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Happy Birthday to the Grand Ole Opry
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October isn’t just the month for Breast Cancer Awareness; it’s also the birth month for the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Did you know that? If you’re a country fan, you probably did. Or if you’re like me, you’re a fan; you just didn’t know until you heard other people talking about it and decided to do some research.
Do you know how the Grand Ole Opry started? I was a bit amazed at the information I found and I think you might be too. The Opry went through a few changes throughout the 83 years it’s been around.
When it came around in 1925, it was originally given the initials WSM, which stood for We Shield Millions, and was a radio station built as a public service to the community by the National Life and Accident Insurance Company; WSM was the insurance company’s motto. The company hired one of the most popular announcers at the time to be the program director: George D. Hay. Hay joined the staff after a month of the station's airing and pronounced himself “The Old Solemn Judge.” He also launched something that would become known as the WSM Barn Dance with championship fiddler, Uncle Jimmy Thompson.
As Hay’s broadcasts became more and more popular, he renamed the show in 1927 to the name we know it as today – the Grand Ole Opry. Fans of the station crowded the hallways of the radio station center to see the performers, causing the company to build an auditorium that would hold 500 fans. By 1932, the show was able to be heard throughout most of the United States and even parts of Canada.
Since the show kept receiving large amounts of attention from fans, they had to find a larger place to air. The Opry went through several places, but finally stuck with the Ryman Auditorium in 1943 where it stayed for nearly 31 years. Not only did the name and place change around this time, but what the show aired changed too.
You could normally hear instrumental performances until 1938, when Roy Acuff performed The Great Speckled Bird. This wasn’t the only major popularity change for the show -- they gained more popularity when the NBC Radio Network began carrying the show in 1939. The show was sponsored by Prince Albert Tobacco and in October of 1943, the Prince Albert Show began airing nationally on more than 140 NBC affiliates.
The Opry stars spent their time performing on the Opry show during the weekend and during the week, they’d travel all over the country performing. They traveled in cars and even buses as time went on. Pretty much what this meant was more fame for the Opry.
In 1947 Ernest Tubb took a group of stars to Carnegie Hall in New York City. Another group of Opry stars played in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Finally, their first European tour kicked off in 1949 and took along Red Foley, Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Rod Brasfield, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hank Williams, and others to U.S. military bases in England, Germany, and the Azores. Later on in 1961, stars like Patsy Cline, Grandpa Jones, Bill Monroe, and Jim Reeves played a second time at Carnegie Hall. From then on, the touring tradition continued among stars.
While the Opry holds onto and cherishes its old traditions, it also grabs onto the new forms of technology. “In 1955, Ralston Purina began sponsoring an hour-long regional-network television show from the Ryman stage featuring Opry stars. And in 1974, the Opry moved from the Ryman to a new, larger facility at the heart of a multi-million-dollar entertainment complex nine miles from downtown Nashville,” says the Opry’s site.
Eventually, the Grand Ole Opry started airing live on television weekly, a few small television airings taking place before this happened in April of 1985 on TNN. Originally this television series was thirty minutes long, but then evolved into a full hour.
Throughout the years, there were many stars inducted into the Opry. Some of them include Ricky Skaggs, Reba McEntire, Holly Dunn, Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Diamond Rio, Trisha Yearwood, Trace Adkins, Terri Clark, Brad Paisley, and soon even Craig Morgan.
So now you know the story behind the Grand Ole Opry. The show can still be heard on the radio, seen on the television, and of course viewed live. To hear it on the radio, tune to 650 AM WSM; tune into GAC (Great American Country) to view the live hour-long showings; and to purchase tickets, you can go here. You can even view live performances at the Opry on YouTube by clicking here in case you missed a show.
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