who was the first member of the grand ole opry
Crook Brothers
title: Grand Ole Opry text: Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 28, 1925. On October 18, 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. "Judge" 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. Hay launched the "WSM Barn Dance" with 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson on November 28, 1925, and that date title: Grand Ole Opry text: is celebrated as the birth date of the "Grand Ole Opry". Some of the bands regularly on the show during its early days included Bill Monroe, the Possum Hunters (with Dr. 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 title: Uncle Jimmy Thompson text: Uncle Jimmy Thompson Jesse Donald "Uncle Jimmy" Thompson (1848 – February 17, 1931) was an American old-time fiddle player and singer-songwriter . He is best remembered as the first performer to play on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry (then called the WSM-AM "Barn Dance"), appearing with founder and host George D. Hay on the evening of November 28, 1925. The positive response generated by Thompson's performance would be an important influence on the show's creative direction in its formative years. While Thompson made only a handful of recordings late in his life, his cantankerous and eccentric personality and his fiddle skills title: Barn dance text: April 19, 1924, with George D. Hay as the show's host and announcer. A year-and-a-half later, Hay moved to Nashville, Tennessee and brought in an old-time fiddler to launch the "WSM Barn Dance"; this show is now known as the Grand Ole Opry and remains on the air to this day. Dozens of similar programs cropped up on AM radio stations all across the United States, from New England to Los Angeles, including the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia (1933), the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in Kentucky (1939), the Louisiana Hayride (1948), the Tennessee Jamboree (1953) and Ozark Jubilee title: George D. Hay text: George D. Hay George Dewey Hay (November 9, 1895 – May 8, 1968) was an American radio personality, announcer and newspaper reporter. He was the founder of the original "Grand Ole Opry" radio program on WSM-AM in Nashville, Tennessee, from which the country music stage show of the same name evolved. Hay was born in Attica, Indiana. In Memphis, Tennessee, after World War I, he was a reporter for the "Commercial Appeal", and when the newspaper launched its own radio station, WMC-AM, in January 1923, he became a late-night announcer at the station. His popularity increased and in May 1924