2008 Soap Box Archives

The Grand Ole Opry

I am currently sitting on my bus in a hotel parking lot in Orlando Florida where we'll be doing a concert tonight and had the thought that we are playing the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night and what an honor it is to be a member of this wonderful American institution.

The first radio program I consciously remember listening to in my earliest years was the Opry and have been an admirer every since.

From the time I learned my first few chords on Russell Palmer's old Stella guitar I dreamed about one day just being able to go to Nashville and watch the show. A dream that came true in 1955 when a bunch of us boys got together and drove to Nashville and actually got to lay eyes on the likes of Roy Acuff, Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and a host of other legendary Opry entertainers.

The Opry, at that time in my life, seemed to be an unattainable goal for a young novice fiddle player like me. It seemed another world, only entered by the special few, and as much out of my grasp as Mars.

Almost every Saturday night found me sitting by a radio tuned to 650 WSM, it's 50,000 watts of AM power booming in across the hundreds of miles to the central Tarheel State like a local station.

When I actually got a chance to make a living playing music I headed in a rock and roll direction. It was the happening music of the day, and rock bands were more in demand.

I even laid my fiddle aside for years. There was just not a place for it in the rock and rhythm and blues dance music we were playing. It was to be quite a while before the fiddle became part of my stage show again.

But in all these years of making a living as a rock musician, country music and the Grand Ole Opry were never far from my heart.

When I started recording in the early seventies, rock had become a free form of music and it seemed it was time to pick up the fiddle again.

I played the Opry the first time with Earl Scruggs and his sons Gary and Randy and to actually walk on that stage with a musical instrument in my hand was a humbling thrill.

After we had some successful records in the middle seventies, we started getting invitations to appear on the Opry and continued to be guests periodically ever since, but was not to become a member until this year.

Why does being a member of the Grand Ole Opry mean so much to me?

It's the fulfillment of one of my earliest musical fantasies and it means that someday in the distant future when some kid from an isolated small town, who knows a few chords on his guitar and is beginning to have dreams about being on the Opry, will look in a book and find the name of Charlie Daniels among the names of the people I admire so much.

Having said all that let me say this, playing the Opry is a whole lot of fun.

Ya'll come see us sometime.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

 

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