You may have heard that new one from Hank Williams III on his Damn Right, Rebel Proud CD about the Grand Ole Opry “not being so grand anymore.” It is, in effect, a fight song for some well-meaning fans who’ve organized to demand that his granddad, Hank Sr., suspended by the Opry for cause in August 1952, be “reinstated” by today’s Opry management. It’s a peculiar “countrier than thou” sort of demand (as Robbie Fulks might put it), since nobody dead is ever a member of a radio show cast, even if they had been a working part of the cast when they died.
(Two smarter ways to honor Hank right now would be to visit the excellent “Family Tradition” exhibit on all things Williams at the Country Music Hall of Fame, or to check out the new Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings box set of Hank Sr. “Mother’s Best” radio-show performances.)
The Grand Ole Opry, I’d argue, is the ongoing, commercial country music performance enterprise that is most cognizant of the music’s history and tradition while being, in a flight of gripping sanity and self-preservation, attentive at the same time to its present and future.
Sometimes, no question, its efforts to balance these things can be awkward. On November 1, the 60th anniversary of beloved Opry icon Little Jimmy Dickens was marked, a unique milestone. Dickens has been a winning belter of near-rocking novelty songs, an often extraordinary and nuanced singer of heartbreak ballads, and a comedian with a great sense of timing – if not always as good a sense of when to retire specific jokes. He was already there when his friend Hank Williams first took the Opry stage.
The anniversary salute show was aired on the prime-time GAC television segment, with George Jones and Brad Paisley and Trace Adkins on hand. But with current viewing audiences clearly in mind, the proceedings featured stars saying nice things about him and then singing their own hits – in Paisley’s case, at least ones for which Dickens had appeared in the videos. Nobody took the step of singing Dickens’ great songs for him; not a “Hillbilly Fever” stomper or a “Farewell Party” heartbreaker either. (Couldn’t they have had Gene Watson, who also sings it so memorably, do that?) But the point is, quibbles aside, they did mark the occasion.
It’s remarkable to me that the Opry is so often taken to task for not “respecting” its older performers enough; the recently settled brouhaha about how often Stonewall Jackson appears on the show set off another round of that grumbling. But where else is there an ongoing show that has veterans who’ve not had hits in decade on at all, let alone regularly? (Sometimes seen even past the point where the vocal qualities that brought them there are always detectable.) Further, the Opry is instituting an additional night of shows next year, on Thursdays, dedicated to additional performances of classic songs by the vets so many rightly come to the Opry to see.
Most of the contemporary performers inducted into the regular cast in the past several years have been precisely those with a strong sense of both tradition and contemporary tastes: Del McCoury, Brad Paisley, Josh Turner, Dierks Bentley, and, for that matter, Mel Tillis, to name a few. If the only thing to be said for the Opry were that it recognized tradition, the institution would be buying itself a one-way ticket to oblivion. (Round-trips for that destination are rarely for sale.)
The place is not just about country history. It’s easy, if all you ever see or hear is the hourlong Saturday-night telecasts, to figure that a never-ending succession of just-signed major-label pop country acts, many of them more lookers than distinctive performers, is what the Opry is now “about.” But the full shows, from all nights, can be heard live online on WSM radio, where they’re also archived. And then the fuller – and real – picture emerges.
Last May 2, I was among the attendees who caught the warmly-greeted Opry debut of Justin Townes Earle. After being introduced by George Hamilton IV (”Here’s a very talented young man on a very special night for him”), Justin wowed them with “Hard Livin’” and “I Don’t Know”, which had both codgers and kids in the audience clapping along. On September 27, among the acts that host Marty Stuart had on the show to mark his own 50th birthday were the rising African-American old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, on their second visit; the audience response to their fast packed stomper “Sandy Gap” was, well, loud and fast stomping. During the summer, the Opry featured Tift Merritt, Elizabeth Cook (a semi-regular), Kieran Kane and John Cowan on nights they appeared at the free Plaza parties outside the big hall.
You see, with the Grand Ole Opry, being the still-vital vaudeville show it is, faced with a variety of choices, the show fundamentally just says yes. If country music is going to have a present and future as well as a past, I’d say that’s the way to go.
