Country music reigns in Nashville, home of the Grand Ole Opry By Tina Eck

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dpa German Press Agency
Published: Monday December 4, 2006

By Tina Eck, Nashville- There is a big country-music show three times a week in the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee. The 4,400 seats in the wood-panelled concert hall, 14 kilometres from the city centre, are usually sold out. The audience claps and sways to "American folk music," performed by its cowboy-hatted heroes.

"Bending down's a bit difficult at my age," laughs Little Jimmy Dickins hoarsely. He clears his throat, then carefully stoops to shake the outstretched hands of his female fans in front of the stage. Dickens, all 1.25 metres of him, is a country-music singer from the US state of West Virginia. The 86-year-old has been in the music business for 58 of his years.

"You know you're getting old when at the sight of a bikini beauty your pacemaker accelerates and opens the garage door," he quips.

Dickens is one of the many attractions at the Grand Ole Opry, which packs the house every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evening and has been broadcast live for the past 81 years by Nashville radio station WMS.

The country crooners introduce each other with flowery words before passing on the microphone.

"Connie Smith is one of our best, most beautiful, and marvellous Christian country singers," Dickens oozes. A platinum blonde in tight jeans and high heels steps into the spotlight. Above her ample cleavage glitters a rhinestone cross.

There is no doubt about it: Tennessee is a robust part of the Bible Belt spanning the US south. And the Grand Ole Opry is nothing, if not socially conservative.

"The live radio show, the oldest, is what made Nashville a country-music mecca," explains Pete Fisher, Opry vice president and general manager. The old-fashioned Grand Ole Opry, which is interrupted by commercials for pancakes and restaurants read live on the air, is also carried on television and the internet.

Musicians with star potential are invited on the show. "We get tips from the industry," Fisher says. Some great careers have started on the Opry stage, such as that of Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks.

Their stories and more are told in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. There one can learn that country music originated in the songs of early colonists from England, Ireland and Scotland who settled in isolated areas of the southern Appalachian Mountains. In the 19th century, they entertained themselves with music made on fiddles and washboards, and later on banjos, guitars and mandolins.

The hillbilly genre of country music arose in the 1920s, honky- tonk in the 1930s, and bluegrass around 1940.

But that is cut-and-dried history. Country music fans should experience a real honky-tonk establishment. On Broadway in Nashville, there is one right after the other: Tootsie's, Woofy's, Rippy's, The Stage, and Robert's Western World.

"How ya doin', darlin'?" booms a doorman. The legal drinking age in Tennessee is 21, but he asks to see the IDs of people clearly on the wrong side of 40.

The deafening country rock played by the live band inside drowns out all further compliments.

"Honey, keep your hands to yourself!" bellows a ponytailed blonde swinging a bottle of beer. She is singing along to the refrain of the popular country tune.

Meanwhile, older couples kick up their heels in front of the stage. People are crowded around the bar. The walls are plastered with old cowboy boots along with yellowed posters and photographs from the whole country-music era.

Today's honky-tonks go back to the rough bars around Texas oilfields in the 1930s. More sensitive souls are better served by bluegrass music, which is also found in Nashville's many music clubs and record shops.

Bluegrass is king every weekday from noon to 1 p.m. in Knoxville, a Tennessee city about 300 kilometres east of Nashville. The Visitor Centre at One Vision Plaza there features live lunchtime music called the "Blue Plate Special."

A kind of miniature Opry, it is broadcast live by Knoxville radio station WDUX, which has a studio behind glass "backstage."

"You don't really get any idea of the importance of this American folk music in Germany," an amazed German visitor remarks. Then he spots his Grand Ole Opry favourite in the Country Music Hall of Fame. From a poster, larger than life, beams Little Jimmy Dickens.

"Hey, isn't that the midget we applauded at the Opry yesterday?"

For more information, check www.opry.com, www.countrymusichalloffame.com, www.nashvillemusicguide.com.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency