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| Exterior of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville |
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – It’s known as “the show that made country
music famous,” and has the distinction of being the longest-running radio
program in North America … 89 years and counting.
If you’re a fan of
country music or not, there is no denying it … a visit to Nashville is not
complete unless you see a live performance of the Grand Ole Opry, especially
when it takes place in its most famous home, the Ryman Auditorium. And when I
took part in a recent press tour of the Music City, I had the chance to do
both.
Actually, the Ryman
Auditorium wasn’t the first home of the Opry; in fact, it became the sixth home
of the show in 1943 when it’s increasing popularity with listeners compelled
its original sponsor, the National Life and Accidental Insurance Company, to
find a larger venue to handle the growing fan base to see the Grand Ole Opry
during its live broadcasts that were heard on 650 WSM Radio (which is still its
official broadcaster), and for a time, on NBC Radio across the U.S. Although
the Opry moved to its current home at Opryland – located just outside of
downtown Nashville -- 40 years
ago, the Ryman’s historical attachment to the Grand Ole Opry still exists in
the hearts of Nashville citizens and country music fans everywhere. In fact,
the Ryman is now used as the official winter home of the Opry between November
and January and in 2001, was deemed as a National Historic Landmark.
After taking a special backstage VIP
tour of the Ryman, I was amazed at this building’s impressive 122-year history.
It was built in 1892 by Nashville-based riverboat captain and businessman
Thomas Ryman, and it was used expressly as a church for travelling evangelical
preacher Sam Jones (its original name was the Union Gospel Tabernacle). When
Ryman died in 1904, Jones presided at his funeral and asked the packed crowd at
the church if the building should be renamed in memory of Ryman; the
congregants unanimously approved and it permanently became known as the Ryman
Auditorium afterwards.
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| Portrait of Captain Thomas Ryman |
From that day, the
Ryman became the premier entertainment venue in all of Nashville, and has
attracted some of the most illustrious names in entertainment of the past
century to its stage, from Enrico Caruso, to Charlie Chaplin, to Harry Houdini,
to Katherine Hepburn, to Bob Hope, to Louis Armstrong, to Bruce Springsteen. The
Ryman’s long and illustrious history can be viewed in a massive illustrated
timeline that graces the walls outside the Confederate Gallery level of the
building, which is guarded by a rather large portrait of Captain Ryman (pictured above).
And at the rear of
both levels of the building are exhibits of memorabilia that offer a living
history of the Ryman’s connection to the Grand Ole Opry, with artifacts from
such legendary Opry stars as Minnie Pearl, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash (pictured left). I also
recommend for any visitor that before taking the tour, to view the highly
informative eight-minute introductory video about the history of the Ryman that
is played on a continuous loop throughout the day, and is narrated by country
music star Trisha Yearwood. And if the mood hits you to become a future Grand
Ole Opry star, you can take a souvenir picture of yourself onstage at the Ryman
for a nominal charge, or make your own CD recording from a select list of
classic country songs that is done in an actual recording studio (which doubles
as WSM’s master control booth during Opry broadcasts), in which you can take
home both as a souvenir of your visit to the Ryman (I did the former, pictured below).
During the
backstage tour, I got the rare chance to see the Ryman from the point-of-view
of a Grand Ole Opry performer. I
got to stand in the wings of the Ryman stage and see the pews where the
audience sits from where the performers make their entrances. And the dressing
rooms double as individual shrines to the memory of the following Opry legends:
Hank Williams, Johnny and June Cash, Minnie Pearl, Patsy Cline and Roy Acuff,
and when the surviving family members from either of these legends are present
at the Ryman for a show, they are given exclusive access to the dressing room in
question for that specific evening. Also, one interesting note I found out from
our guide is that in the Patsy Cline dressing room, there is a painting of the
legendary singer – who died in a tragic plane crash n 1963 -- that was done on
a cupboard door that was taken from the kitchen of Cline’s home, which was
donated by her widowed husband.
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| Vince Gill |
Two days after I
took the tour of the Ryman Auditorium, I was filled with plenty of its wonderful
history and its longtime country music tradition, and was ready to take in a
live performance of the Grand Ole Opry in its best known home. The Opry does
four shows every week; one show each on Tuesday and Friday nights, and two
shows on Saturday night. I caught the second Saturday night show, in which the
line-up was a mixture of longtime Opry members like Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill
(who was sporting a Nashville Predators jersey, which meant he probably caught
the Nashville Predators-Winnipeg Jets game at the nearby Bridgestone Arena
before the show -- pictured right -- in which the Preds beat the Jets 2-1), to up-and-coming
country music stars; the latter category was best exemplified by 10-year-old
Fiddlin’ Carson Peters (pictured below), who brought down the house with his extraordinary
fiddling skills and his rocking rockabilly rendition of the classic “Blue Moon
of Kentucky”.
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| Rising star Fiddlin' Carson Peters |
A typical Grand Ole
Opry show is divided into four blocks of 30 minutes each, in which each segment
had three or four performers do two songs each, and every segment was punctuated
by Opry announcer Ernie Stubbs, who extolled the virtue of each broadcast
sponsor, which are Humana (a healthcare plan), the Dollar General chain of
discount stores, and the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store chain. Stubbs is
someone whom you can easily define as a consummate professional, as his soft
baritone voice guided the listeners and Opry live audiences through the
experience of a Grand Ole Opry show and what each sponsor had to offer … no
matter how many times a member of the group Riders in the Sky tried to distract
him during a commercial break (pictured below).
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| Grand Ole Opry announcer Ernie Stubbs (right) trying not to be distracted by a member of the group Riders in the Sky |
And as the curtain
went down after two hours of what I believed was one of the most enjoyable,
entertaining live shows I have experienced, I couldn’t help but witness a piece
of American entertainment history, and see the ghosts of past Opry stars echo through
the pews and stage of the venerated Ryman Auditorium, as the late George D.
Hay, the show’s original announcer, proclaimed in a December 1927 broadcast
that “for the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from
Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry.”
Finally, here’s an
interesting Grand Ole Opry fact: the call letters of broadcaster 650 WSM, which
was established in 1925 by the National Life and Accidental Insurance Company,
stood for “We Shield Millions”.
For more
information about the Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry, go to their
respective websites, www.ryman.com and www.opry.com. And to find out what else Nashville can
offer tourists, visit www.visitmusiccity.com or call 1-800-657-6910.
