Today's Opry members coexist happily with the ghosts. No one who plays bluegrass can forget that Bill Monroe introduced the music from the Opry stage. Today's Opry members know that the torch has been passed to them, and that they in turn must pass it on. Away from the Opry, today's top stars can play to stadiums full of fans; at the Opry, they play to four thousand people, some of whom have little idea who they are. They have just a few minutes to win over the crowd while artists from the last fifty years watch from the wings. That's what makes the Grand Ole Opry one of the premier stages in American music.

Through the years, the legends of the Grand Ole Opry have become known by one name. Cash, Acuff, Hank, Patsy, and so on. At the eightieth anniversary, Garth was there. He emerged from a brief self-imposed retirement, and, in case he, or anyone else, was wondering, he's still the most powerfully iconic presence in country music. Before joining Steve Wariner for some duets, he went onstage as the fourth member of a quartet alongside Little Jimmy Dickens, Porter Wagoner, and Bill Anderson. Backstage, every hand was shaken and every photo taken. Old-timers used to call it "shake and howdy," and it's a tradition that has almost disappeared. Garth, though, seemed genuinely pleased to carry it on. Ernest Tubb, who personified shake and howdy, would have smiled his big benevolent smile and approved.

Country music venerates tradition, and the Grand Ole Opry embodies it. There is nothing remotely comparable elsewhere in music. No show covers all the bases, from street-corner blues to hip-hop or from rockabilly to heavy metal, but every night at the Grand Ole Opry four thousand people of all ages can hear the broad sweep of country music from the back porch to the stadium. No one performs more than a few songs per segment, so the show isn't trapped in one time period. It's breathlessly varied and fast-paced, faster and more varied by far than the very first show when Uncle Jimmy Thompson played the fiddle for one hour to the sole accompaniment of his niece.

Brad Paisley, one of the current stars who has made a sustained commitment to the Opry, has a vision for the show. "Ideally," he said recently, "people will come hear Porter Wagoner or Bill Anderson on a night I'm singing and walk away saying, 'I like that new guy, too.' And maybe there'll be people who come to the show because they've heard my songs on the radio and they'll say, 'Boy, I didn't know Bill Anderson wrote "City Lights," or I didn't know Jimmy Dickens's "Bird of Paradise" is so funny. I need to go get their CDs.'"

The Opry came into a world with few entertainment options; now, of course, there are so many. Every era had its unique set of problems, though. In its earliest days, the Opry's managers had to contend with Nashville's old-money crowd, who believed that the show brought disgrace to their community. Today, as the interstates approach Nashville, the official road signs say "Metropolitan Nashville, Home of the Grand Ole Opry." The Opry has made Nashville synonymous with country music, and the country music business no longer has to trumpet how much it contributes to the city and its economy because the evidence is everywhere. Those entrusted with the future of the Grand Ole Opry contend with different problems, but the show will survive because too many people want it to survive. True, there are complaints that it isn't what it used to be, but it never was. If it was what it used to be, it would have been finished by 1930.

So much has happened in eighty years, and here for the first time the story is told in the words of those who witnessed it. Some were in front of the microphone, some behind the curtains, and some in the back office. Some observed and some participated. Everyone was there. Occasionally memories conflict, but that's as it should be. No two people have ever remembered the same event the same way.

-- Colin Escott

I am a huge fan of Colin Escott's work. Every book he has written (from Hank Williams to this his latest endeavor) becomes the "definitive version" on the subject. And so, it is with my personal pleasure to include this page on my website as he is a crucial and most credible source for anyone interested in traditional country music!

-- Mark Brine

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