75 years ago Hank Williams stepped on its stage and looked out at a packed Grand Ole Opry house for the first time. His son had been born a couple weeks before, he’d just left the Louisiana Hayride, and he had the nation’s No. 1 country hit with his version of “Lovesick Blues.”
But this isn’t just a story of Hank’s Opry debut. It’s a story of how 230 girls changed the course of Southern popular music.
For in the audience for that June 11, 1949, show were the girls from Volunteer Girls State, ready to blow off some steam after a week of participating in the citizenship training program. For some, it was their first trip to the big city of Nashville.
For context, 230 people are enough to fill the largest section of the balcony of the Ryman, which probably sat 3,000 or so people in 1949. (It had more sections back then than it does today, and some of them looked straight down onto the stage from the side.)
Just like it does today, the Opry in 1949 emphasized older music, so it drew an older audience. But the night Hank came in for what was essentially his Opry audition, the Opry had invited an entire section of his target audience to see the show. So this became a very different type of audience from the typical Opry crowd.
Opry management wasn’t sure how Hank would go over, so they didn’t put him on the hour carried nationally by the NBC Radio Network. Instead, he went on a later segment with Ernest Tubb.
There was lots of energy in the air that night, and when Hank donned his hat and walked out from the wings of the Ryman, the place exploded.
If you were Hank, launching into “Lovesick Blues” then feeling the screams of all those girls wash over you, it would have been electrifying. It would have made your hair stand on end. He finished the song, and the place was still going nuts.
The girls were going crazy, so everybody starts going crazy. They bring Hank back out to acknowledge the crowd, and it gets even louder. So they bring him out again — and now it’s a game…
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