Places, Everyone!…Venue #1/25: Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee

Welcome to the beginning of a brand new music series called Places, Everyone! In this series I intend to showcase fifty of the most iconic live music venues in the world! For the majority of these venues, their inclusion in this series will be because of the role they have played in helping to shape the history of modern music. But a few of these venues will have made the list because of infamous things that went down on their stages or in their seating areas. Regardless of the hows and the whys for their inclusion, each music venue will be given its due. We will learn about the history of these buildings, notable acts and events that took place there, plus a plethora of interesting stories that help to make each locale absolutely legendary. Sit back in your seat. Place your phones on silent. The show is about to begin. Enjoy.

The first iconic music venue that we will be visiting is the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The Ryman Auditorium is best known for playing host to one of country music’s most hallowed institutions, The Grand Ole Opry. While “The Ryman” and the Grand Ole Opry have histories that are inextricably linked, they are both separate entities. For the longest time I did not know that a building called the Ryman Auditorium existed. For most of my life I thought that if you were visiting Nashville and wanted to go to the Grand Ole Opry you would be going to a building called The Grand Ole Opry, where you would get to see a country music show inside. It was only in later years that I learned that the building was actually called the Ryman Auditorium, and the Grand Ole Opry was the show itself. As you can tell, I am not the biggest country music fan in the world. My apologies in advance to all who are.

The Ryman Auditorium was built in 1892 and was originally known as the Union Gospel Tabernacle. The building was constructed under the direction of a local Nashville businessman named Thomas Ryman. Ryman was a man who made his fortune from owning saloons and taverns. However, one day he attended a gospel revival being held in a tent on the outskirts of town. He originally went there to mock those running the revival and those in attendance, but something happened to Thomas Ryman that day that changed his life. He found God. In doing so, Mr. Ryman committed himself to ensuring that a permanent home was found for those preaching the Word of God. So he funded the construction of the Union Gospel Tabernacle church. Built to hold several thousand people, the Union Gospel Tabernacle had wooden pews for seats, a raised pulpit/stage area for preaching and lofted ceilings which helped to make the acoustical properties of the main room quite good. As the turn of the century came and went, the Union Gospel Tabernacle hosted many religious services, but the need to establish additional revenue streams to keep the building operational meant that soon, non-church related events began being booked there. 

In order to spearhead such an effort, Thomas Ryman hired someone who was to make history in the entertainment business. For the job of booking agent and promotions manager, Ryman hired a woman named Lula C. Naff. Naff was one of the first women anywhere in the United States to be entrusted with such an important business role. She went by the initials L.C. Naff to help disguise the fact that she was a woman when she was engaged in conducting entertainment business via correspondence. Naff became legendary for breaking down cultural barriers by booking female acts, booking acts that could have been thought of as risqué, and also for booking acts that contained people of colour. At the time, there were strict segregation laws in place that reserved many public spaces for whites only. However, Naff regularly brought in acts that featured black entertainers. One of the ways she got to do this was by booking in black gospel singers in a building used mainly as a church. In doing so, Naff helped make the Union Gospel Tabernacle one of the most racially desegregated venues in the United States. Soon word about Naff and her venue began to spread beyond the Tennessee borders. In time, national acts such as Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Bob Hope, Doris Day, opera singer Enrico Caruso and even composer John Philip Sousa began to appear at the Tabernacle. After the death of Thomas Ryman, the venue was renamed in his honour and became officially known as the Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman Auditorium was doing booming business. As the 1930s dawned, an opportunity presented itself to L.C. Naff and the Board of Directors of The Ryman Theatre. A local radio station had begun broadcasting a country music variety show and was looking for a permanent home to stage their broadcasts. Naff thought that The Ryman Auditorium would be the perfect venue. The management team at WSM Broadcasting agreed. So, in 1943, the Ryman Auditorium became the official home for a little show called The Grand Ole Opry.

The Grand Ole Opry began in 1925 as a weekly radio broadcast on station WSM. The original show that aired was called the WSM Barn Dance. It featured a cast of local musical acts that all performed live at the station. Over time, the show gained popularity. Because these acts were performing live, listeners started showing up at the radio station to watch them perform. Soon crowd control became an issue, and the management of the station was forced to consider relocating the show to bigger venues. After broadcasting out of several other smaller churches and other auditoriums, the management of WSM became aware of the popularity of a venue that had recently been renamed as the Ryman Auditorium. After staging some trial shows there, the decision was made to enter into a formal partnership with the Ryman Auditorium to make it the permanent home of the Grand Ole Opry. It remained so until 1974, when a newer, more modern facility was built on the outskirts of town called Opryland U.S.A. The last performer from the Grand Ole Opry show to perform at the original Ryman Auditorium was a woman named Sarah Cannon, who went by the stage name of Minnie Pearl. Usually known for her comedic stylings, on that last night Minnie Pearl cried real tears on the stage.  After that final show, a circular portion of the Ryman Auditorium stage was cut out and placed in the centre of the new stage at Opryland U.S.A., so as to honour the past while moving forward into the future.

As for the Grand Ole Opry itself, it came of age during its time at the Ryman Auditorium. As the original WSM Barn Dance established itself, it did so by showcasing entertainers who performed country music in ways that honoured the historical roots of the genre. In time, those performers came to be regarded as honorary members of an organization whose mandate was to promote country music and preserve its history. In time, some of those performers left their groups and/or moved on to other things. It was decided that any act being brought in to replace those acts that had departed had to agree to abide by the spirit of the Opry’s mandate. Thus, the idea of memberships in the Grand Ole Opry came to be. From its earliest days, potential acts who wished to perform on the stage at the Ryman Auditorium during a Grand Ole Opry show had to be invited to join the Opry by an existing member. If the new performer agreed to accept the membership invitation, they would be required to appear on a Grand Ole Opry broadcast a specific number of times per year. Eventually, the membership rolls of the Grand Ole Opry grew to include 225 different artists and/or bands. Regardless as to whether an Opry member was a local Nashville performer or a national star such as Dolly Parton or Alan Jackson, every one of them was obligated to appear on a Grand Ole Opry show multiple times each year. 

While the Grand Ole Opry was based out of the Ryman Auditorium, there were certain aspects of that relationship that made the switch to a new location inevitable. First of all, the Ryman Auditorium was not built with being an entertainment venue in mind. It was built as a house of worship. If you think about theatres and concert halls, you will know that they all have areas for the audience to sit and a stage for performers to perform. However, those are just the areas that the public sees. Behind the stage and under the stage are dressing rooms, storage areas for sets, props and musical instruments, some have an orchestra pit and on and on it goes. The Ryman Auditorium had none of those amenities. It was a church. There were no dressing rooms or prop storage rooms at the Ryman Auditorium. There are many stories of scheduled performers doing make up and getting dressed in the Ryman’s public washrooms. There were many other stories of performers who were waiting their turn to come on stage actually leaving the Ryman Auditorium and eating, drinking and even performing in some of the bars, clubs and restaurants located nearby, simply because there was such limited extra space at the Ryman Auditorium. A second aspect of life at the Ryman Auditorium that made life difficult for performers and audience members alike was that there was no air conditioning. The venue could grow dangerously warm when there was a full house in the middle of the summer. For all of these reasons and some more, when the Ryman Auditorium was purchased by WSM Broadcasting in the 1970s, it was decided that renovations would be too costly and that a new building would be cheaper to build instead. This is how Opryland U.S.A. came to be.

After the Grand Ole Opry show left the Ryman Auditorium, it looked like the old building would likely face the wrecking ball and be demolished. The building had remained vacant after the Grand Ole Opry left. It became dilapidated and fell into disrepair. As the Ryman Auditorium began to crumble, the neighbourhood around it fell into decline as well. However, when the plan to demolish the Ryman Auditorium and rebuild new buildings in that spot was floated publicly a great outcry went up. Many citizens of Nashville and around the United States felt that the historical significance of the Ryman Auditorium made it a culturally important heritage site. One person who agreed was a man named Ed Gaylord. Mr. Gaylord was C.E.O. of Gaylord Entertainment Company, which was the company that produced the TV show known as HeeHaw.  Mr. Gaylord was good friends with Sarah Cannon who, as many of you may know, was a regular performer on HeeHaw as Minnie Pearl.  With negotiations ongoing for Gaylord to purchase a controlling interest in the Ryman Auditorium, singer Emmylou Harris and her band entered the Ryman Auditorium while it was officially deemed as being structurally unsafe and recorded three live shows for a small, invitation-only audience of one hundred or so people. From these performances came a live album called At The Ryman which won the Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Country Album by a Duo or Group.  The attention drawn toward the Ryman Auditorium and its cultural significance with regard to the history of country music in America as a result of the Emmylou Harris Grammy win was the final factor in convincing Ed Gaylord to complete his purchase and restore and renovate the Ryman Auditorium, returning it to its former glory. At the same time as that was happening, it was decided that the Grand Ole Opry would return to a refurbished Ryman Auditorium for occasional special shows. Not only that, the Grand Ole Opry now hosts a residency there during the winter months from January to March. In 2022, the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame added the Ryman Auditorium to its growing list of landmark venues in the history of modern music. If you were to visit Nashville today, you would discover a renovated and modernized Ryman Auditorium, complete with cushioned seats, formal dressing rooms, air conditioning and a Hall of Fame area that honours the careers of many of the legendary country music performers who made the Ryman Auditorium their professional home. 

While the Ryman Auditorium is a concert venue now, for many there is a special mythology about it that makes it far more than a mere bricks and mortar building. America loves its myth-making, and the Ryman Auditorium is called the mother church of country music for a reason. It serves as the home for a genre of music that many people feel reflects a way of life that is simpler, better and more honest than much of what we see in the world today. If values such as family, community and a strong work ethic are mainstays of country music, then the place that serves as symbolic home to it all must be a pretty special place, too. Thus the Ryman Auditorium is elevated above other venues in stature and is venerated for its history and for its future as well. If you are ever in Nashville, then by all means, don’t hesitate to check it out, take a tour and even see a show. It is a special place, indeed.

The link to the official website for the Ryman Auditorium can be found here.

The link to the official website for the Grand Ole Opry can be found here.

The link to a video for the song “Where Have You Gone?” by Alan Jackson can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.   

NOTE: Alan Jackson is a member of the Grand Ole Opry. This song is a tribute to the roots of traditional country music. The official music video was shot inside the Ryman Auditorium so you will get a good look at how “The Ryman” looks today by watching this video.

The link to a lovely article in the Tennessean newspaper about Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers concerts at the Ryman Auditorium and why they were such symbolic and important concerts can be found here. Well worth a read, especially for the story about Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe and his dances with Emmylou Harris during the concerts. Great stuff!  

The link to the official website for the city of Nashville, Tennessee can be found here.

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