It was on that late-fall Saturday evening that Hay introduced 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson as part of a show Hay called the WSM Barn Dance. Hay would have been hard-pressed to find a more unassuming guest to open his first show.

Thompson, it seems, was the inquiring type and his curiosity had brought him to Nashville to see not only the town but National Life's much ballyhooed radio station where his niece was the staff pianist. While touring the studio, the fiddler crossed paths with Hay and the conversation soon turned to fiddle music. Before Uncle Jimmy knew it, he had won himself an on-air slot.

To say the show's format was informal would be an understatement. Most of the music was unwritten; somebody would call a tune and away the musicians would go. The programs were almost exclusively instrumental and featured a marked emphasis on fiddle tunes.

WSM Barn Dance Saturday was traditionally "come to town" day in the South and the courthouse lawn was usually the designated gathering place, attracting musicians and gossips alike. WSM's Barn Dance on Saturday night was becoming the new courthouse of the airwaves, with Uncle Jimmy's fiddling serving as the clarion call to come to the WSM studio to play and/or listen.

And come they did. In fact, so many people turned up at the small National Life studio that a new auditorium soon had to be built to accommodate the overflow crowds. "We Shield Millions" had rapidly become "We Seat Many".

The WSM Barn Dance was based on a program Hay had hosted in Chicago, and although the Chicago show had been successful, no one could predict how triumphant the new incarnation would be. Two years later Hay would rename his show "The Grand Ole Opry" and it wasn't long before the Opry became known as one of the most entertaining country music shows on radio.

Certainly one reason the Opry is so popular is the caliber of performers it has attracted over the years. Whether it was Opry members from the past like Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe, or contemporary members like Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire and Alan Jackson, being part of the Opry cast has always been considered the highest honor and the crowning achievement in a country performer's career.

Today, WSM's Grand Ole Opry stands as both the premium country music showcase and the longest running, live radio show in history. On the air now for over 70 years, the Opry combines the pace and charm of a 1930's big-production radio show with the excitement of modern country music. Every Friday and Saturday night hundreds of thousands of radio listeners across the country and thousands more in the Opry House audience savor this unique blend of the old and the new.


Country wasn't the only music to be found on WSM, however. In addition to playing the pop music of the day, WSM also featured a healthy mix of classical and dinner music.

L to R: Ott Devine, (unidentified), Jack Stapp, Harry Stone and George D. Hay. By the time WSM observed its first anniversary, plans for increasing the station's power to 5,000 watts were already in the works. (In those early days of radio, WSM's original 1,000 watt signal could already reach listeners as far away as Nebraska and Puerto Rico.) With the increase in power came an affiliation with the NBC Network, which allowed the station to expand its broadcast day to a full eight hours.

The increase in hours necessitated the addition of more staff members including Harry Stone, a young businessman from a competing Nashville station who was appointed as General Manager in 1928. Stone's tenure marked WSM's official entry into commercial broadcasting with the signing-on of numerous local sponsors.

By late 1932, WSM had joined a small, elite group of maximum-power, Class 1-A, clear-channel broadcasters. The stations new 50,000 watt status, coupled with the low 650 kilocycle frequency, made WSM a nation-spanning giant. (Clear-channel status meant it was the only station in the entire U.S. permitted to broadcast on the 650 frequency.) At the heart of this expansion was a diamond-shaped, vertical antenna which was 878 feet high, the tallest tower in North America at the time.

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