The Grand Ole Opry announced a one-night return to its most famous former home, Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville, including an unprecedented re-creation of a past Opry show. The July 17 show will feature a collection of performances destined to return fans to the historic night of March 15, 1974, the final night of the Opry’s original Ryman run. Throughout that portion of the show, moments from the 1974 broadcast will be closely recreated for the Ryman and radio audiences. To purchase tickets to this one-night only recreation of the March 15, 1974 Opry show click HERE.
“I am certain this is going to be another unforgettable part of our 100th year,” said Opry Executive Producer Dan Rogers. “For generations of Opry fans and artists, the Opry’s 1943 – 1974 run at the Ryman was a truly magical part of the Opry’s 100-year history. While we can’t actually turn back time, we’re going to do our best with performances and even commercial reads to transport fans to that historic evening when the Opry said farewell to the Mother Church of Country Music. I grew up listening to my parents talk about having witnessed Opry shows at the Ryman during that era, and for an hour or so on July 17, we’ll all have an experience similar to theirs.”
The Opry’s longest-serving member ever, Country Music Hall of Famer Bill Anderson, was among those who performed on March 15, 1974 and is scheduled to return to reprise his set from that historic evening. “The last Grand Ole Opry show at the Ryman would have been special under any circumstances,” Anderson recalls, “but it was made extra special for me by the fact that my mom and dad had driven up from Georgia to be in the audience. Twenty years earlier, in 1954, they had brought me to Nashville and to the Ryman to see the Opry for the very first time. None of us could have ever imagined the summer before my senior year in high school that only a few years later I would be performing on that very stage, let alone go on to become the longest serving Opry member in history. That night in 1974 I stood alongside many of my heroes from those earlier days, smiling down at my parents, and saying so long to the only Opry home I had ever known…definitely a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. When the Opry asked me if I’d be part of helping to re-create that last night at the Ryman in 1974…and sing the songs I sang back then…I readily agreed. ‘Just don’t ask me to wear the same clothes I wore that night,’” I quipped. “’Even if I could find them, I’d never be able to get in them!’”
Among those joining Anderson during the throwback will be Lorrie Morgan, whose father George Morgan was the final artist to perform on the March 15, 1974 Opry show, as well as Mandy Barnett and Chuck Mead. Among those appearing earlier in the night will be CMA award-winning group The Band Perry.
In celebration, WSM Radio will re-air the historic shows from both the final Ryman show residency and the opening of the Grand Ole Opry House. Fans can relive these legendary moments in their entirety for the first time since they aired live on WSM-AM more than 50 years ago. WSM-AM will air the final Ryman Auditorium show on Thursday, July 17 at 10 a.m. CT and will air the first Grand Ole Opry House show on Friday, July 18 at 10 a.m CT.
Author and radio great Garrison Keillor was among those at the Ryman on March 15, 1974, covering the show for the “The New Yorker”. His piece appeared in the May 6, 1974 issue under the regular feature heading “Onward and Upward with the Arts”. He attended the last Ryman show seated in the engineer’s booth and wrote: “The best place to see the Opry that night, I decided, was in the booth with my eyes shut, leaning against the back wall, the music coming out of the speaker just like radio, that good old AM mono sound. The room smelled of hot radio tubes, and, closing my eyes, I could see the stage as clearly as when I was a kid lying in front of our giant Zenith console. I’d seen a photograph of the Opry stage back then, and, believe me, one is all you need. So it was good to let the Opry go out the same way it had first come to me, over the air in the dark.”
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