The Grand Ole Opry is a regular live country-music radio broadcast originating from Nashville, Tennessee, on WSM, held between two and five nights per week, depending on the time of year. It was founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as the WSM Barn Dance, taking its current name in 1927. Currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment (a joint venture between NBCUniversal, Atairos and majority shareholder Ryman Hospitality Properties), it is the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history. Dedicated to honoring country music and its history, the Opry showcases a mix of famous singers and contemporary chart-toppers performing country, bluegrass, Americana, folk, and gospel music as well as comedic performances and skits. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world and millions of radio and internet listeners.
In the 1930s, the show began hiring professionals and expanded to four hours. Broadcasting by then at 50,000 watts, WSM made the program a Saturday night musical tradition in nearly 30 states. In 1939, it debuted nationally on NBC Radio. The Opry moved to its most famous former home, the Ryman Auditorium, in 1943. As it developed in importance, so did the city of Nashville, which became America's "country music capital". The Grand Ole Opry holds such significance in Nashville that it is included as a "home of" mention on the welcome signs seen by motorists at the Metro Nashville/Davidson County line.
Membership in the Opry remains one of country music's crowning achievements. Just over 225 acts have been members of the Grand Ole Opry out of the thousands of acts that have existed during the history of country music. At present (2024), about 75 acts are members. As Tina Benitez-Evans wrote in American Songwriter, "Membership in the Grand Ole Opry is one of the highest achievements within the country music community."
Since 1974, the show has been broadcast from the Grand Ole Opry House east of downtown Nashville, with an annual three-month winter foray back to the Ryman from 1999 to 2020, and again for shorter winter residencies beginning in 2023. In addition to the radio programs, performances have been sporadically televised over the years, originally on The Nashville Network, and later CMT, GAC, and Circle. As of 2025, video compilations of previous Opry performances (dubbed "Opry Live") are distributed digitally every Saturday evening on FAST network Circle Country as well as the Opry's YouTube and Facebook outlets, and syndicated to a number of television stations across North America.
The Grand Ole Opry started as the WSM Barn Dance in the new fifth-floor radio studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 28, 1925. On October 17, 1925, management began a program featuring "Dr. Humphrey Bate and his string quartet of old-time musicians." On November 2, WSM hired long-time announcer and program director George D. Hay, an enterprising pioneer from the National Barn Dance program at WLS in Chicago, who was also named the most popular radio announcer in America as a result of his radio work with both WLS and WMC in Memphis, Tennessee. Though only 29 when he was hired by WSM and turned 30 a week later, Hay (known as the "Solemn Old Judge") launched the WSM Barn Dance with 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson on November 28, 1925, and that date is celebrated as the day the Grand Ole Opry began.
Some of the bands regularly on the show during its early days included Bill Monroe, the Possum Hunters (with Humphrey Bate), the Fruit Jar Drinkers with Uncle Dave Macon, the Crook Brothers, the Binkley Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers, Sid Harkreader, DeFord Bailey, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and the Gully Jumpers.
Judge Hay liked the Fruit Jar Drinkers and asked them to appear last on each show because he wanted to always close each segment with "red hot fiddle playing". They were the second band accepted on Barn Dance, with the Crook Brothers being the first. When the Opry began having square dancers on the show, the Fruit Jar Drinkers always played for them. In 1926, Uncle Dave Macon, a Tennessee banjo player who had recorded several songs and toured on the vaudeville circuit, became its first real star.
The phrase "Grand Ole Opry" was first uttered on radio on December 10, 1927. At the time, the NBC Red Network's Music Appreciation Hour, a program with classical music and selections from grand opera, was followed by Hay's Barn Dance. That evening, as he was introducing DeFord Bailey, the show's first performer of the night, George Hay said the following words: "For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present 'The Grand Ole Opry'."
As audiences for the live show increased, National Life & Accident Insurance's radio venue became too small to accommodate the hordes of fans. They built a larger studio, but it was still not large enough. After several months broadcasting with no live audience, National Life decided to allow the show to move outside its home offices. In October 1934, the Opry moved into then-suburban Hillsboro Theatre (now the Belcourt) before moving to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville on June 13, 1936. The Opry then moved to the War Memorial Auditorium, a downtown venue adjacent to the State Capitol, and a 25-cent admission fee was charged to try to curb the large crowds, but to no avail. In June 1943, the Opry moved to the Ryman Auditorium.
One hour of the Opry was nationally broadcast by the NBC Red Network from 1939 to 1956, and for much of its run, it aired one hour after the program that had inspired it, National Barn Dance. The NBC segment, originally known by the name of its sponsor, The Prince Albert Show, was first hosted by Acuff, who was succeeded by Red Foley from 1946 to 1954. From October 15, 1955, to September 1956, ABC-TV aired a live, hour-long television version once a month on Saturday nights (sponsored by Ralston-Purina) that pre-empted one hour of the then-90-minute Ozark Jubilee. From 1955 to 1957, Al Gannaway owned and produced both The Country Show and Stars of the Grand Ole Opry, both filmed programs syndicated by Flamingo Films, a company Al Gannaway acquired. Gannaway still owns the right to these shows; furthermore, Gannaway Stars of the Grand Ole Opry was the first television show shot in color.
On October 2, 1954, nineteen year old Elvis Presley made his first and only appearance at the Grand Ole Opry; although the audience reacted politely to Presley's revolutionary brand of rockabilly music, Opry manager Jim Denny told record producer Sam Phillips after the show that the singer's style was not suited to the program.
As the hippie counterculture movement spread across the country during the 1960s, the Opry maintained a strait-laced, conservative image with "longhairs" not being featured on the show. Artists were expected to dress conservatively, with women regularly wearing gingham country dresses; Jeannie Seely, upon joining the Opry in 1967, fought management to wear more contemporary attire such as miniskirts and go-go boots, arguing that if the Opry were going to have a dress code, it should be enforced upon the audience as well and that she was only wearing what most young women of the time were wearing. Seely's actions effectively caused the fall of a gingham curtain. Despite her disputes with the dress code, Seely would remain loyal to the Opry; she would make over 5,300 appearances on the program over her 58 years as a member, ending upon her death in 2025.
The Byrds were a notable exception. Country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, who was a member of the group at the time, was in Nashville to work on the band's country rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The band's record label, Columbia Records, had arranged for The Byrds to perform at the Ryman on March 15, 1968, a prospect that thrilled Parsons. However, when the band took the stage the audience's response was immediately hostile, resulting in derisive heckling, booing, and mocking calls of "tweet, tweet" and "cut your hair" The Byrds further outraged the Opry establishment by ignoring accepted protocol when they performed Parsons' song "Hickory Wind" instead of the Merle Haggard song "Life in Prison", as had been announced by Tompall Glaser. Two decades later, long after Parsons' death, members of The Byrds reconciled with the Opry and collaborated on the 1989 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two.