Nashville treasure – celebrating 100 years of country music institution, the Grand Ole Opry

When James Brown came to Nashville in 1979 to record vocals for “It’s Too Funky In Here”, he received an unexpected invitation. Country star Porter Waggoner asked him to stop by the Grand Ole Opry – not as an audience member, but as a performer. Backed by the fiddlers and pickers in Waggoner’s band, The Godfather Of Soul tore through Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as well as his own “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”. A few Opry members clutched their pearls, but the audience went wild.

“It wasn’t meant to be a big media event, just a gesture of goodwill,” says Nashville historian Craig Shelburne, who writes about the performance in his new book 100 Years Of Grand Ole Opry. “It was an Opry artist saying to James Brown that his music mattered. But it also showed how unpredictable the Opry is. Anything is liable to happen on live radio.”

The venerated institution – which started as a small radio show and has grown into a symbol of the country music tradition – is celebrating its centennial in 2025, with a new boxset of live performances, a TV special, an exhibition at the Country Music Hall Of Fame, and a European tour that includes a night at the Royal Albert Hall. “The Opry is a way of life,” says Marty Stuart, who was inducted in 1992 and will be headlining the London show. “It’s an institution that gets passed along every weekend. If you’re going to be a country performer, the Opry is the place to be.”

“The place was a fire hazard”

Broadcasting its first shows from an insurance office in 1925, the Opry has survived numerous musical revolutions. Elvis was banned after a disastrous performance in 1954, and The Byrds were booed off the stage fourteen years later. In 1974, the programme moved from the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville to a new theme park facility on the banks of the Cumberland River, which proved controversial as the beloved Ryman sat in disrepair for decades. “The place was a fire hazard, sadly,” says Larry Gatlin, of the Gatlin Brothers. “It wasn’t air-conditioned. When you played a matinee on a Saturday afternoon in August, it was hotter than two rats making love in a wool sock. There were people who wanted to tear it down, but I think moving the Opry actually saved the Ryman.”

Gatlin is one of few remaining artists who’ve played the Opry both at the Ryman and at what he calls Big House. He first took the stage in 1971, backing up Dottie West. Five years later, West inducted the Gatlin Brothers into the Opry, this time in its brand-new facility. “You have to sing your way in,” says Gatlin, who now hosts a regular segment called Opry Country Classics. “They announce you, then you cry for a little bit and hold up the little trophy, and then you’ve got to sing a song.”

It’s a crucial accolade for any country star. “For us it was the big bang moment,” says Ketch Secor, who started performing at the Opry in 2000, when his band Old Crow Medicine Show was hired to play on the sidewalk outside the auditorium. “We started working our way in and were finally inducted in 2012. Everything that has happened to us happened because of the Opry.”

“It has never repeated a show once in its 100 years”

Secor has seen the Opry grown more varied over the years, acknowledging the important contributions of black performers like Linda Martell and the harmonica player DeFord Bailey. That adaptability has been crucial to the Opry’s longevity, as it balances the old with the new. “The Opry is a way to connect with the past, but it’s important to note that it has always changed with the times,” says Shelburne. “So it never became a thing of the past, and it has never repeated a show once in its 100 years. The Opry is always new.”

Craig Shelburne’s 100 Years Of Grand Ole Opry is out now, published by Abrams; the Grand Ole Opry takes over London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 26