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2002 Soap Box Archives The Grand Ole Opry It’s Saturday and in a few hours the band and myself will be mounting the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. It is an honor and a dream that I thought was almost impossible when I was a young fiddle player listening to The Opry and trying to imagine what it would be like to actually see it. I remember the first time I ever attended the Opry. It was in 1955 or so and a bunch of my buddies and me made what was then the long long trip to Nashville, Tennessee. Stood in line for tickets and stayed until the last note was played. Then we went around the corner to the Midnight Jamboree at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and then drove back to Carolina, tired but happy. I remember the first time I actually played the Opry as a member of The Earl Scruggs Revue. Walking on that stage was an awesome experience. It was at the old Ryman Auditorium and there were so many stars backstage that it could make your head spin. Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, legends in the flesh. And then the first time I ever took the stage with The Charlie Daniels Band. It is a real privilege to walk on that stage and go out over WSM 650, the radio station that has been synonymous with country for over 75 years. Bill Cody,a DJ friend of mine calls it “The Mother Church” of country music. there was a time that you were never considered at the top of the country music business if you didn’t appear on the Grand Ole Opry. Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Eddie Arnold, Ray Price, Little Jimmie Dickens and countless other stars in the country music constellation were Grand Ole Opry regulars. It’s like no other show in the world and has been broadcast continuously every Saturday night except for one for over seventy-five years. The Opry has attracted audiences from around the world and has maintained its”countryness” through change and challenge, trend and fad. You can get back to your roots at the Opry. I spent countless hours in Roy Acuff’s dressing room listening to stories about how it used to be when Roy Acuff and The Smokey Mountain Boys did concerts in places that didn’t even have electricity. It seemed there was always a jam session going on in Bill Monroe’s dressing room and the bluegrass music resonating out of that door was the best in the world. Cousin Minnie Pearl always had a smile and that hat with the price tag hanging off the side, a sweet and talented lady who is as much a part of the Opry tradition as the old time fiddle tunes the square dancers clog to every Saturday night. I will walk on that stage tonight and savor every second. It’s an experience I’ll always value and never forget. Something no one can take away from us. Tonight when the band takes the stage it won’t be just any of the stages we mount over a hundred times a year. It will be a special and exciting feeling, exhilarating and yet humbling like walking onto the pages of a history book where so many of my heroes have walked before. The Grand Ole Opry, the rootinest, tootinest country music the world has ever known. Long live The Opry!!!!! What do you think? God
Bless America
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