A Yankee by upbringing, I wasn’t always in love with country music, but I couldn’t help myself when I stuck around Nashville after finishing college. The city is home to some of the most well-known landmarks on the country music scene. The area known as Music Row is a couple of streets densely packed with major country music record labels. There’s the Bluebird Café, whose Writer’s Nights have been frequented by such folks as the songwriter of Kenny Roger’s hit, “The Gambler,” or the unsigned and aspiring Garth Brooks in the 80’s. Then there’s the Ryman Auditorium, the early home of the “Grand Ole Opry.” This weekend when I drove back to my old city to see a friend off to Canada, the memory of my first visit to the Opry came flooding back. It was there that I fell the hardest.
***************************************************************
Attending the Opry seemed only fitting as a country music fan. The show has been going strong since 1925 when it was first broadcast live as a radio show. Today the lineup is a motley crew of historical country music fixtures like Dolly Parton and the newer, like Canadian-born Terri Clark. The Opry tapes in different locations throughout the year, but what the true Twang Head wants is to attend the show in its original location at the Ryman Auditorium, where it aired live from 1943 until 1974, before moving to a larger, more modern venue.
I couldn’t find anyone to go with me, so a fledgling Twang Head and solo, I headed to Opry at the Ryman. I decided to attend on a night when Charley Pride was performing. Back when Black country musicians were nonexistent, Mr. Charley Pride charted 29 number-one country hits between 1966 and 1989. He still hangs onto the title as the most successful Black country singer ever. There’s got to be a few other faces like mine in the crowd, I figured.
The Ryman sits about midway down the hill that marks your entry into downtown Nashville. From the top of the hill at night, you can see a rainbow of neon lights, the country clubs, cowboy boot stores, and bars lining Broadway Street, until they fall off into the dark, disappearing into where the Cumberland River meets the bottom of the hill at 1st Avenue.
I’m parking with only a few minutes left until the show is supposed to start. I’m hustling down the street, mad that I didn’t set my clock back from CP– colored people– time, so I could arrive promptly for my official induction to the country music world. At the Ryman, I pass one of those notoriously expensive busses, the extravagance of the pimped out interiors superseding the mediocrity of cross-country transportation by bus. I smile when I see that it’s one of the busses of Montgomery Gentry. Their song “Some People Change,” with a verse about a neo-Nazi, down on his names, praying, rising up a changed man, breaks out at the refrain with a surprise traditional gospel choir vocal. This is one of my favorite songs, combining my love of country music with the socially relevant message. It’s a song that I can hold on to, one that recognizably coincides with my exterior.
I pick up my ticket from will call. I had decided that to do the Opry, would be to do it in style. So I bought the best that I could afford. At the Opry, a little goes a long way, and for around 50 dollars I would be sitting at the foot of the stage.
Before going in, I have to make one phone call.
“Hey Dad,” I say, knowing exactly where he would be, sitting in the rocking chair in his childhood home across from his 89-year-old father, who would be absorbing random strings of the seven o’clock news, as his old age dozed him in and out.
“Guess where I’m at?”
I take a deep breath, beginning to feel the nervous energy swell inside.
“I’m at the Grand Old Opry, about to go in and see Charley Pride.”
I pause as my news is broadcasted throughout the room on the other end of the line.
“Guess where Marona is?” my dad echoes to my grandfather and my grandmother, she no doubt sitting only feet from Papa C.L. at the kitchen table, as she has done for over 60 years.
There’s no missing the muffled excitement of the room transmitted back to me, voices singing haphazardly out of tune in the background.
“I gotta go. It’s about to start,” I say, hurrying off the phone.
I step in the auditorium. I may be late, but I haven’t missed a performance, only the historic welcoming to the Grand Ole Opry. The auditorium is dark, but I’m up so close, the stage lights are blinding me. I’m sharing the spotlight with the likes of Little Jimmy Dickens, imagining my fro casting a silhouette across the stage, wondering if the Opry-attendees behind me are irritated by their obstructed view.
The show starts at 7:00 but Charley Pride won’t be playing until 9:00. I sit through Ricky Skaggs, Jimmy C. Newman, Earl Scruggs, counting down the hour until Mr. Pride graces the stage, reminding myself that this is not a jazz concert so I shouldn’t be snapping, nor is it R&B, so my hand doesn’t need to be waving rhythmically in the air, obstructing even more views.
Charley Pride comes on. “No doubt about it. It's for sure I'm coming down with love,” he sings. There’s something about sitting in the dark gazing up at a fluorescing stage that makes you feel like the person working it sees no one but you. “Don't cha, don't cha, don't cha fight the feelings of love,” Every time he stands in front of me, I take it as an official welcoming of my love of country music, each sonorous note sung validating me. My grandfather, my father, and now Mr. Charley Pride scoot over to make room for a new fan.
The lights come up. I stand up, stretch, and turn around. From where I stand, I see no other faces in the crowd that look like mine. I smile. It’s okay.
This proud cowry-shell-rocking afroed Black girl has declared her love for country music.
My friends, they were at the club and open mic night, but on this Saturday evening, I headed to the Grand Ole Opry, a name coined during the 20s by harmonica wizard Deford Bailey– the first Black country star.
I’m in love with country music.
No comments:
Post a Comment