Seniorenclub Meets Musikantenstadl

The "Grand Ole Opry" is the oldest radio show in the world, is still considered the pinnacle of country music and is being heard all around the world. Wolfgang Ritzberger was live in Nashville, which owes its reputation as the world capital of country music to this radio show.

I bet that each of us would tick country music when we were asked to answer the question about what’s the most important industry in Nashville. Which doesn't seem to be completely wrong, after all, according to official statistics, the music industry in Nashville has a turnover of more than six billion dollars. The most important record labels have their headquarters in Nashville, and the world-famous guitar manufacturer Gibson, currently under Chapter 11, i.e. in insolvency proceedings with planned restructuring, is also at home in Nashville. The answer is wrong, however, because the health industry, for example the operators of hospitals, are the ones running the game. Quieter than the musicians, which seems to be in the nature of things, but economically much more important: annual sales of just under 20 billion and around 100,000 employees compared to the 20,000 or so people who make their living from the music industry.

But you only hear about that from taxi drivers or when touring with the Hop-on-and-off bus right across the city. The picture is dominated by music and partying all day long. You don't really notice anything of the health industry "downtown", country music bands are omnipresent. This happens in a density that otherwise can only be experienced in New Orleans, almost every pub has live music, almost every pub advertises with his "Schanigarten" on the roof, which means that there is something going on at every level, so to speak (even in the basement, like the Coyote Ugly Bar, famous from the film of the same name, with waitresses dancing on the counter). And just as the French walk through the city with a baguette under their arm, here every second person carries a guitar case.

Party and itinerant preacher

On the roads party vehicles in all variations dominate the traffic, at least the publicly visible one, everything else can only be inferred, but this is not that regarding the guests of these vehicles, who seem to be quite amused by alcohol and where the transport as a purpose clearly takes a back seat. The clientele of such ventures is fed not least by the tens of thousands of students who are on the hunt for a degree here, especially at Vanderbilt University, which is one of the elite universities in the USA and where more than 11,000 students are enrolled. By the way, where there is party, the host of the welcome multimedia show at the Ryman Theater tells us, there is also this: Cut to a church service (very cleverly designed with several projectors as shadow play). That's right, even on the street, in the midst of the hustle and bustle and the party that seems to be all over the place, there are loosely distributed preachers who try to free the people passing by from the purgatory in which they are visibly located. One troop looked particularly audacious, a little as if they had moved here as a street gang in Harlem for lack of a field of activity and had switched to the subject of itinerant preachers. Full package with stage, banners and grim looking staff.

The Grand Ole Opry

Its reputation as the Mecca of country music was established here in Nashville by the oldest radio show in the world, without which we would see Nashville differently today. "The Grand Ole Opry" started in 1927, still under a different name, with the station WSM – AM 650 khz, that is on medium wave. At that time, at the end of the 20's, still with a rather modest range: the area of Tennessee around Nashville, but soon the station was strengthened and especially at the end of the 30's NBC took over their program. Now "The Grand Ole Opry" could be heard everywhere in the States and became a part of the radio history of the USA (sound files from the beginnings can be found for example in the library of the Congress) and of country music. Today "America's Country Music Station" still broadcasts on medium wave and still with a transmitter mast. Meanwhile, the signal of the broadcast is not only taken over by other stations but is also transmitted via the station's own TV station and via all conceivable channels of the Internet. The program is thus broadcast worldwide, and the number of listeners is generally low. The various appearances on the Internet now have hundreds of thousands of "likes", "followers", etc. But a big part of the charm is the show, which takes place here every Friday and Saturday in front of about 4500 paying visitors, is almost sold out and today makes up a not inconsiderable part of the income.

Mother Church of Country Music

The show has been held in the building where it is staged since 1974, when the Rymond Theatre in the city centre had become too old and dilapidated and it looked as if no one wanted to renovate the former church, which was (and still is) called the "Mother Church of Country Music". Ole Opry had meanwhile become a company in its own right, whoever wanted to perform here – and all musicians dreamed of it, even Jimi Hendrix as a boy always wanted to perform in this show – could come as a guest or as a member. But the latter meant paying dues, more than most of them could. afford. But taking part paid off in any case, because whoever was a guest here, his record sales increased more than noticeably, in those days when record sales were still the measure of all things. A certain Elvis Presley was a guest here in 1954, still at the Rymond, as the first harbinger of a new music that had been frowned upon here until then. For decades the rule was: no electrically amplified instruments, no drums, unplugged, honest and almost a bit puristic American folk music, so-called yodelling is still done today. The people in charge of the radio show decided to build their own theatre, a little outside Nashville Downtown, an amusement park was built around it, but it had to make way for a "Leasure Time Center", a mix of cinema, amusement area (an unimaginably large arcade and bowling alley), shopping facilities and restaurants, a conference centre and one of the largest hotel complexes in the USA. In the centre there’s the concert hall for more than 4500 visitors, "The Grand Ole Opry". Up to 100 dollars (plus taxes) are paid for the tickets, then you are rewarded with two hours of the good old radio served live. With everything that we loved the radio for, long before theorists started to think about how much word share versus how much music share and especially which music is at the expense of the quota.

Navel of the country music world

First the sonorous voice, which greets us with a lightly singing tone: "Welcome to the grand ole opry, live here from Nashville on WSM-AM Radio, WSM App worldwide and WSM Television and on satellite all over the world, please welcome …", simultaneously waving his hands in applause. Without transition the band starts playing and a somewhat elderly lady is greeted by the audience. Jeannie Seely, the lady is 78 years old, has at least a few Grammys at home and it’s safe to say that a part of the audience has grown old with her. Many of the stars performing here – every 30 minutes the show is interrupted, and a new host leads through the next half hour – are rather unknown to the average European music consumer. Which doesn't mean anything, because Caitlin Smith, for example, who appears in the third set, sells a slim ten million downloads on Spotify, on the other platforms it will go similarly well, and two numbers are enough to become a fan. Downloads are, thanks to the Internet, possible everywhere. Before her, by the way, an older man from Japan also appeared, Charlie Nagatani is Japan's most famous country musician, organizes a big country music festival in his home country and was happy to have the chance to perform at the Ole Opry, the Circle. This Circle is also something special, because it is visibly carved from different wood. Whoever enters this Circle, enters the old stage of the Ryman, those boards that for decades were the navel of the world of country music. What is also emphasized by every musician here, he is standing on historical ground and this impresses everybody. Not even Devon Dawson, who showed with his ballads where country music has arrived in the meantime and, like Caitlin Smith, was able to reduce the average age considerably.

Welcome to the grand ole opry, live here from Nashville on WSM-AM Radio, WSM App worldwide and WSM Television and on satellite all over the world, please welcome …

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Scattered in between are the “old boys”, the Blue Grass heroes Bobby Osborne and Ricky Skaggs, who also has a whole shelf of Grammys at home and is considered the founder of modern Blues Grass music, or Riders in the Sky, a delicious old-timers' troupe, dressed in cowboy outfits to make the whole thing a bit more fun and who obviously still have a great time on stage. In the style of classic radio, the speaker read out advertisements in between, whereby the Songs for "Kentucky Kernel" should obviously have cult character, because the audience acknowledged them with laughter and applause. Probably also because "Kentucky Kernel" has served as a breading pan for chicken knuckles since 1810, giving them the incomparable taste of the South. You can practically hear the singing from the cotton fields and the murmur of the Mississippi while someone dreamily plucks a lonely melody on the banjo. It is no coincidence that the face on the package reminds one of the colonels who, with his chicken knuckles and his special recipe, has built up a worldwide brand. Anyway, I bought "Kentucky Kernel" at the supermarket and took it home. And when the show was over, and the hall filled with those guests who had booked a backstage tour, I marched along in the crowd and was looking for a pub. Unfortunately, most of the pubs here close at 10 pm, only one hut was still open, the "Bavarian beer house" and that’s how I came to drink Hofbräuhaus beer from Bavaria in the Mecca of country music.