the state court of appeals. The law itself remained on the books until 1967. Country music birthplace At the very time that Tennessee's rural culture was under attack by urban critics, its music found a national audience. In 1925, WSM, a powerful Nashville radio station, began broadcasting a weekly program of live music which soon was dubbed the "Grand Ole Opry." Such music came in diverse forms: banjo-and-fiddle string bands from Appalachia; family gospel singing groups; and country vaudeville acts (such as Murfreesboro native Uncle Dave Macon). As of 2014, the longest-running radio program in American history, the Opry used the new technology of radio to tap into a huge market for "old timey" or "hillbilly" music. Two years after the Opry's opening, in a series of landmark sessions at Bristol, Tennessee, field scout Ralph Peer of the Victor Company recorded Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family to produce the first nationally popular rural records. Tennessee emerged as the heartland of traditional country music—home to many of the performers as well as the place from which it was broadcast to the nation. The Great Depression and TVA The need to create work for the unemployed during the Great Depression, the desire for rural electrification, and the desire to control the annual spring floods on the Tennessee River drove the federal government's creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public utility, in 1933. The TVA affected the lives of nearly all Tennesseans. The agency was created mainly through the persistence of Senator George Norris of Nebraska. Headquartered in Knoxville, it was charged with the task of planning the total development of the Tennessee River Valley. TVA sought to do this by building hydroelectric dams, constructing 20 between 1933 and 1951, as well as electricity-producing coal-fired power plants. Inexpensive and abundant electrical power was the main benefit the TVA brought to Tennessee, particularly to rural areas that previously did not have electrical service. TVA brought electricity to about 60,000 farm households across the state. By 1945, TVA was the largest electrical utility in the nation, a supplier of vast amounts of power whose presence in Tennessee attracted large industries to relocate near one of its dams or steam plants. This incentive contributed to important economic development in the state. World War II and economic progress World War II brought relief to Tennessee by employing ten percent of the state's populace