Music City Barn Dance“Mom! Dad! It's time for the Grand Ole Opry! » In the early twenties, during the Great Depression, it was a time when the family gathered around the radio to listen to music of all types. It was a little piece of happiness brought into the lives of people who were going through difficult times. There was gospel music, rock and roll, jazz and, yes, country music played on a simple radio. Let's go back to the beginning. It all started on November 28, 1925, on the fifth floor of the National Life and Accident Insurance Building. The room was Studio A. WSM Radio was created for advertising promotions, but also broadcast music. In an effort to try something new, WSM Barn Dance began with the first live performer, a fiddler named "Uncle" Jimmy Thompson. It was something southerners called honky tonk or Western music. As more people began listening to this style of music, it became known as country music. In this small studio in Nashville, Tennessee, music of all kinds was released to a world at war and emerging from a depression. People started crowding into the studio to watch Barn Dance. The live audience grew so large that after two years they moved to a larger Studio B. In an attempt to deter audience size, the Opry began charging twenty-five cents, which after the depression many felt would not pay that price. Yet the desire for this music was so great that people paid the price and audiences grew. The type of music played each night before the Barn Dance was New York opera. In an accidental comment one evening, George D. Hay said: “For the past hour you have been hearing music taken largely from the middle of a paper, to reconstruct the damaged parts of the paper. Opry, to make sure the music would come back again. Old-time influences have come and gone on the radio airwaves, but the extreme driving force of the country music industry, WSM Radio and the Grand Ole Opry, transformed a small town into a big city, nicknamed "Music City." . Today, more than seventy-five years later, the Opry is still broadcasting to listeners on the same radio station. Although the Opry is best known for its country music, its history has provided honky tonk, gospel. , comedy and rock'n'roll. Audiences have listened to the music through wars and depression. The floods brought support from around the world. The desire for music may have flourished since the inception of the Grand Ole Opry. the most influential and inspiring program in the history of American music (Jessen, Wade).