Description:
When Nashville's National Life and Accident Insurance Company created radio station WSM as an advertising vehicle--the call letters representing their corporate slogan, "We Shield Millions"--no one suspected its "old-time music" program would one day be country music's shining star. In A Good-Natured Riot, author Charles Wolfe offers a thorough, valuable examination of the Grand Ole Opry's formative years, answering the questions that the genre's recorded history cannot (simply because most of the Opry's earliest stalwarts were part-time musicians who were rarely recorded). Interestingly, WSM wasn't the first station to broadcast old-time music, and the citizens of Nashville, who considered theirs to be an erudite and cultured city, despised hillbilly music and any association with it. Nevertheless, the nearby Tennessee hills offered a wealth of authentic old-time music, and rural folks from all across the U.S. (the airwaves were quite clear at the time) adored the sounds of Uncle Jimmy Thompson and Dr. Humphrey Bate. Soon enough, the music's popularity led WSM station manager George Hay to create a weekly Barn Dance program in the fall of 1925. The bulk of Wolfe's chronicle is told through discussions of the Opry's stars, their lives, and their music, adding station logs, repertoire listings, press releases, and news clippings to his own extensive interviews and research. He progresses from early staples like Bate, Thompson, DeFord Bailey, and Uncle Dave Macon (the only early member who was actually a well-known professional musician), to innovators like the McGee Brothers, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and the Delmore Brothers, to Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe, who brought country music into the modern age. By the time Acuff and Monroe held sway, circa 1940, the Opry had become a nationally syndicated NBC show and most of its stars were actively and successfully making records. Wolfe documents the first 15 years of the Opry in incredible detail, and in doing so illustrates the development of old-time music from homespun, informal diversion to finely honed commercial powerhouse. --Marc Greilsamer
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