Waiting in Line—1 Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972

The heyday of radio was the 1930s and 1940s, before television took over the hearts and minds of Americans. As fledgling stations in the 1920s were looking for programming, many turned to traditional music to satisfy the mostly rural audiences of that era. In Nashville, WSM (for "We Shield Millions," the slogan of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, which owned the station) hired the "Solemn Old Judge" George D. Hay to run things. He introduced the Opry as a live radio show of traditional instrumental music in 1925.

The show grew in popularity, and in the 1930s, really took off. In 1932, WSM received a license to broadcast at fifty-thousand watts, the maximum allowed by the FCC. This gave the Opry a huge audience, ranging from all over the South and much of the Midwest to other parts of the country and North America as well. In 1939, NBC added thirty minutes of the Opry to its network programming, significantly broadening its reach and influence.

More listeners over a broader geographical area meant more opportunity for touring performers who made their money by playing live shows, not by selling records, which were just starting to be distributed widely. This broad exposure attracted star talent to the Opry. While the acts that came in the 1930s were "country" in the broadest sense, they were actually quite different musically. Pee Wee King's Golden West Cowboys, a Western pop-country band, came in 1937; Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys, a crooning hillbilly act, in 1938; Bill Monroe with his jazzed-up mountain music, later called bluegrass music after the name of his band, The Blue Grass Boys, in 1939; and Minnie Pearl, the consummate hayseed comedienne, in 1940.

The Opry had several homes as its audience grew. The Opry finally settled at the Ryman Auditorium, called the "Mother Church of Country Music," on Fifth Avenue North, off lower Broadway, in 1943. The show stayed at the Ryman until March 15, 1974—around the time many of these pictures were made—and was then moved to Opryland, a large theme park and hotel complex on the outskirts of Nashville, where it remains active and influential.

Photographs >