A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry (Co-Published with the Country Music Foundation Press) - Softcover

Wolfe, Charles K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082652074X ISBN 13: 9780826520746

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Winner of a Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award
Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award

On November 28, 1925, a white-bearded man sat before one of Nashville radio station WSM's newfangled carbon microphones to play a few old-time fiddle tunes. Uncle Jimmy Thompson played on the air for an hour that night, and throughout the region listeners at their old crystal sets suddenly perked up. Back in Nashville the response at the offices of National Life Insurance Company, which owned radio station WSM (""We Shield Millions""), was dramatic; phone calls and telegrams poured into the station, many of them making special requests. It was not long before station manager George D. Hay was besieged by pickers and fiddlers of every variety, as well as hoedown bands, singers, and comedians - all wanting their shot at the Saturday night airwaves. ""We soon had a good-natured riot on our hands,"" Hay later recalled. And, thus, the Opry was born.

Or so the story goes. In truth, the birth of the Opry was a far more complicated event than even Hay, ""the solemn old Judge,"" remembered. The veteran performers of that era are all gone now, but since the 1970s pioneering country music historian Charles K. Wolfe has spent countless hours recording the oral history of the principals and their families and mining archival materials from the Country Music Foundation and elsewhere to understand just what those early days were like. The story that he has reconstructed is fascinating. Both a detailed history and a group biography of the Opry's early years, A Good-Natured Riot provides the first comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of the personalities, the music, and the social and cultural conditions that were such fertile ground for the growth of a radio show that was to become an essential part of American culture.

Wolfe traces the unsure beginnings of the Opry through its many incarnations, through cast tours of the South, the Great Depression, commercial sponsorship by companies like Prince Albert Tobacco, and the first national radio linkups. He gives colorful and engaging portraits of the motley assembly of the first Opry casts - amateurs from the hills and valleys surrounding Nashville, like harmonica player Dr. Humphrey Bate (""Dean of the Opry"") and fiddler Sid Harkreader, virtuoso string bands like the Dixieliners, colorful hoedown bands like the Gully Jumpers and the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the important African American performer DeFord Bailey, vaudeville acts and comedians like Lasses and Honey, through more professional groups such as the Vagabonds, the Delmore Brothers, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and perennial favorite Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys.

With dozens of wonderful photographs and a complete roster of every performer and performance of these early Opry years, A Good-Natured Riot gives a full and authoritative portrayal of the colorful beginnings of WSM's barn dance program up to 1940, by which time the Grand Ole Opry had found its national audience and was poised to become the legendary institution that it remains to this day.

Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press.

About this title

About the Author

Charles K. Wolfe (1943-2006) was one of the leading experts on the history and development of country music. He wrote or edited around twenty books, including The Devil's Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling (Vanderbilt University Press/Country Music Foundation Press). Until his retirement in 2005, he was an English professor at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. His work helped popular music scholarship gain academic acceptance.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Good-Natured Riot

The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry

By Charles K. Wolfe

Vanderbilt University Press

Copyright © 1999 Country Music Foundation Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8265-2074-6

Contents

List of Illustrations, ix, 
Preface, xi, 
Acknowledgments, xiii, 
1. "A Good-Natured Riot", 3, 
2. Nashville in the 1920s, 26, 
3. Goin' Uptown: Dr. Humphrey Bate, Dean of the Opry, 43, 
4. Uncle Jimmy Thompson, 67, 
5. "Sail Away, Ladies!": Classic Opry Fiddlers, 86, 
6. "Take It Away, Uncle Dave!", 101, 
7. DeFord Bailey, 119, 
8. The Hoedown Bands, 130, 
9. Family Tradition, 154, 
10. The Original Nashville Sound: Nashville's First Recordings, 166, 
11. The First Professionals: The Vagabonds, 179, 
12. The Dixieliners, 190, 
13. "When It's Time for the Whippoorwill to Sing": The Delmore Brothers, 211, 
14. "Dear Lesperdeezer": The First Comedians, 225, 
15. September Song: The Late 1930s, 241, 
16. "The Homespun Voice of America": Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe, 254, 
Appendix 1: Judge Hay's Valediction, 267, 
Appendix 2: The Opry Roster, 1925–1940, 269, 
Notes and Sources, 288, 
Discography, 295, 
Index, 296, 

CHAPTER 1

"A Good-Natured Riot"

There are two ways to look at the Grand Ole Opry as it emerged through its first fifteen years: as a radio show and as a collection of talented musicians. The distinction could be considered arbitrary, of course, because in the real world a show's form cannot be separated from its content. But an artificial division can be made for the purposes of study, and in the case of the Grand Ole Opry the "form" includes the complex of geographical, political, commercial, and historical factors that caused a Nashville insurance company to found and sustain a controversial radio show. It also includes the public relations genius of a young announcer named George Hay, who established and defined the scope of the show. Any notion of the program's form must include the temper of the 1920s, the time that spawned such a program, and the way in which the people of that time looked at entertainment and mass media. And the concept of form must include the city of Nashville, a city which aspired to become a center of classical culture and instead became a center of popular culture.

The content of the Opry must include a look at the musicians and their music. What was so special about this particular group of musicians that caught the imagination of the South, when similar groups of similar quality dropped into obscurity? What did these pioneering artists think they were doing with their music and with their show? Who were these legend shrouded figures like Uncle Jimmy Thompson, Uncle Dave Macon, Dr. Humphrey Bate? Most of them are now gone, but by using modern research techniques we can reconstruct their lives, their careers, and their music. The picture that emerges is fascinating.

In this chapter and the next, we will be examining some of the aspects of the Opry's genesis and form. We will attempt to study the Opry as a single entity — a whole — and trace its direction and changes. Yet the early Opry as a whole was primarily a live radio show — a vague and amorphous thing born in a sparkling moment, that then vanished into the night, leaving only memories. And in the end, it was nothing but a collection of individuals and music. Thus for the bulk of this study we will concentrate primarily on individual musicians, with occasional side trips into relevant historical events. We cannot hope to recapture the essence of

Edition details

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082652074X
• ISBN 13: 9780826520746
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352