Hillbillies, Outlaws, and Songwriting Legends: The Legacy Of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium

SERVANTS OF THE SONG

Johnny Cash was conflicted. It was April 1971 and his television show was debuting a new version of a hangover anthem called “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” by a young songwriter named Kris Kristofferson. Cash had performed it as part of a live sketch a few months earlier, but was unhappy with the thin arrangement. So he beefed it up and gave the song its own segment in the episode. Kristofferson had become something of a cause célèbre among Nashville artists by that time, with looks that established him as a crossover sex symbol and a lyrical style that kicked at the conventions of the genre. Cash had taken the young Texan under his wing, but had yet to record any of his tunes. It was rumored that Kristofferson, a pilot in the National Guard, had commandeered a helicopter to deliver a demo to the Man in Black’s estate outside of Nashville.

To have Cash perform a song on his television show was a big moment for the young songwriter – a professional boost certainly, but also a more personal validation from an artist Kristofferson had long idolized. However, ABC executives objected to one line in the song: “Wishin,’ Lord, that I was stoned.” Instead, they suggested an alternative that would be potentially less offensive to straight-laced viewers who might recoil at even the hint of turning on: “Wishin,’ Lord, that I was home.” Cash mulled it over; he even asked for Kristofferson’s advice. The line was crucial to the song’s evocation of alienation and loneliness, a feeling so strong that even “home” might not alleviate the misery. No one knew what he would do during the live taping. Cash took the stage at the Ryman and intoned, in that familiar basso profundo, that he wished, Lord, that he was stoned.

As Kristofferson told Robert Hillburn, author of the 2013 biography Johnny Cash: A Life, “I was watching from the balcony of the Ryman, and he looked up at me just when he sang the line the way I wrote it, with ‘stoned’ in it. I was so proud of him. I could understand why people were starting to see him as the father of our country or something. He was a real hero.”

That is a crucial performance in country music history. On one hand, it represents one generation of country singers passing the torch to the next, an act that cemented Kristofferson’s reputation as the genre’s top songwriter. Moreover, it validated the surging outlaw movement, a group of musicians who bristled against the practices of the industry and the formal constraints of the genre. On his 1975 smash The Red-Headed Stranger, which remains one of country’s best-selling albums, Willie Nelson exploded the traditional format of country music, fashioning a loose concept album from new compositions and scraps of hymns and traditional songs. Kristofferson wrote meandering melodies and songs that far exceeded the typical two or three minutes. Even the subject matter changed, as outlaw hits explored frank depictions of sexual need (Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night”) and cheeky commentary on the scene itself (Waylon Jennings’ “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand?”).

Artists like Jennings and Nelson were “servants of the songs,” writes Michael Streissguth in his recent book, Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, And The Renegades Of Nashville. They “chased the music the way it sounded in their heads. They resisted the music industry’s unwritten rules, which prescribed the length, the meter, and the lyrical content of songs as well as how those songs were recorded in the studio.”

Marty Stuart was a hotshot mandolin player – just a teenager, in fact! – in Lester Flatts’ band when he made his Ryman debut in 1972, but he remembers the excitement of the outlaw movement and the new possibilities that accompanied it. “Everybody that passed through the old system was rooted in tradition,” he says, “but the outlaws threw everything up in the air. Personally, of all the musical phases I’ve seen in Nashville, that was probably the freshest and most exciting. They absolutely rethought and restaged country music without surrendering the authenticity. It set the industry on a completely different course.”

But at a moment when the outlaws embraced greater songwriting freedoms and grittier authenticity, other country superstars were busy sewing rhinestones onto everything. The glitz and glamour of the mainstream was perhaps most fully embodied by the Grand Ol Opry’s move in 1973 from the Ryman to a theme park just outside of town: Opryland U.S.A. The new auditorium was everything the Ryman was not. It had cushioned seats instead of wooden pews, dressing rooms instead of communal changing areas, central heat and air instead of heavy coats and funeral fans. “People definitely had sentimental feelings for the Ryman,” says Brenda Colladay. “But they were also happy to go to a more comfortable place. They were miserable in the 100 degree heat with nothing but a funeral fan to keep themselves cool.”

Not everyone was so sentimental. Acuff himself supported the move. “Roy was very vocal,” recalls Stuart. “He didn’t like the place. It was cold in the winter, hot in the summer. He was glad to have a prestigious place out across town.” In most cases, it was the new guard – many of them outlaws – who would voice opposition to the move, making no secret that they favored the modest quarters of the Ryman to the state-of-the-art comforts of the Opry House. Grounding their own craft in that of their forebears, that generation would eventually work to save the storied venue from neglect and demolition.