• April 01, 1974
• Vol. 1
• No. 5

Minnie Says Howdy to a New Ole Opry

With a strum and a whoop and her trademark holler, country music's comic queen Minnie Pearl rared back and gave the Grand Ole Opry's new $15 million home in Nashville a rousing baptism by decibel. The modern show-place, air-conditioned and capable of seating 4,400, has become the sixth home of the venerable opry, which has been broadcast live every Saturday night for the past 48 years. Minnie herself has been with it for more than three decades. The show started in 1925 with one 80-year-old bearded fiddler named Jimmy Thompson and an audience of not more than 200. Today it runs for five-and-a-half hours, has 62 performers and reaches an estimated radio audience of more than 20 million. Once called hillbillies by the Nashville blue-bloods, the performers have grown into million-dollar properties who have put Nashville solidly on the map as the country music capital of the world. But despite all the mechanization and new-theater respectability, Cousin Minnie's "HowDEEEE" carried with it an unmistakable message—the opry might have moved, but it will stay down-home.

The Grand Ole Opry is the longest running show in the history of American radio. At the start it was called WSM barn dance. But a year after it began, it casually changed its name, the same way it does everything else—in front of its audience.

The master of ceremonies then, George D. Hay ("The Solemn Old Judge") was waiting impatiently for an opera program to end so he could get his own show started.

"You've been up in the clouds with grand opera," he finally told his audience. "Now get down to earth with us in a four-hour shindig of grand ole opry." The name stuck.

Opening night at the opry's newest quarters, nine miles outside Nashville, would have made the Solemn Judge smile. The house was packed, and the opry cast entertained a VIP audience, including President and Mrs. Nixon and Governor George Wallace and his wife. Nixon played the piano and even took a Yo-Yo lesson from the King of Country Music, Roy Acuff. The audience found it all quite folksy and enjoyable, so much so that comedienne Minnie Pearl suggested to Acuff that perhaps the President ought to take him on tour. "Of course," she mused to Acuff, who has become a multimillionaire from country music, "he can't afford you."

Minnie, who has been in the opry for 34 years, remembers when she first performed on the opry stage. She was an immediate hit, which entitled her to a ritual ribbing from a fellow performer.

"I thought I was the biggest thing since sliced bread," the 61-year-old Minnie laughs. "Robert Lunn, the Talkin' Blues Boy, saw I was getting pretty heavy. I was ready to dash out for another encore and, while the audience was still clapping, Robert came by and looked at me and said, 'Minnie, have you been on yet?' "

For Minnie and other old-time opry stars there was a sadness in leaving the old opry house. Many performers who had starred there have since died. But at the new opry auditorium, a musician, who was thinking of these late stars, came up to Minnie. "They're all here," the musician told her. "Tex Ritter, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams—they came to the new house, and they'll be up there with us every Saturday night."