Grand Ole Opry

Decorative brickwork at Opryland Hotel depicting Ryman Auditorium with Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff

The Grand Ole Opry started as the WSM Barn Dance in the new fifth-floor radio studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 28, 1925. On October 17, 1925, management began a program featuring "Dr. Humphrey Bate and his string quartet of old-time musicians." On November 2, WSM hired long-time announcer and program director George D. Hay, an enterprising pioneer from the National Barn Dance program at WLS in Chicago, who was also named the most popular radio announcer in America as a result of his radio work with both WLS and WMC in Memphis, Tennessee. Though only 29 when he was hired by WSM and turned 30 a week later, Hay (known as the "Solemn Old Judge") launched the WSM Barn Dance with 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson on November 28, 1925, and that date is celebrated as the day the Grand Ole Opry began.[7]

Some of the bands regularly on the show during its early days included Bill Monroe, the Possum Hunters (with Humphrey Bate), the Fruit Jar Drinkers with Uncle Dave Macon, the Crook Brothers, the Binkley Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers, Sid Harkreader, DeFord Bailey, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and the Gully Jumpers.[8]

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 Barn Dance, with the Crook Brothers being the first. 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 on the vaudeville circuit, became its first real star.[8]

Signs welcoming motorists to Nashville on all major roadways include the phrase "Home of the Grand Ole Opry".

The phrase "Grand Ole Opry" was first uttered on radio on December 10, 1927.[9] At the time, the NBC Red Network's Music Appreciation Hour, a program with classical music and selections from grand opera, was followed by Hay's Barn Dance. That evening, as he was introducing DeFord Bailey, the show's first performer of the night, George Hay said the following words:

For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present 'The Grand Ole Opry'.[9][10]

The Hillsboro Theatre (now the Belcourt Theatre), home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1934 to 1936

The War Memorial Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1939 to 1943

As audiences for 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. After several months with no audiences, National Life decided to allow the show to move outside its home offices. In October 1934, the Opry moved into then-suburban Hillsboro Theatre (now the Belcourt) before moving to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville on June 13, 1936. The Opry then moved to the War Memorial Auditorium, a downtown venue adjacent to the State Capitol, and a 25-cent admission fee was charged to try to curb the large crowds, but to no avail. In June 1943, the Opry moved to Ryman Auditorium.[11]

Roy Acuff

Ryman Auditorium, the "Mother Church of Country Music", home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, and seasonally from 1999 to 2020

One hour of the Opry was nationally broadcast by the NBC Red Network from 1939 to 1956, and for much of its run, it aired one hour after the program that had inspired it, National Barn Dance. The NBC segment, originally known by the name of its sponsor, The Prince Albert Show, was first hosted by Acuff, who was succeeded by Red Foley from 1946 to 1954. From October 15, 1955, to September 1956, ABC-TV aired a live, hour-long television version once a month on Saturday nights (sponsored by Ralston-Purina) that pre-empted one hour of the then-90-minute Ozark Jubilee. From 1955 to 1957, Al Gannaway owned and produced both The Country Show and Stars of the Grand Ole Opry, both filmed programs syndicated by Flamingo Films. Gannaway's Stars of the Grand Ole Opry was the first television show shot in color.[12]

On October 2, 1954, a teenage Elvis Presley had his only Opry performance. Although the audience reacted politely to his revolutionary brand of rockabilly music, Opry manager Jim Denny told Presley's producer Sam Phillips after the show that the singer's style did not suit the program.[13]

In the 1960s, as the hippie counterculture movement spread, the Opry maintained a strait-laced, conservative image with "longhairs" not being featured on the show. Artists were expected to dress conservatively, with women regularly wearing gingham country dresses; Jeannie Seely, upon joining the Opry in 1967, fought management to wear more contemporary attire such as miniskirts and go-go boots, arguing that if the Opry were going to have a dress code, it should enforce it upon the audience as well, and that she was only wearing what most young women of the time were wearing.[14] Seely's actions effectively caused the fall of a "gingham curtain".[15] Despite her disputes with the dress code, Seely would remain loyal to the Opry, setting the record for most appearances on the program over 55 years (and ongoing) as a member.[16]

The Byrds were a notable exception. Country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, who was a member of The Byrds at the time, was in Nashville to work on the band's country rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo.[17] The band's record label, Columbia Records, had arranged for The Byrds to perform at the Ryman on March 15, 1968, a prospect that thrilled Parsons.[17] However, when the band took the stage the audience's response was immediately hostile, resulting in derisive heckling, booing, and mocking calls of "tweet, tweet" and "cut your hair"[18][19] The Byrds further outraged the Opry establishment by ignoring accepted protocol when they performed Parsons' song "Hickory Wind" instead of the Merle Haggard song "Life in Prison", as had been announced by Tompall Glaser.[17] Two decades later, long after Parsons's death, members of The Byrds reconciled with the Opry and collaborated on the 1989 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two.

Another artist that ran afoul of the Opry's stringent standards was Jerry Lee Lewis, who made his first and only appearance on the show on January 20, 1973, after several years of success on the country charts. Lewis was given two conditions for his appearance – no rock and roll and no profanity – and he proceeded to disregard both, even referring to himself as a "motherfucker" at one point. In a continuous 40-minute set, Lewis played a mixture of his rock and roll hits and covers of other singers' country songs. It has been said that he was bitter about how he was treated when he first arrived in Nashville in 1955, and he supposedly used his Opry appearance to exact revenge on the Nashville music industry.[20]

Country legend Johnny Cash, who made his Opry debut on July 5, 1956, and met his future wife June Carter Cash on that day, was banned from the program in 1965 after, drunkenly, smashing the stage lights with the microphone stand. Cash commented on the incident years later: "I don't know how much they wanted me in the first place," he says, "but the night I broke all the stage lights with the microphone stand, they said they couldn't use me anymore. So I went out and used it as an excuse to really get wild and ended up in the hospital the third time I broke my nose."[21] Cash was accepted back in 1968, after the success of his At Folsom Prison album and his recovery from addiction.[22]

Grand Ole Opry House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
the Grand Ole Opry House in 2022
Show map of Tennessee Show map of the United States
Location	600 Opry Mills Dr, Nashville, Tennessee 37214[23]
Area	4 acres (approx.)[23]
Built	1972-74[23]
Architect	Welton Becket & Associates; Pierre Cabrol[23]
Architectural style	Modern/Brutalist[23]
Restored	2010 (flood damage remediation)
NRHP reference No.	14001222[24]
Added to NRHP	January 27, 2015

Interior in 2022

Ryman Auditorium was home to the Opry until 1974. By the late 1960s, National Life & Accident desired a new, larger, more modern home for the long-running radio show. Already 51 years old at the time the Opry moved there, the Ryman was beginning to suffer from disrepair as the downtown neighborhood around it fell victim to increasing urban decay. Despite these shortcomings, the show's popularity continued to increase, and its weekly crowds were outgrowing the 2,362-seat venue. The Opry's operators wanted to build a new air-conditioned theater, with greater seating capacity, ample parking, and the ability to serve as a television production facility. The ideal location would be in a less urbanized part of town to provide visitors with a safer, more controlled, and more enjoyable experience.[25]

National Life & Accident purchased farmland owned by a local sausage manufacturer (Rudy's Farm) in the Pennington Bend area of Nashville, nine miles east of downtown and adjacent to the newly constructed Briley Parkway. The new Opry venue was the centerpiece of a grand entertainment complex at that location, which later included Opryland USA Theme Park and Opryland Hotel. The theme park opened to the public on June 30, 1972,[26] well ahead of the 4,000-seat Opry House, which debuted nearly two years later, on Saturday, March 16, 1974. The last show of the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium was held on March 15, 1974.

Opening night was attended by sitting U.S. President Richard Nixon, who played a few songs on the piano.[27] To carry on the tradition of the show's run at the Ryman, a six-foot circle of oak was cut from the corner of the Ryman's stage and inlaid into center stage at the new venue.[28] Artists on stage usually stood on the circle as they performed, and most modern performers still follow this tradition.

The theme park was closed and demolished following the 1997 season, but the Grand Ole Opry House remains in use. The immediate area around it was left intact, even throughout the construction of Opry Mills, which opened in May 2000.[29] The outside was decorated with the commemorative plaques of country music Grammy winners, formerly of Opryland's StarWalk, until the display was retired, reconfigured, and moved downtown to become the Music City Walk of Fame in 2006.[30]

The Grand Ole Opry continues to be performed every Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and occasionally Wednesday and Sunday at the Grand Ole Opry House. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 2015.[31][32]

The Grand Ole Opry House was also the home of the Country Music Association Awards from 1974 to 2004, and hosted three weeks of tapings for the long-running game show Wheel of Fortune in 2003. The venue has also been the site of the GMA Dove Awards on multiple occasions.[33]

On December 21, 2018, the backstage band room was officially named the Jimmy Capps Music Room in honor of Capps's 60th anniversary on the Opry.[34]

Following the departure of the Opry, Ryman Auditorium sat mostly vacant and decaying for 20 years. An initial effort by National Life & Accident to tear down the Ryman and use its bricks to build a chapel at Opryland USA was met with resounding resistance from the public, including many influential musicians of the time. The plans were abandoned, and the building remained standing with an uncertain future. Despite the absence of performances, the building remained a tourist attraction throughout the remainder of the 1970s and 1980s.[35]

In 1991 and 1992, Emmylou Harris performed a series of concerts there and released some of the recordings as an album entitled At the Ryman. The concert and album's high acclaim renewed interest in reviving Ryman Auditorium as an active venue. Beginning in September 1993, Gaylord Entertainment initiated a full renovation of the Ryman, restoring it to a world-class concert hall that reopened with a broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion on June 4, 1994.[35]

On Sunday, October 18, 1998, the Opry held a benefit show at Ryman Auditorium, marking its return to the venue for the first time since its final show on March 15, 1974.[36]

Beginning in November 1999, the Opry was held at Ryman Auditorium for three months, partly due to the ongoing construction of Opry Mills. The Opry returned to the Ryman for the three winter months every year until 2019–20, allowing the show to acknowledge its roots while also taking advantage of a smaller venue during an off-peak season for tourism.[36] While still officially the Grand Ole Opry, the shows there are billed as Opry at the Ryman. From 2002 to 2014, a traveling version of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular took up residence at the Grand Ole Opry House each holiday season while the Opry was away. It was replaced by Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical from 2015 in 2017 and by Cirque Dreams Holidaze in 2018.[37]

Grand Ole Opry logo used from 2005 to 2015

In May 2010, the Opry House was flooded, along with much of Nashville, when the Cumberland River overflowed its banks. Repairs were made, and the Opry itself remained uninterrupted. Over the course of the summer of 2010, the broadcast temporarily originated from alternate venues in Nashville, with Ryman Auditorium hosting the majority of the shows. Other venues included TPAC War Memorial Auditorium, another former Opry home; TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall; Nashville Municipal Auditorium; Allen Arena at Lipscomb University; and Two Rivers Baptist Church.[38]

Much of the auditorium's main floor seating, the backstage areas, and the entire stage – including the six foot inlaid circle of wood from Ryman's stage – was underwater during the flood. While the Grand Ole Opry House's stage was replaced, the Ryman circle was restored and again placed at center stage in the Grand Ole Opry House before shows resumed.[39][40] The renovations following the flood also resulted in an updated and much-expanded backstage area, including the construction of more dressing rooms and a performer's lounge.

The Opry returned to the Grand Ole Opry House on September 28, 2010, in a special edition of the Opry entitled Country Comes Home that was televised live on Great American Country.[41] The evening included Martina McBride and Connie Smith singing Smith's signature hit "Once a Day" together, and other collaborations included Dierks Bentley and Del McCoury ("Roll On Buddy, Roll On"), Josh Turner and Lorrie Morgan ("Golden Ring"), and Montgomery Gentry and Charlie Daniels Band ("Devil Went Down to Georgia"), before closing with a guitar jam featuring Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, Steve Wariner, Ricky Skaggs, and Marty Stuart.

The Opry closed its doors to spectators and trimmed its staff in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee but continued to air weekly episodes on radio and television, relying on advertising revenue to remain solvent.[42] The Opry resumed allowing spectators on a limited basis in October, and resumed full operations in May 2021.[43] Due to the restrictions, the show did not move to the Ryman Auditorium in November 2020 as was customary. The Winter Ryman residency did not resume in 2021–22, partly due to scheduling conflicts from Ryman concerts postponed during the pandemic closure.

The Opry livestreams were celebrated by viewers as something to look forward to during the pandemic, with the majority of viewers being under lockdown. According to Pollstar, Opry Live was the number one most-watched livestream series in 2020 across all genres and received more than fifty million viewers from over fifty countries throughout the year, with two individual episodes (Vince Gill/Reba McEntire and Brad Paisley/Carrie Underwood) placing at numbers nine and ten respectively in the top ten. President of Opry Entertainment Scott Bailey explained that "as the stewards of the Grand Ole Opry, it was never a question of if the Opry would play on, but how could it provide a safe and much-needed source of comfort during what has been an extraordinary year around the world. We are proud of this tremendous result and the numbers of viewers who have tuned in, not only for what it has meant for Circle, but also for what it says about the country music genre and country music fans. On behalf of all of us at the Grand Ole Opry and Opry Entertainment, I'd like to thank the artist community, industry and music lovers around the world for their continued support".[44]

After seven months of performing without a live audience, in October of 2020, the Opry kicked off its 95th anniversary by welcoming back 500 guests to the Opry House – and so began a month-long celebration of the Opry, country music, its artists, and its fans.[45]

The Grand Ole Opry celebrated its 5,000th Saturday night show on Oct. 30, 2021 with performances by country superstars and Opry members like Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Darius Rucker, Vince Gill, Chris Young and several others.[46]

On June 11, 2022, Opry member Vince Gill invited both Charlie McCoy and Don Schlitz – who both made frequent appearances as guests on the show – to become Opry members, marking the first double invitation in Opry family history.

On the day of legendary Opry member Loretta Lynn’s passing, Oct. 4, 2022, Carly Pearce performed her song “Dear Ms. Loretta” on the Opry stage. A memorial concert was held for Lynn a few weeks later that featured performances by George Strait, Tanya Tucker, Wynonna, and several other artists. Thousands of Lynn’s friends, family, and fans were in attendance at the Opry House.[47]

The Opry unveiled a new, upgraded stage with all-new, advanced audio technology – the first major updates to the set in over two decades – in February of 2023.[48] Opry NextStage, a program that spotlights a select number of up-and-coming country artists each year, began bringing younger and more diverse acts to the Opry stage in 2019.[49] Artists from more genres like Folk, Americana, Gospel, Blues, and Southern Rock frequently appear on the show. And in 2022, Opry management invited two new comedians – Henry Cho (the Opry’s first Asian American member) and Gary Mule Deer – to become Opry members.[50]