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Title details for A Good-Natured Riot by Charles K. Wolfe - Available

A Good-Natured Riot

The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry

by Charles K. Wolfe
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award
Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award
On November 28, 1925, a white-bearded man sat before one of Nashville radio station WSM's newfangled carbon microphones to play a few old-time fiddle tunes. Uncle Jimmy Thompson played on the air for an hour that night, and throughout the region listeners at their old crystal sets suddenly perked up. Back in Nashville the response at the offices of National Life Insurance Company, which owned radio station WSM ("We Shield Millions"), was dramatic; phone calls and telegrams poured into the station, many of them making special requests. It was not long before station manager George D. Hay was besieged by pickers and fiddlers of every variety, as well as hoedown bands, singers, and comedians—all wanting their shot at the Saturday night airwaves. "We soon had a good-natured riot on our hands," Hay later recalled. And, thus, the Opry was born.
Or so the story goes. In truth, the birth of the Opry was a far more complicated event than even Hay, "the solemn old Judge," remembered. The veteran performers of that era are all gone now, but since the 1970s pioneering country music historian Charles K. Wolfe has spent countless hours recording the oral history of the principals and their families and mining archival materials from the Country Music Foundation and elsewhere to understand just what those early days were like. The story that he has reconstructed is fascinating. Both a detailed history and a group biography of the Opry's early years, A Good-Natured Riot provides the first comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of the personalities, the music, and the social and cultural conditions that were such fertile ground for the growth of a radio show that was to become an essential part of American culture.
Wolfe traces the unsure beginnings of the Opry through its many incarnations, through cast tours of the South, the Great Depression, commercial sponsorship by companies like Prince Albert Tobacco, and the first national radio linkups. He gives colorful and engaging portraits of the motley assembly of the first Opry casts—amateurs from the hills and valleys surrounding Nashville, like harmonica player Dr. Humphrey Bate ("Dean of the Opry") and fiddler Sid Harkreader, virtuoso string bands like the Dixieliners, colorful hoedown bands like the Gully Jumpers and the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the important African American performer DeFord Bailey, vaudeville acts and comedians like Lasses and Honey, through more professional groups such as the Vagabonds, the Delmore Brothers, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and perennial favorite Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys.
With dozens of wonderful photographs and a complete roster of every performer and performance of these early Opry years, A Good-Natured Riot gives a full and authoritative portrayal of the colorful beginnings of WSM's barn dance program up to 1940, by which time the Grand Ole Opry had found its national audience and was poised to become the legendary institution that it remains to this day.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 20, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780826520753
      • File size: 12777 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780826520753
      • File size: 12777 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 31, 1999
      Perhaps there is no commercially successfully genre of music as misunderstood as country: even its most ardent fans seem content to embrace its aw-shucks image. Wolfe makes no such mistake, affectionately chronicling the savvy business decisions that gave birth to the Opry and to its careful "rustication." Emerging from 25 years of research on the Opry's beginnings, Wolfe's book includes an unprecedented number of interviews with the performers and their families and associates. Although he sometimes favors depth of detail over narrative shape, his work will be invaluable to historians of country, and of American music more broadly. Wolfe depicts a number of eager, opportunistic (not to mention talented and pioneering) performers and businessmen who made big bucks by fashioning old-time music into a slick commodity with mass appeal. Knowing that early Opry stars Uncle Dave Macon and Uncle Jimmy Thompson were in it for as much glory and money as they could come by should not decrease our appreciation of their music; no one minds that Elvis and the Beatles built fortunes along with their legends. Wolfe's book should help both country music's proponents and opponents realize that country is an important and substantial chunk of the music business, and that it has always involved both smarts and flair.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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