Attired in top hats, riding in horse-drawn carriages, the procession made its way downtown, where Hay and Acuff were to appear on stage for a brief program before the film rolled. It all worked, and soon the guests were watching a surrealistic version of how the Grand Ole Opry was founded—as a campaign plot to get “Abner Peabody” elected governor. The Weaver Brothers and Elviry, veteran vaudeville troopers from Arkansas, were featured along with Acuff.
Fans got to see a very soulful version of Roy singing “Great Speckled Bird,” a stately “Wabash Cannonball,” and a rousing “Down in Union Country,” sung with the band in an old Model A Ford bouncing down a Tennessee hill. There was also a boisterous scene where Roy fiddled for a square dance and even called a set or two. Though he did not receive top billing for the film—his name was actually listed under Uncle Dave Macon’s—Acuff’s singing stole the show.
In later weeks, as the film toured nationwide, Republic officials sensed they had a new star for more Acuff films. For Roy himself, that evening in 1940 was an important step on his road to truly national fame. He had been on the Grand Ole Opry only a little over two years, fresh from his background and boyhood in east Tennessee, where he had played the fiddle and organized a string band called the Crazy Tennesseans.
Too many stories about Acuff emphasize this past; his debut on the Opry, and then—poof!—he is a living legend and Japanese soldiers are taunting American GIs by saying, “To hell with Babe Ruth! To hell with Roy Acuff!” But a number of very specific and very important events occured in Roy’s career during the early 1940s, events that really propelled him from an average Opry star to a national sensation, an earlier generation’s version of Garth Brooks. These were Acuff’s glory days, and as they changed him, he in turn changed country music.
Even before his Hollywood debut, Acuff had begun to sense that things were starting to go his way. The letters that poured in at the Opry seldom had much to say about his fiddling, but were raving about his singing. “I didn’t realize how different my singing was from the rest until mail started coming in,” he said.
The letters would mention “how distinct my voice was, and how they could understand my words.” Early in 1939, he reorganized his band, bringing in Lonnie Wilson, Pete “Oswald” Kirby, comedian Jake Tindell, and a cousin of Sam McGee’s named Rachael Veach. This gave the band more versatility and made Roy the only featured vocalist. Then, on October 14, 1939, the Grand Ole Opry signed a deal with the NBC radio network. The show had been on the air since 1925, but for most of that time it had originated only as a “clear-channel” broadcast live from WSM Nashville.
