WSM: A Monument To Country's History

I have a special fondness for WSM-AM Nashville, so it would have been impossible for me to be objective about the recent controversy regarding the future of the 76-year-old station that gave birth to the country music industry (see story, page 1). That's why I'm so glad to hear that the Gaylord executives who had been considering flipping the format to sports/talk announced that they had decided to keep it country.

As the WSM rumors dragged on, a thousand wonderful memories came flooding back. I recalled the eight years I was part of the grand old station's staff and how thrilled and thankful I was the day I was hired. I thought of the years I spent as a young radio guy longing to be part of the station's legacy. I chuckled to myself when I recalled the many tapes and résumés I sent to various WSM PDs and all the phone calls I made in the early days of my radio career, hoping to get that chance. For me, it was a youthful taste of how the thousands of aspiring performers must have felt as they dreamed of Opry stardom, or what it must have been like for the millions of listeners whose dreams led them merely to a seat in the audience at the Ryman.

My dreams were filled with images of bringing the legends onto the Opry stage with thunderous applause and reading the folksy commercial copy live into the WSM microphone. Needless to say, I did a lot of talking to myself back then, practicing for the big day. Growing up 30 miles from a "big" town of 5,000 in the Rockies, finding the necessary privacy to belt it out was easily accomplished. Whether I was on horseback or plodding along on a tractor, I was certain that I was the only one who could hear me practice?except for the billions of imaginary radio listeners, of course.

I never realized the boyhood dream of bringing Hank Snow and Cousin Minnie Pearl onto the hallowed stage as an announcer, but I was enormously thankful and humbled by the experience of interacting with them as a co-worker at WSM. Roy Acuff never remembered my name from visit to visit?he always knew me as "one of those WSM people." Helping the WSM announcing staff eulogize and remember Acuff on the air in the days following his death remains a personal career highlight for me. I forged enduring friendships with other cast members, including Jeannie Seely, Billy Walker, Bill Anderson, Jan Howard, Jim Ed Brown, Jean Shepard, Charlie Louvin, and the late Dottie West.

Although my career ultimately took another path, listening faithfully to WSM has been a good habit I've never been interested in breaking. In the years since, I've been thankful to live in a city with such a radio station, particularly since my experiences as a staff member prepared me so well for the next phase of my career.

For lovers of traditional country music, especially those in the Nashville area, WSM is a vibrant, living, breathing thing. To think of it as just another garden variety sports/talk station was like thinking of the Vatican as just another pretty Italian city.

WSM and the Grand Ole Opry stand as monuments to the national past, present, and future. The idea that after 76 years the powers-that-be at Gaylord might have lacked the tenacity and resourcefulness to make the station profitable while preserving its legend said far more about the company than it did about the fiscal condition of the station.

With or without country on WSM-AM, the music and Nashville will survive, but there would have been plenty of weeping in hillbilly heaven.