The third person named to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966 was the man who is rightly credited with creating the Grand Ole Opry and served as its master of ceremonies for nearly 30 years. George D. Hay, “The Solemn Old Judge”, was an Indiana native who began his career as a newspaperman in Memphis. He authored a popular column for the Memphis Commercial Appeal called “Howdy, Judge” from which he got his nickname. When the newspaper opened its own radio station in 1923, Hay was prevailed upon to serve as late-night station announcer and radio editor. He found he had a flair for this kind of work and brought a sense of showmanship and style to it. He chanted the call letters, scripted his shows, and blew an imitation steamboat whistle, which he called “Hushpuckena”, to announce the start of the evening’s shows. His popularity grew so fast that in May 1924 he was hired to work at WLS in Chicago, where, among other duties, he announced for the show that would eventually become the National Barn Dance. By 1924, he won Radio Digest’s most popular radio personality award and in 1925 was prevailed upon to come to Nashville as program director and on-air announcer for that city’s brand new radio station WSM. In late November of that year he began a Saturday night program featuring rural musicians and string bands from the surrounding area. That first broadcast of the “WSM Barn Dance” featured a 78-year-old fiddle player and Civil War veteran named Uncle Jimmy Thompson. The program gained popularity and soon began to draw an audience to the small WSM studios to see the performers in person. In 1927, Hay dubbed the Saturday night barn dance program the “Grand Ole Opry”. The Opry is now in its 87th year, having never missed a broadcast in that time and is the longest running radio program in history. George D. Hay was a remarkable visionary and colorful romantic who played a vital role in the commercializing and promotion of country music. Eventually he became upset at the direction the Opry was taking and he left Nashville by the end of the 1950s, settling in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he died in 1968. There are a few very brief video clips available of George D. Hay but here is a recording of his famous signature sign off with his famous poem from the mid 1940s. youtube/watch?v=RfwzysXeRFg
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 22:00:56 +0000
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