How Has the Grand Ole Opry Evolved From Its 1925 Origins to Today?

February 19, 2026

On November 28, 1925, a 77-year-old fiddler named Uncle Jimmy Thompson played for one hour on WSM radio in Nashville. The show was called the WSM Barn Dance. By the time announcer George D. Hay renamed it the Grand Ole Opry in 1927, nobody had any idea they were founding an institution. The show is now 100 years old and still broadcasts live every Saturday night. That is not a natural outcome. It required a series of adaptations, a few controversial decisions, and at least one moment of institutional reckoning it waited nearly a century to address.

The Radio Years: 1925 to 1943

The early Opry was not a country music show by design. It was a barn dance variety program featuring old-time music, comedy acts, string bands, and whatever local talent Hay could find. The lineup included Dr. Humphrey Bate’s string band, Uncle Dave Macon on banjo, and DeFord Bailey, a Black harmonica player from Smith County, Tennessee, who became one of the show’s most popular early performers. Bailey’s “Pan American Blues” regularly opened broadcasts, and both Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe took him on tour specifically because his name drew crowds.

It was during one of Bailey’s performances on December 10, 1927, that Hay uttered the line that named the show. Following an NBC broadcast of classical music, Hay announced: “For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present The Grand Ole Opry.” Bailey was the one playing when that happened.

WSM gained a 50,000-watt transmitter in 1932, reaching 30 states every Saturday night. The show went national on NBC radio in 1939. By the early 1940s, live crowds outgrew every studio WSM had used, and the Opry settled into the Ryman Auditorium in 1943. The Ryman, built in 1892 by riverboat captain Tom Ryman as a gospel tabernacle, had better acoustics and more seats than anything else available in Nashville.

The Ryman Era: 1943 to 1974

This is the period that made the Opry’s mythology. Hank Williams made his debut at the Ryman and later got fired for showing up drunk. Elvis Presley made his only Opry appearance there in 1954, and the talent booker told him he should go back to driving trucks. Johnny Cash became a member, met June Carter on that stage, and once deliberately broke all the footlights with a microphone stand. Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Bill Monroe all joined the Opry family during the Ryman years. In 1945, Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs performed together on the Ryman stage and invented bluegrass.

In 1941, DeFord Bailey was dismissed. The official reason was a licensing dispute between ASCAP and BMI that prevented him from playing his copyrighted songs on air. Bailey had been performing on the Opry since 1926, making him one of its founding performers. The Opry went the next half-century without a Black cast member. In August 2022, the Opry formally apologized to Bailey’s legacy, acknowledging it had been “part of a problem within country music suppressing the contributions of our diverse community.” The apology video was publicly aired during the Opry’s February 2023 Black History Month programming, when Bailey’s grandson Carlos DeFord Bailey performed on the same stage. Bailey spent his later years shining shoes on 12th Avenue South. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005, 23 years after his death.

The Opryland Move: 1974

On March 15, 1974, the Opry broadcast its last show from the Ryman. On March 16, it opened in a new 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House built within the Opryland USA theme park, about 10 miles east of downtown. President Richard Nixon attended opening night and played piano on stage. Each artist performed only one song because the lineup was so long.

The move was commercially rational and culturally contested. The Ryman had become physically inadequate for the crowds the Opry needed. The new house gave the show room to grow. But when workers cut a 6-foot circle from the Ryman’s original wooden stage and transplanted it to the center of the new Opry House stage, they were acknowledging what they were leaving behind. Opry members still stand on that circle of original Ryman floorboards when they perform.

The Consolidation Years: 1974 to 2010

The Opry evolved from a radio institution into a live entertainment landmark. Television broadcasts began on PBS in 1978 and became regular programming by 1985 through The Nashville Network (TNN). The show became a tourist attraction as much as a broadcast. Membership grew and contracted, genre boundaries shifted, and the Opry gradually expanded its tent while maintaining its conservative core identity.

The show remained almost entirely white in its membership for decades until Charley Pride, who joined on May 1, 1993, became only the second Black Opry member after Bailey. Pride had first performed at the Opry in January 1967 but declined the earlier membership offer due to the Opry’s 26-Saturday-per-year requirement, which conflicted with his touring income. After Pride’s death in December 2020, Darius Rucker became the only Black member currently active. In May 2010, Nashville flooding sent several feet of water onto the Opry House stage. The show never missed a Saturday broadcast, performing at War Memorial Auditorium and the Ryman while restoration crews worked. The Opry House reopened on September 28, 2010.

The Centennial and Current Form

The Opry celebrated its 100th birthday in 2025. A three-hour NBC special titled “Opry 100: A Live Celebration” aired on March 19, 2025, hosted by Blake Shelton and featuring more than 50 Opry members. On November 28, 2025, the exact 100th anniversary of the first broadcast, the Opry held a special radio show featuring 26 members performing country, bluegrass, gospel, and comedy. Bill Anderson, the show’s longest-serving member at 64 years, made a toast: “To 1925 and all that was. To 2025 and all that is, and to a hundred years from tonight for all that there may be, long live the Grand Ole Opry.”

Ricky Skaggs opened the centennial concert by playing “Tennessee Wagoner” on the same fiddle Uncle Jimmy Thompson used in 1925. The Opry also performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the first time in September 2025, with Luke Combs, Carly Pearce, Marty Stuart, Darius Rucker, and Ashley McBryde, joined by Mumford and Sons.

Today the Opry operates as a joint venture between Ryman Hospitality Properties, NBCUniversal, and Atairos. It broadcasts live on WSM 650 AM on Friday and Saturday nights and streams globally. About 75 acts hold active membership out of the roughly 225 who have ever been members across the show’s history. Shaboozey, Ringo Starr, and Post Malone all made Opry debuts in 2025. The show still features Riders in the Sky in custom-stitched western wear singing four-part cowboy harmonies, and it still broadcasts on AM radio, and the same circle of old Ryman wood sits at the center of the stage.

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