Records and Roots: The Grand Ole Opry's history is in a league all its own

From Chicago came a fellow by the name of George D. Hay. The year was 1925. The city, Nashville.By then, the founder of Nashville's National Life and Accident Insurance Co. had launched a radio station. Adorned with the call letters WSM, an acronym for the company's slogan of "We Shield Millions," radio station WSM began life on Oct. 5, 1925, at 650 on the AM dial.WSM hired Hay a month later. Hay was well known in radio from his announcing work on Chicago's WLS and the show that became the renowned National Barn Dance. With 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson as his first guest, Hay inaugurated the WSM Barn Dance on Nov. 28, 1925.Two years later, the WSM Barn Dance became the Grand Ole Opry.At that time, the WSM Barn Dance with Hay as host followed a classical music program. When the NBC broadcast of Walter Damrosch's Music Appreciation Hour concluded on one particularly cold December 1927 evening, Hay made history."For the past hour we have been listening to the music taken largely from the Grand Opera," Hay said, "but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry."A star was born. Another star was born that night, too. When a short black harmonica player by the name of DeFord Bailey took to the microphone, he enthralled listeners with his enthusiastic rendition of "Pan American Blues." By then, Bailey had appeared on the WSM Barn Dance. However, when paired with its new Grand Ole Opry name, he and it clicked with audiences.Hay, known as "The Solemn Ole Judge" on the show, tabbed Bailey with his nickname, "The Harmonica Wizard." With such early Opry stars as Uncle Dave Macon, Dr. Humphrey Bate and His Possum Hunters and so forth, the Grand Ole Opry became a hotly in-demand radio show.However, take note. During the swaddling days of the Opry, it was strictly a radio show. It was neither staged for a live audience nor heard far beyond Nashville.But in October 1932, WSM increased its power to 50,000 watts on a clear-channel frequency. Suddenly with additional power during evening and late-night hours, folks throughout much of the country could hear WSM and its flagship show on Saturday night, the Grand Ole Opry.That created demand. People not only wanted to hear the Grand Ole Opry over the radio, they wanted to see the Opry. And so, on February 1934, WSM moved into the 500-seat Studio C in the National Life Building. Not enough. In October 1934, the Opry relocated to the Hillsboro Theater, which seated 800.Demand boomed. Consequently, on June 13, 1936, the Opry moved again, this time to the 3,500-seat Dixie Tabernacle. New stars pumped additional bolts of excitement into the Opry on air and into the seats. The Opry's biggest addition came when East Tennessean Roy Acuff made his Grand Ole Opry debut on Feb. 5, 1938. Thanks to such career-making songs as "Wabash Cannonball," Acuff eventually came to be known as the king of country music.Yet another relocation came in July 1939. The Opry moved back into downtown Nashville when it occupied the War Memorial Auditorium. Admission price in those days? Only 25 cents.Three months later, on Oct. 14, 1939, WSM's Grand Ole Opry made its first appearance on the NBC Radio Network with its half-hour Prince Albert Show segment, which was sponsored by Prince Albert tobacco maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Suddenly, the entire nation could hear at least 30 minutes of the show that was later nicknamed "a good-natured riot."Bill Monroe joined the Opry two weeks later. With a sound the likes of which no one had heard, Monroe alighted the radio waves with his electric bolts of high-energy acoustic music to such tunes as Jimmie Rodgers' "Muleskinner Blues."Perhaps oddly enough, neither Jimmie Rodgers nor the original Carter Family ever made an appearance on what quickly became the home of country music, Nashville's Grand Ole Opry.By the time the Opry made its most famous move to the Ryman Auditorium on June 5, 1943, the ranks of Opry membership had swelled considerably. Major stars including Ernest Tubb, Minnie Pearl and Pee Wee King joined. Eddy Arnold spun off from Pee Wee King's band and also joined.On June 11, 1949, perhaps country music's and the Opry's biggest name made his Opry debut: Hank Williams. He sang "Lovesick Blues." Some accounts have it that he encored the song up to nine times.For 31 years, the Opry occupied the Ryman Auditorium. Given the Ryman's past as a church, it earned the nickname "the Mother Church of Country Music."On April 6, 1968, the Opry did the unthinkable: They canceled the night's show. Civil rights icon Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated two days earlier in nearby Memphis. Nashville imposed a 7 p.m. curfew, which meant no one could attend the Opry that night.Change came to America. Change came to the Opry. The Grand Ole Opry vacated its beloved Ryman Auditorium home for the new 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House away from downtown Nashville on March 16, 1974. Yet after a benefit Opry show in 1998, the Opry returned to the Ryman for three months during the winter of 1999 and 2000.Nowadays, the Opry makes sporadic returns to the Ryman. They will do so again for a couple of Saturday nights in January.As throughout its long history, the Opry can still be heard every Saturday night over the radio at 650 AM WSM. Listeners can also hear it online. A bridge to country music's past, a beacon into its future, that's the Air Castle of the South, WSM, and its flagship, the "Grand Ole Opry."