Denny) that he ought
to return to Memphis to resume his truck-driving career, prompting him to swear
never to return. Ironically, years later Garth Brooks commented in a television interview
that one of the greatest thrills of playing the Opry was that he got to play on
the same stage Elvis had.
The Ryman was home to the Opry until 1974, when the show moved to the 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry
House, located several miles to the east of downtown Nashville on a former farm
in the Pennington Bend of the Cumberland River. An adjacent theme park, called Opryland USA, preceded the
new Opry House by two years. Due to sagging attendance, the park was shuttered
and demolished after the 1997 season by the
Opry's current owner, Gaylord Entertainment Company.
The theme park was replaced by the Opry Mills Mall. An adjacent hotel, the Gaylord Opryland
Resort & Convention Center, is the largest non-gambling hotel in North America and is the site of dozens of
conventions annually.
Still, the Opry continues, with hundreds of thousands of fans traveling from
around the world to Nashville to see the music and comedy on the Opry in
person
Impact and economics
In many ways, the artists and repertoire of the Opry defined American
country music. Hundreds of performers have entertained as cast members through
the years, including new stars, superstars and legends. Being made a member of
the Grand Ole Opry is to be identified as a member of the elite of
country music. Many linked the stripping of Hank Williams' Opry membership in 1952 to his death soon afterward.
The quality of the program has waxed and waned over the years. In the mid-1960s management decided to enforce strictly
the requirement that members had to perform on at least twenty-six shows a year
in order to keep their membership active. This imposed a tremendous financial
hardship on members who made much of their income from touring and could not
afford to be in or near Nashville every other weekend. This was aggravated by
the fact that the Opry's appearance fee paid to the artist was
essentially a token ($44 at the time).
The Opry management was so certain in its belief that only someone who
could truthfully bill themselves as a "Member of the Grand Ole Opry"
could be considered to be a major country music star that it felt this rule
could be enforced; however, by this point many country music artists were so
established that this was really no longer true. The quality of the Opry
suffered in the years following, and by the late 1970s and early 1980s the Opry was regarded by many country music
fans as sort of a musical equivalent of a sports "old-timers' game," where only
former stars were to be seen. Over time, this problem was largely corrected by a
reduced attendance requirement and special exceptions.
Another controversy that raged for years was over allowable instrumentation,
especially the use of drums and electrically
amplified instruments. Some purists were appalled at the prospect; traditionally
a string bass provided the rhythm component in country music and percussion
instruments were generally little used. Electric amplification was regarded as
the province of rock and roll, anathema to many country
fans, especially older ones. These restrictions chafed many artists, such as Waylon Jennings, who
were popular with the newer and younger fans. These restrictions were largely
eliminated over time, alienating many older and traditionalist fans, but
probably saving the Opry long-term as a viable ongoing enterprise.
Management has been very conscious of the need to enforce its trademark on the term Grand Ole
Opry and limit use to members of the Opry and products associated
with or licensed by it. However, it lost a legal case against the owners of a
small, now-defunct Nashville record label calling itself Opry Records.
The record company's attorneys
successfully argued that WSM's management indeed owned the rights to the words
Grand Ole Opry, but only in that order and combination, and no more owned
the word Opry in isolation than they owned Grand or
Ole.
This has made the management wary about the issue of licensing and
trademarks. It has also allowed a plethora of small-time country music shows to
label themselves as Oprys of one sort or another, such as the Bell
Witch Opry; Ozark Opry, etc. (Much the same thing happened when the
Coca-Cola company failed to trademark the term "cola.")
In September 2004,
it was announced that the Grand Ole Opry had contracted for the first
time with a "presenting sponsor" and would henceforth be known as "the Grand
Ole Opry presented by Cracker Barrel." Cracker Barrel, a long-time
Opry sponsor headquartered in nearby Lebanon, Tennessee, is a chain of
country-themed restaurants and gift shops whose market overlaps with that of the
Opry to a great extent.
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