The Grand Ole Opry Read online

  Jim Denny, who’d been the Opry’s bouncer at the Dixie Tabernacle, realized that there was some money to be made from the crowds before they got to see the show. “Denny,” wrote journalist George Barker, “had the genius of being able to do a little something for himself all the time he was doing a first-rate job for his boss.”

  VINCE HIMES, Jim Denny’s employee:

  Jim Denny ran the concessions. That included soft drinks and hot dogs, which were sold to people waiting in line outside the Opry for tickets. People started lining up around two or three p.m., and they’d get pretty hungry. The War Memorial and the Ryman weren’t air-conditioned, so it got very hot in those buildings during the summer. We sold a lot of fans.

  Several years would pass before Denny took over the Opry’s Artists Service Bureau. During the war years, he ran the concessions and opened one of Nashville’s first recording studios so that soldiers stationed in nearby Fort Campbell could record messages to send home.

  During the war, the Grand Ole Opry became more popular than ever. Servicemen from the South were sent across the country and then around the world, and they took their music with them. The Opry’s homespun music and humor seemed inextricably tied to the vision of hearth and home that inspired the troops. Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff became household names during the war years. Acuff’s searing emotionalism went hand in hand with his music’s spiritual high ground, while Ernest Tubb sang simply and movingly of loss and separation in songs like “The Soldier’s Last Letter” and “It’s Been So Long, Darling.”

  In 1941, several Opry performers were recruited for a Camel road show. The Esty Agency, which handled the Opry sponsor Prince Albert, organized the Camel Caravan on behalf of R. J. Reynolds’s Camel brand. Until the Opry performers joined the cast, all of the artists had been pop or jazz since the Camel Caravan’s inception as a radio show in 1932.

  MINNIE PEARL:

  Someone had the idea of putting the Camel Caravan on the road with three units of the show traveling around the country entertaining servicemen. They organized a troupe from Hollywood, one from New York, and one from Nashville. Mr. Frank sold the Esty Agency on using Pee Wee’s show for the Opry Camel Caravan. The young men on the bases came from all over the country, many from places too far from Nashville for us to perform at because we always had to be back home for the Saturday broadcast. We started in August 1941. Europe was at war, but the United States wasn’t, and most Americans didn’t think we ever would be. For nineteen months, we worked three shows a day. In addition to my regular fifty dollars a week from Pee Wee, the Esty Agency offered me additional fifty dollars if I would act as chaperone to the cigarette girls, who’d walk through the audience passing out sample packets of Camels.

  The Camel Caravan Opry troupe in Florida.

  In May 1942, almost six months after the United States entered the Second World War, the government introduced gasoline rationing, and the draft had already depleted the ranks of sidemen, but Opry stars continued to tour far and wide.

  In her newspaper, the Grinder’s Switch Gazette, Minnie Pearl described a typical “all-night jump.”

  The Camel Caravan touring truck.

  Work the Opry ’til midnight—take time out to load up, killing an hour in the process—start out of Nashville saying to ourselves that we positively will not stop to eat ’til we’ve gone at least seventy-five or onehundred miles. Lots of chatter the first fifty miles or so, everybody discussing the latest Opry news. Things begin to quiet down. The motor hums, miles slip by, the driver is wide awake. Into towns and out. Sleepy little towns where sensible folks are asleep like we ought to be. Lights of an all-night café show up ahead.

  Pull over to one side. “Let’s eat.” Sleepy musicians pile out and into the café. “Coffee.” See what’s on the jukebox. “Got Eddy’s new record. There’s one of Tubb’s. Here’s Roy’s ‘Silver Trumpets.’ Play that one. Better move on, we got miles to go fellas. Into the car again. Let me sit in the front with the heater. My feet are ice.” Settling down for another forty or fifty miles. “Hey, wake up, somebody. I can’t take it any longer. I’m dead. My eyes are plumb shut.” “I’ll take it. Wait’ll I get out and stretch.” “What time is it anyway?” “About 5:30. Almost time for breakfast.” “Not yet, let’s try to make it to Plainville. It’s only fifty miles from here.” Quiet again. All of a sudden, there’s a bumping sound, not so bad first. Gets worse. “What’s that?” “Tire.” “Get out, won’t take long.” “That spare okay?” “Fella said he wouldn’t guarantee it.” “Put it on. May be a filling station down the road.” “Why can’t we have those flats closer to town?” Stop for breakfast. “We ought to make it in time to clean up a little before the show.” Back in the car again. Lively chatter now. Coffee and breakfast have waked us all up. “Try that new number. You start it.” Singing for twenty or thirty miles. Best rehearsing in the world, right there on the road. “Are we on the right road? Haven’t seen a highway sign for miles.” “What’s the time?” “Okay, we’ll make it if we don’t have any more hard luck. Where do we show tomorrow? We’ve showed there. Good town. Rotten hotel. You remember, we showed there with the tent show summer before last?” “Let’s get a Coke or something. I’m hungry again.” “Let’s wait and eat ’til we get there. There’s the town now. There’s one of our showbills. I hope we pack ’em in. Say, where’s the auditorium?”

  The Camel Caravan’s cigarette girls passed out free smokes and raised morale among the servicemen.

  MINNIE PEARL:

  Eddy Arnold opened with “I’ll Be Back in a Year, Little Darlin,” and the boys loved it because they thought they’d be home in a year. Then, after Pearl Harbor, he opened with that song one night and got booed all the way through. The Caravan ended in 1942. It was too expensive to get us all the way back to Nashville on Saturday night, and travel was becoming more and more difficult with gasoline rationing and all the rubber for tires going to the war effort.

  Curly Fox and Texas Ruby (left) and the Bailes Brothers

  (right) were among the acts that turned their touring transportation into advertising.

  PEE WEE KING:

  One time when Minnie was with us, we were traveling back to Nashville. During the war, we were always having flats because the tires were made of synthetic rubber. We’d already had twelve flats on that trip, and we were hot and tired and frustrated and late. I was mad as hell. I said “All right, everyone, get out. I’m gonna throw this tire through the windshield.” Minnie said, “Gus, I do believe Pee Wee is upset.” Gus was my brother-in-law and road manager. He said, “Minnie, I’ve never seen Pee Wee mad at anything before, but I think you’re right. He’s cussing in Polish.” Minnie said, “I thought he was using cuss words I’d never heard before.”

  Pee Wee King and his fiddle player, Speedy McNatt, ensure that their latest record is on the jukebox.

  There have been very few Saturday nights when the Opry wasn’t broadcast over WSM, but one came toward the end of the war.

  Report in MINNIE PEARL’S Grinder’s Switch Gazette:

  On Saturday April 14 [1945], the WSM Grand Ole Opry was not on the air. All of the radio stations and all of the networks observed a three-day period of mourning for our late President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For those three days, the usual programs were cancelled, including the OPRY. Announcements were made over WSM to the effect that the OPRY would not be held that Saturday night. For the benefit of those who had not heard the announcement and had come from a distance to see the OPRY there was a short musical program at the Opry House for which tickets were not required.

  “THE NEWS, THE GRAND OLE OPRY . . . AND THAT WAS IT!”

  LORETTA LYNN in Butcher Holler, Kentucky:

  I loved Ernest Tubb even when I was a little girl. I’d lay by the radio on Saturday night with my head right up next to it. I’d have a coat or something around me. I’d go to sleep crying when he’d sing, “It’s been so long darlin’ since I had a kiss from you.” It was wartime, you know.
During the war, Daddy would say, “We’re gonna save the batteries on the radio.” It was an old Philco radio. We listened to the news and the Grand Ole Opry, and that was it!

  JEAN SHEPARD in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma:

  We listened to the Opry on a sharecropper’s farm in Oklahoma. We saved up and scrimped every year to buy a $2.98 battery for that radio. My daddy run a ground wire down to this lead pipe in the ground. I’d go out to the cistern and get some water and pour water around it so we could knock the static out. The Opry would come in loud and clear and it’d be wonderful. Grant Turner would say, we have cars here from Michigan and Texas and Oklahoma and Ohio, and I’d think, “How in the world did those people get there?”

  left: Listening to the Opry has always been a family affair, with something for every generation

  right: Many people saved their battery power to listen to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. Some people even took the battery out of their trucks to hook up to the radio.

  JIM MCREYNOLDS of Jim and Jesse in Carfax, Virginia:

  We grew up in the mountains in Virginia, and the only entertainment we had was an old battery radio. On Saturday nights, the whole family would gather in and listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Back then, if you were a member of the Opry, you were there every Saturday night. You could always count on Monroe and Acuff and so on. We grew up in a family that played old-time music, and you’d listen to the Opry on Saturday night, and you’d spend all next week trying to copy what you heard.

  JEANNIE SEELY in Titusville, Pennsylvania:

  I was born in 1940, and I remember the times when Edward R. Murrow or President Roosevelt was on with announcements about World War II, which I didn’t understand. All I knew was you had to be quiet. Then we’d turn on the Grand Ole Opry, and everyone sang along and clapped. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t always there. You should be able to always turn that button and hear the Opry and Ernest Tubb. If we couldn’t pick up the Opry, we’d pile into the car and go find someone who could pick it up.

  PEE WEE KING:

  I was substituting for Roy Acuff when President Roosevelt died. The Judge came to me and says to me, “Would you do your stage show while the network takes over? Just entertain our audiences here at the Ryman?” I said, “Well, sure.” I told Buddy Harroll, our trumpet player. “Buddy, run out in the bus and bring your ax in.” Buddy says, “King, you kiddin’? A trumpet on the Opry stage?” I says, “Yeah.” I told the audience, “The network has taken over our radio time eulogizing our late president, so if you don’t mind, we’d like to show you what we do in our stage shows. First, everyone, please bow your head in respect.” I played “My Buddy” on the accordion. We had everybody in the audience in tears. Then Buddy went straight into “Bugle Call Rag,” and Judge Hay almost jumped off the stage.

  By war’s end, the Grand Ole Opry had become the most popular country music radio show, and every up-and-coming country star wanted to work on it. The Opry offered something for everyone: old-time rural music from Uncle Dave Macon and Sam and Kirk McGee; Bill Monroe’s bluegrass; Ernest Tubb’s honky-tonk music; Roy Acuff’s heartfelt Ap-palachian music; Minnie Pearl’s comedy; Eddy Arnold’s crooning; and Pee Wee King’s sharp-tip western swing. The show was breathlessly fast-paced, designed in such a way that if there was someone you didn’t like, you’d barely have time to reach the dial before he or she was off. The rapidly evolving lineup and innovative managers behind the scenes would take the show to even greater heights in the years ahead.

  6

  STAR TIME

  By the end of the Second World War, no one seriously questioned the Grand Ole Opry’s preeminence. There were hundreds of radio barn dances on stations great and small, but the Opry was the dream of every performer on every small-town radio barn dance, and the Opry’s management team was determined to keep it that way. But there were clouds on the horizon. For one thing, no one foresaw the impact that television would soon have on “live” radio. When Pee Wee King left the Opry in 1947 to work on a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, the feeling was that he’d be back in six months. Even so, as the Opry’s new management team took shape in the years immediately after the war, the future looked rosy and assured.

  Ott Devine, who would become manager of the Opry in 1959, George Reynolds, Jack Stapp, Harry Stone, and Judge Hay.

  Judge Hay was still at the Opry, but only as an announcer. In 1945, he wrote the first history of the show, A Story of the Grand Ole Opry. It was a slender booklet sold only at the Opry’s concession stands, but it showed that the Solemn Old Judge already appreciated the significance of what he’d created twenty years earlier. Vito Pel-lettieri still stage-managed the show, and Harry Stone was still WSM station manager, but his brother, David, had left. The Opry’s former bouncer, Jim Denny, had taken over David’s role at the Opry’s Artists Service Bureau. Shortly before the war, Jack Stapp had come to WSM as program director, and returned after serving overseas. A quiet, diffident man, Stapp had worked at CBS radio in New York and helped professionalize the Opry. Edwin Craig still oversaw the Opry from his position on the board of National Life, and brought back his old friend Jack DeWitt to the newly created post of president of WSM. DeWitt was born on Fatherland Street in East Nashville, near where the Opry was held between 1936 and 1939, but his interest in radio was almost entirely technical. As a part-time engineer, he’d helped install WSM in the National Life building, and was chief engineer between 1932 and 1942. DeWitt’s appointment as president placed him over Harry Stone, and this was probably Craig’s way of trying to limit Stone’s authority.

  JACK DEWITT, WSM president:

  I came back to WSM in 1947. I used to go to the Opry every three or four months. I would go down and sit in the front seat at the Ryman. Then I’d go backstage and see the guys. I wanted to show them that I had a great interest in the Opry, which I didn’t at all. I like what’s called good music, but I didn’t let them know that if I could help it.

  Jack DeWitt happily left the Opry to Harry Stone, Jack Stapp, and Jim Denny. They couldn’t risk a new star spearheading a rival barn dance, so one of their top priorities was to recruit up-and-coming artists from other radio barn dances. The Opry was still paying “scale” (the minimum mandated by the musicians’ union for broadcasts), but could entice young stars with its prestige, huge listenership, and lucrative tours.

  JACK STAPP:

  The one thing I wanted to do was to get the best country talent at the Grand Ole Opry. Every time one of our artists would say, “Hey, I just heard a great singer down in Shreveport, you ought to get him,” I’d get on the phone and I’d call him. I’d ask him if he wanted to come to Nashville.

  The answer was almost invariably “Yes.”

  MARIE CLAIRE, Jim Denny’s assistant:

  Jim Denny greatly improved the quality of country bookings through the bureau. Where Opry acts once played schoolhouses and tiny halls, Denny had them in auditoriums, arenas, and fairs. He had a deep, gruff voice. He liked to wear brown pinstriped suits, and he walked down the hall like a bear. He scared some people to death.

  Jim Denny had come to Nashville on his own at age eleven in 1922. Jim Denny: “I got off the train and all my money was in a little tobacco sack. I had about forty cents. I got a job selling the Tennessean up and down Church Street. Between editions, I delivered telegrams, and I was adopted, sort of, by the women in the bordellos north of the Capitol. Most of their business was arranged by telegram. Very often, answers were required, so I got to carry the messages both ways. They were always good for a fifty-cent tip, a good meal, and conversation.”

  The first problem facing the new management in the postwar years was how to handle an Opry star who sometimes gave the impression that he was bigger than the show itself: Roy Acuff. The host of the Opry’s networked Prince Albert show, Acuff was not only the biggest star in country music, but one of the biggest stars in all popular music. War reporter Ernie Pyle reported that the Japanese troops at the Battle of Ok
inawa screamed, “To hell with Roosevelt! To hell with Babe Ruth! To hell with Roy Acuff!” When National Life salesmen went on the road, they were trained to say, “Good morning, I work for the company that owns the Grand Ole Opry, and Roy Acuff asked me to come by and give you a personal hello. May I come in?”

  The war in Europe was over, but hundreds of thousands of GIs remained there, and, with the fighting ended, they could focus a little more upon entertainment. Their choice: Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys.

  THE FIRST CARNEGIE HALL SHOWS

  No event better underscored the fact that country music had a nationwide following than the first Carnegie Hall concerts in September 1934.

  Billboard magazine, November 1947:

  Staid Carnegie Hall has been re-bopped by Lionel Hampton and jived by Woody Herman, but Thursday and Friday September 18 and 19, it was corn-quered by hillbilly music and the place will never be the same again. A cornbilly troupe called the Grand Ole Opry featuring many performers appearing regularly on the air show of that name took over the house and proved to the tune of $12,000 gross that the big city wants country music. The promoters, Sol Gold, Abe Lackman and Oscar Davis, got more than a kick out of it because they garnered about $9,500 with a talent nut of about $5,000. If nothing else, the hillbilly concerts demonstrated several important things. First, New York is sold on hillbilly music. These weren’t just curious onlookers out for a night of novelty. These were serious devoted fans, almost rabid in their wild enthusiasm. Such screaming and wild applause after each number hasn’t been heard in town since Frank Sinatra brought out the bobbysoxers at the Paramount. Instead of juveniles, these were people beyond their teens who knew all the numbers and entertainers, which is proof positive that they listen to all the shows featuring these performers.