6 Grand Ole Opry Debuts That Launched Country Legends

Alabama native Hank Williams was just 25 when he hit the Ryman stage, holding nothing but his guitar and an already-weathered voice that captivated the crowd with his hits of “Lovesick Blues” and “Mind Your Own Business.” The audience reportedly demanded six encores before the house managers insisted that the rest of the show continue. Fame would prove both fragile and fleeting for the singer-songwriter nicknamed the “hillbilly Shakespeare.” Three years later, alcoholism cost him his Opry membership after he repeatedly missed performances or showed up drunk. Just six months later, Williams died unexpectedly at the age of 29 of heart failure on New Year’s Day while riding in the back seat of his Cadillac convertible between gigs.

One of the most notorious Opry debuts came in 1954 when a 19-year-old up-and-comer from Tupelo, Mississippi, named Elvis Presley decided to do something a little unexpected. He played a tune familiar to the Opry audience—Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”—but added elements of rockabilly and blues to the bluegrass standard. “The people who came to the Opry in 1954 did not know rockabilly, but they did know Monroe,” Nash says. “They were pretty shocked to hear that souped-up version. He got polite applause, but essentially, it was a bomb.”

According to legend, Opry manager Jim Denny was so unimpressed with the performance that he told Presley afterward to go back to driving a truck—a yarn Nash says Denny’s son Bill later debunked. But the singer was so disappointed that he “cried all the way back to Memphis,” she says, and “left his costume on the back of a restroom door at a gas station” along the route. Presley soon found a place on the Louisiana Hayride circuit—and then became one of the biggest stars in music and Hollywood. While he later made occasional backstage visits to the Opry, he never performed there again.

Johnny Cash, dubbed the “Man in Black” for his outlaw persona, might seem like an odd fit for the buttoned-up Opry, but early in his career, he became a favorite on the Ryman stage. At his 1956 debut, the 24-year-old sang his hit “I Walk the Line” along with “Get Rhythm” and “So Doggone Lonesome.” Backstage that night, he met his future wife, June Carter, who had been performing country music with her sisters and mother, Maybelle, since she was 10.

As with Williams, Cash’s personal demons jeopardized his standing with the Opry. He was banned in 1965 after he smashed all the onstage lights with his microphone stand. “I left and used that as an excuse to really get wild,” he later recalled—winding up in the hospital with a broken nose. The Opry and Cash mended fences a few years later, after the success of his At Folsom Prison album. The “Ring of Fire” singer remained a member in good standing until his 2003 death.

At age 13, Dolly Parton managed, along with her uncle Bill Owens, to land a guest spot on the Opry stage, where she was introduced by Johnny Cash, himself. She already showed a remarkable lack of nerves. “As I heard the band play my introduction, I lifted my head and looked up toward the lights,” she remembered. “I smiled at the people in the balcony and then let ’er rip.” She so fiercely tore into George Jones’ song “You Gotta Be My Baby” that the audience demanded three encores. “Even as a child, she had an unearthly voice,” Nash says. The country legend became a regular at the Opry and was inducted as a member in 1969.

Loretta Lynn, the daughter of a Kentucky coal miner, made her first appearance at the Opry after releasing her first single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” She and her husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, had been promoting the tune themselves, mailing out copies and stopping by radio stations as they drove from Tacoma, Washington, to Nashville in hopes of a big break. They even slept in their car in the Opry’s parking lot the night before her Ryman debut. “I didn’t know he’d done that, and I woke up and… could not believe we were sleeping over from the Grand Ol’ Opry. But that’s where we were,” she later recalled. “I was so excited, I don’t remember singing, but I remember patting my foot.” She was such a hit that she soon set an Opry record for 17 consecutive appearances—and became a member in 1962.

Just two weeks after winning the fourth season of “American Idol,” Carrie Underwood made her first appearance at the Opry with an introduction by Country Music Hall of Famer Bill Anderson. The future chart-topper performed her debut single, “Inside Your Heaven,” as well as a soulful rendition of the Roy Orbison classic “Cryin’” that she had covered on the TV competition show. Three years later, country singer Randy Travis invited her to join the Opry—and superstar Garth Brooks presided over her induction. “It means a lot to me because it's the heart of country music, the church, the sacred place, the super-elite club that says you love this music,” she said at the time.