The lonesome, sentimental songs were the biggest: “Beneath That Lonely Mound of Clay” (1940), “The Precious Jewel” (1940), “Wreck on the Highway” (1942), “Fire Ball Mail” (1942), “Wait for the Light to Shine” (1944) and “Two Different Worlds” (1945). “Wabash Cannonball,” an old song that had been recorded in the 1920s by the Carter Family, had been a favorite with Acuff audiences since the Crazy Tennesseans first recorded it back in 1936. Ironically, Roy did not sing the song on that record; Dynamite Hatcher did.
It wasn’t until 1947 that Roy recut the song for Columbia, able to sing his own theme song on wax at last. In 1942, primarily to preserve his own publishing interests, Acuff joined forces with veteran songwriter Fred Rose to open the first modern publishing company in Nashville, Acuff-Rose. It was immediately successful, and later became a major country publisher, signing everyone from Don Gibson to the Louvin Brothers to Hank Williams.
This business interest helped Acuff survive the hard times of the 1950s and enabled him to take advantage of the folk revival of the 1960s. By the 1970s he had decided to return to his roots, to the older, acoustic sounds that had first brought him fame. Following his participation in the 1971 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band collection Will the Circle Be Unbroken (a project he was initially dubious about), Acuff saw his audience expand dramatically.
In the years since, he has continued to follow his instincts, honing his fiddle playing, resurrecting old songs, and defending the faith to a Nashville scene that all too often has a short memory of its music’s past. On June 28, 1940, readers of the Nashville Tennessean opened their morning papers and saw something they had never seen before: a large display ad for a film titled The Grand Ole Opry. There was a picture of George D. Hay—the Solemn Ole Judge, the show’s founder—standing right in front of a WSM microphone, decked out in his best summer skimmer and whitest spats, holding his script, smiling big.
“Please don’t pardon our southern accent when we say YOU ALL,” the copy read. “Secure your tickets now to see Judge Hay, Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys, with Rachael and Uncle Dave Macon—on the stage and screen at the WORLD PREMIER of Republic’s full length feature pic ture GRAND OLE OPRY.” Nashville’s hillbilly radio show had finally made it to the big time. True, the celebrations in Nashville could hardly match the hoopla of just a few months before, when its sister city of Atlanta had premiered Gone With the Wind. Republic, which ground out budget films at the rate of two or three a month, was not exactly MGM.
But this was still a first, a very big first, and WSM was hoping the film would do for mountain music what Gene Autry’s Republic efforts had done for cowboy music—make it a nationwide phenomenon. The night started with a big “free” square dance at Memorial Square in downtown Nashville. Then the various dignitaries, including Tennessee governor Prentice Cooper, Acuff and the Opry stars, WSM announcers and dozens of reporters from papers as far away as Cleveland, Knoxville, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Detroit, assembled for a parade to the Paramount Theater.