The Grand Ole Opry (28 page)

Ott Devine (at podium) leads the Opry cast in a remembrance of Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Randy Hughes, Cowboy Copas,
and Jack Anglin

We ask that you in the audience stand and join us for a moment of silent prayer in tribute to them.

One minute of silence followed.

Thank you. Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Jack Anglin, and Randy Hughes never walked on this stage without a
smile. They would want us to keep smiling and recall the happier occasions. I feel that I can speak for all them when I say,
let’s continue in the tradition of the Grand Ole Opry.

MINNIE PEARL:

Roy Acuff struck up his fiddle and played a number for them. I stood in the wings trying not to break down, but the tears
were hard to hold back. Roy called me out and I tried to compose myself. I recall swallowing my tears. I said, though not
very loudly, “Howdee, I’m just so proud to be here,” but the rest is a blur. Grief and sorrow seem so alien to the Opry environment.

Some were beginning to say that the Grand Ole Opry was jinxed, and over the next two years there was a spate of accidents
and fatalities involving current or former Opry members. Less than three weeks after Jack Anglin’s death, Texas Ruby, who
appeared on the Opry with her husband, Curly Fox, died in a trailer fire while Curly played the Friday Night Opry. On August
27, former Opry executive Jim Denny died of a heart attack; he was 52. And on November 16 that year, Ernest Tubb and Jean
Shepard were involved in a wreck near Durham, North Carolina, in which the driver of an oncoming car was killed. On July 31,
1964, Jim Reeves died in a plane crash, and on June 20, 1965, former Opry member Ira Louvin of the Louvin Brothers died in
a car wreck. Three weeks after Louvin’s death, Roy Acuff was seriously injured in a car wreck near Sparta, Tennessee.

ROY ACUFF:

I’d sung “Wreck on the Highway” so many times, it flashed in my mind when I saw that car coming toward us. I just started
to pray. I think the wreck was a warning that my luck—my traveling luck—was running out. Any game you play, you’re gonna lose
sometimes, and I’ve been traveling thirty years about a hundred thousand miles a year.

ERNEST TUBB:

Ol’ Roy’s retired five times. After that bad wreck in the summer of ’65, he said, “Ernest, I’m quitting that road. You better
get off it too before it kills you.” I came back in that Christmas, and I didn’t see Roy. I asked someone where he was, and
they said, “He’s up in Alaska.”

The number of travel-related incidents was surprisingly low for a cast that traveled as a way of life. The road
was
a problem for the Opry, but in another way. Because most Opry performers made their living on tour, it was hard to meet the
Opry’s requirement of twenty-six appearances a year to retain membership. If an artist had a hit, managers and bookers insisted
that they
not
work the Opry on the most lucrative night of the week, and it’s a testament to the lure of the Opry that so many artists
still wanted to be on the show anyway. Several artists, though, wanted to work the Opry on their own terms, and the conflict
came to a head in December 1964.

CLARA HIERONYMOUS,
journalist, in the
Tennessean:

Twelve top country and western music stars will not appear on the Grand Ole Opry in 1965 and have been prohibited from using
the Opry name in their outside billings, it was learned yesterday. Another entertainer, long-time favorite Minnie Pearl, has
been given a leave of absence from the show for the coming year, but will continue to use the Opry billing in her current
contracts. Others leaving the Opry roster were George Morgan, Don Gibson, Billy Grammer, Johnnie Wright, Kitty Wells, the
Jordanaires, Faron Young, Ferlin Husky, Chet Atkins, Justin Tubb, Stonewall Jackson, and Ray Price. According to WSM officials,
the move was in keeping with a longstanding Opry rule that performers must appear in 26 shows a year in order to be retained.
“Nobody is mad at anybody,” said WSM public relations director, Bill Williams, “it’s just that periodically we have to take
stock. These entertainers will be allowed to return any time they wish.”

BILL ANDERSON:

That was a surprise. I’d never signed a contract saying that I would be in twenty-six times a year. I had the same manager
as Faron and Ferlin, and I just felt that they made the choice to work the road. Hubert Long was our manager, and I remember
him coming to me at that time and saying, “Do you realize how much money it’s costing you to be on the Grand Ole Opry? I could
book you out on the road and you’re down there making eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents.” I considered leaving, but
my father, who knows nothing about show business but a lot about human nature, gave me as good a piece of advice as I’ve ever
gotten. He said, “Son, look around you.” The Opry was owned by National Life, and he said, “Maybe the Opry isn’t at the very
top, but these people haven’t gotten to the level they’re at by being stupid. They’ll turn things around, and you’ll be glad
you stayed.” I took his word and it’s some of the best advice I’ve got in my life.

Johnny Cash had left the Opry in 1958. He returned in 1964, but was asked to leave the following year for a very different
reason.

JOHNNY CASH:

The band kicked off a song, and I tried to take the microphone off the stand. In my nervous frenzy, I couldn’t get it off.
That was enough to make me explode in a fit of anger. I took the mic stand, threw it down, then dragged it along the edge
of the stage. There were fifty-two lights, and I wanted to break all fifty-two, which I did.

Johnny Cash on the Opry stage with Roy Acuff.

CARLENE CARTER,
country singer and Johnny Cash’s
stepdaughter:

He was banned from the Opry for a long time. He kicked out all the floor lights . . . the floodlights at your feet. I don’t
know what came over him. I don’t know what upset him so much. I think he was just bein’ Cash.

Ott Devine eventually relaxed the requirement to twenty weeks per year, and explained the situation in a letter to Earl Scruggs.

It has not been and never will be possible to stage the Grand Ole Opry as we know it and compete with the road shows in talent
fees. The talent fees have doubled since 1962 and as you know, each weekend we schedule several times the number of musicians
that a road show would carry. The number and cost of firemen, policemen, ushers, ticket takers, etc. we are forced to employ
has increased each year.

It was never our intention to ban for life those persons unable to meet our requirements as to the number of Saturday nights
at the Opry House. We were not angry with them then or now. . . . Some felt we were too harsh in not allowing the acts to
even guest with us in 1965. Some felt we were not strict enough. In my opinion, all were treated as fairly as possible. .
. . We feel that the twenty week requirement settled upon last year is fair to the artist who wishes to remain a member of
the Grand Ole Opry and fair to the audience which travels hundreds of miles to see you here in Nashville. We will continue
maintaining and improving the Grand Ole Opry, and hope that you will continue to appreciate its value to you.

The Opry still had an irresistible allure for many up-and-coming stars.

JEANNIE SEELY:

The Opry might not have been as important to the industry as it had been, but all of us grew up listening to it, and we grew
up wanting it. In fact, the Opry was the biggest reason I moved to Nashville. Once I got a record that charted, I wanted the
Grand Ole Opry. I was out in California. I met Dottie West out there. I said, “Dottie, I don’t know enough to try for the
Grand Ole Opry yet.” She said, “Jeannie, that’s where you learn.” Boy, was she right. I had a record climbing the charts,
and they were calling me saying, “We took over this market and that market,” and I said, “Well, did anyone talk to Mr. Devine
yet?” ’Cause I wanted the Opry.

Another of the Opry’s new hirees, Willie Nelson, came to Nashville in 1960. He’d made plenty of records, but everyone around
Nashville thought of him as a songwriter because none of his own records had sold as well as other artists’ recordings of
his songs, like Faron Young’s record of “Hello Walls” or Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” or Ray Price’s “Night Life” or Jimmy Elledge’s
“Funny (How Time Slips Away).” All were Willie Nelson hits, but not for him.

WILLIE NELSON:

November 28, 1964, was when I made my first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, for which I was paid thirty-five dollars. And
I cohosted a television show with my old hero, Ernest Tubb. The whole enterprise was supported by my songwriting royalties.
But I love the Opry. The family tradition there is very similar to the family tradition I grew up with. It’s very important
to keep family units together, and that’s the kind of life that the Opry was trying to set an example for. The show represents
the people to themselves.

Ott Devine welcomes Willie Nelson to the Opry.

Ott Devine faced yet another problem: in September 1963, after twenty years at the Ryman Auditorium, the Opry’s parent company,
National Life, had to decide whether to leave the family home, or buy it.

DAVID HALL,
journalist, in the
Tennessean:

The Opry’s lease expired. National Life said it was considering a move to the Fairgrounds. The difficulty had been over price.
WSM had sought to rent the Ryman for one year at a price of $30,000 with four one-year renewal options at an annual increase
of $1,000.

After purchasing the Ryman Auditorium, WSM officially renamed the building the Grand Ole Opry House. Stoney and Wilma Lee
Cooper, George Morgan, unknown, Roy Drusky, Loretta Lynn, Bill Carlisle, and Roy Acuff watch as Ott Devine hangs a temporary
banner.

JACK D
E
WITT:

The people who ran the Ryman, including Horace Hill and the others, decided that the thing to do was to sell the Ryman Auditorium
to us. I was on a committee to deal with Dan May, who was in charge of selling the Ryman. We’d meet and we’d trade a whole
lot of jokes back and forth, and they started out at $700,000, and we got them down to $220,000, and bought it. It took weeks
and weeks to get the deal done. The problem was, how do we cool the place in summer? In the wintertime it was cold, but we
could take care of that with the furnace they had in there. Summertime was just unbearable. I had fans put in the windows
to try to cool it off some. I got a price from an air-conditioning outfit, but they said there was no place to put the equipment.
The roof wouldn’t hold it, and we didn’t have the land around there to put it outside.

From the beginning, the Grand Ole Opry had been part of WSM and WSM had been part of National Life, but by the 1960s the Opry
was slowly distancing itself from both. The managers who took over after Ott Devine’s departure in 1968 saw a future for the
Opry that had nothing to do with insurance or even radio.