‘The Grand Ole Opry,’ a fixture in country music, turns 100

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering engineering. science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. The amazing thing is that we're still here and we're still significant and it's still very much a living, breathing thing and not a cultural relic. And I think every single night there, something really cool and something magical happens. A celebration of country music's biggest show, the Grand Ole Opry, turns 100 years old today.

0:56It's Friday, November 28th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WVUR Boston. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:06It's the day after Thanksgiving. Maybe you're watching football. Maybe you're indulging in some e-commerce, eating leftover turkey. Things that are a slice of Americana these days in their own way. We've got two stories on today's show about American history. From the bright lights of one of country music's biggest stages, to the overlooked stories of Native Americans, and how tribes from coast to coast are repatriating the remains of their ancestors that have been held for decades in museums and university archives. It feels really good to bring them back. They've been sitting on museum shelves for quite a while, and good to get them back and feast and ceremony and send them back on their journey to the spirit world.

2:02More on that story in about 15 minutes. But first, Peter O'Dowd has this celebration of an icon of country music that turns 100 years old today. The Grand Ole Opry broadcast on the radio in Nashville for the first time in November 1925. Here's a clip from WSM Radio in 1939. From Nashville, Tennessee, Prince Albert, the world's most popular smoking tobacco, brings you the South's most popular program, the Grand Ole Opry.

2:37Well, a lot has changed in the music industry since then, but the broadcast is still a bucket list destination for rising stars. And all-time greats like Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline are among the members who've dazzled audiences on the Opry stage over the years. Here's Carrie Underwood performing in 2021.

3:13Charlie Matos is one of the hosts of the show, and he's on the line with us now. Charlie, what a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for coming on. Oh, you got it, Peter. Looking forward to it. You know, it's kind of amazing that any radio show has been broadcasting for 100 years. How did the Grand Ole Opry get started? Well, it began on a Saturday night. And this truly illustrates the magic of radio when you really was all theater of the mind, right? The solemn old judge, George D. Hay, who was not solemn or old and moved from Chicago and was probably in his early 30s, was just looking for something to do on a Saturday night, some live programming.

3:50And he invited a fiddler by the name of Uncle Jimmy Thompson to come by and play some old time fiddle tunes. and it proved incredibly popular. So they kept doing this Saturday night thing. People started showing up in the halls of the studio to peek in and catch a glimpse of what they were hearing. And suddenly they decided, you know, we probably need a venue where we could sell tickets and make this into something. And a hundred years later, we're still going strong. Let's hear another moment from the show. This is Garth Brooks in the late 90s. It is my honor for the first weekend in 1997 to say thank you for letting us come back to the Grand Ole Op.

4:30All right, so then he goes on to play one of his hits, The Dance. And now, glad I didn't know The way it all would end The way it all would go Our lives are better enough to change I couldn't miss the pain But I don't think too need The day

5:12Holding you You said that anytime Garth Brooks takes the stage at the Opry at Special, why does that broadcast stand out to you? Oh my. Well, number one, there's just an energy in the building as the guy at the podium about to bring him on. It's kind of like a comedian knowing the big punchline and laugh line is coming. It's just kind of one of the great moments of getting the host to show. And, you know, he always delivers. He certainly has inducted a lot of people through the years and really gets the importance of that show. Yeah, I mentioned it was a launching pad or a destination for young artists.

5:49What kind of boost does an appearance at the Opry add to someone's career? Well, I'll tell you this. I can't tell you how many times we've had an artist say, my grandfather, you know, he's heard me on the radio. He's come and see me in concert. There's nothing like telling him I'm playing the Grand Ole Opry. Now that's the checklist that you've made it. I want to leave you with a moment from the COVID pandemic when the show was broadcast without an audience. Here's Mark Wills performing on the 4th of July, 2020. We are honored to get to play some music on this 4th of July. We've lost a couple of our Opry members throughout this shutdown.

6:27We lost Miss Jan Howard. We lost Mr. Joe Diffie. And we lost a very good friend of mine who played in this Opry band for 61 years. We're going to do a song for Mr. Jimmy Capps tonight.

6:53Around midnight, shadow appears on center stage. Charlie, what do you remember about that time? The only way I can describe it is magical and surreal all at the same time, because you realized you were part of something unique and unprecedented. The fact that we kept that Saturday night tradition alive from roughly mid-March to mid-October before we were allowed to have anybody back. We stripped those shows down to three artists with just a guitar, clearly no crowd. I was fortunate enough to work a few of them. And at one point, you know, I counted, including myself and the three artists on stage, there were 14 people in the entire building.

7:35So it was just insanely intimate and out of the box crazy all at the same time. When you look back at the hundred years of the Grand Ole Opry, now clearly you weren't around for all of them, but I wonder what you think the impact of the Opry has been on country music. The Opry has always been called the show that made country music famous. And you could trace bluegrass back to the Ryman Auditorium. You could probably trace jazz back to maybe Preservation Hall in New Orleans as an iconic place. But as a show, not a venue, not a place, not a city as a show, it's hard to come up with anything that has that same cultural significance.

8:15The only thing I could honestly think even close, and it's long since gone by many decades, is Ed Sullivan. You could equate Ed Sullivan to rock and roll with Elvis and Beatles to the quintessential bucket list, where were you moments when that happened. But over the course of 100 years, and I'm guessing somewhere near 15 ,000 shows, well over 5 ,000 just Saturday night shows, it's hard to even put a finger on it. I think the amazing thing is that we're still here and we're still significant and it's still very much a living, breathing thing and not a cultural relic. And I think every single night there, something really cool and something magical happens.

8:57I'm just lucky to be there for a lot of them. Charlie Matos, host of the Grand Ole Opry, thank you so much for your time and congratulations on 100 years of the Opry. We're looking pretty good. We've had a lot of work done through the years, but we're hanging in there. Only about 200 artists have been inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and one of them is on the line now. Mandy Barnett has appeared at the Opry hundreds of times. On September 28, 2021, the legendary Connie Smith came on stage to wish her a happy birthday. You made your Opry debut, people, I don't know if you know this, but nearly three decades ago and have played the show magnificently more than 500 times.

9:39You felt like family since we first met, and on this, your special day, we're honored to invite you to become an official member of the Grand Alarmie. Andy Barnett joins me now. Welcome. Good to speak with you. Oh, good to speak with you. Every time I hear that, it chokes me up. Why is that such an emotional moment to be invited into this circle of musicians? You know, I wanted to become a Grand Ole Opry member ever since I visited for the first time around 1985. I was 10 years old. I came to the Opry for the first time and I just fell in love with it. I just thought I want to be part of this place.

10:20I want to be on that stage. I want to be a member. Why? Is there something like an interaction with the audience who comes to the Grand Ole Opry as opposed to like a typical show in some anonymous arena somewhere? Like, is there a difference in the audience? It's everything. The audience is excited to be there because of what it is, what it's been, what it was to their parents, their grandparents. There's history. A hundred years of a live show week after week. There's nothing else like it. We've been going back over some of the top moments from the past hundred years. Here's Patti Loveless performing If My Heart Had Windows during her induction in 1988.

10:57Let's listen. If my heart had windows You see a heart full of love just for you A tear Now that must have been right around the time you were a kid going to the opera. Why does that performance resonate with you? Well, I saw her and it blew me away. And I just thought that's what I want to do. I was just so inspired by her performance and how heartfelt she sang, her voice, just everything. I grew up loving Patti Loveless and have been able to be friends with her and get to do shows with her. And so that's one of the cool things about the opera. You get to meet your heroes. It certainly has come full circle for you.

11:52Let's listen to this song you've played live at the Opry. It's called The Whispering Wind. When the whispering wind blows on by, autumn leaves start to fly. When the whispering wind blows on by. A lot has changed over the past century, not only in this country, but in the history of music. What do you think the Grand Ole Opry and country music will sound like 100 years from now? You never know. I mean, and things tend to come back, so we may end up just a lone fiddle player. You never know. The Opry's survival is adapting to change while preserving the past. You're going to see new artists out there that maybe they're not as traditional as some of the other artists, but that's the thing that makes it so great is there's a lot of variety on that show.

12:50It is one big variety show.

13:01Mandy Barnett is a member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, helping us look back on 100 years of history. Mandy, thank you so much. So glad to be here. Thank you.

13:19Coming up next. The remains of thousands of Native Americans are sitting on museum and university shelves, despite a federal law from 1990 that's supposed to facilitate their return to tribes that in most cases gave no prior consent to archaeologists to excavate them. That is changing slowly, and Scott Tong has more on that story after the break. Thanksgiving has roots in an early meeting of European pilgrims and Native Americans. It is, of course, a complicated history, in part why Native American Heritage Month is observed in this month of November. And we want to talk today about one very literal element of Native heritage that is still very much in contention, the unequal treatment of Native American remains.

14:13This month, the Menominee Indian tribe of Wisconsin reburied the remains of 67 ancestors that were excavated in the 1960s and held for decades by the Milwaukee Public Museum. And we're going to hear from a tribal elder there in a second. But first, Shannon O 'Loughlin runs the Association on American Indian Affairs and is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Shannon, good to have you. Thanks for having us, Scott. There's a law from 1990 that requires items and remains taken from indigenous grave sites to be returned to tribes. It's called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

14:54It's been 35 years now, so why have so many remains still not been returned? Very good question, Scott. And frankly, the reason has been is because many institutions and museums, including federal agencies, have been extremely reluctant to follow the law to support this human rights statute. statute. Reluctant. I mean, I'm looking at the list of some of these places, you know, where many of these remains still are. UC Berkeley, Harvard, Indiana University, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Department of Interior. How did these remains become excavated and taken to these places in the first place?

15:41Well, that's definitely a story of American colonization.

16:11The best fit for your health, your lifestyle, and your budget. And they work for you for free. Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50 % at selectquote.com slash anytime. That's 50 % off at selectquote.com slash anytime. No other organ brings together science and spirituality quite like the human brain. Our thinking is very different from what we have imagined. Studies about the brain are, at heart, studies about ourselves. So why, even after centuries of research, has the brain still remained such a stubborn and elusive mystery? I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. Listen to On Point for our special series, Brainwaves, wherever you get your podcasts.

16:56The United States policy allowed this harm to occur despite many hundreds of treaties that the U.S. entered into with Native nations that was supposed to protect Native peoples and their interests. So NAGPRA was a law that was passed not because Native peoples are a separate racial group, but because of those initial treaties and that government -to-government relationship that the U.S. has with Native nations. Yeah. These researchers, these universities and museums, over the years, how have they talked about why they've held and in many cases continued to hold these remains? How do they defend themselves in what they're doing?

17:54Well, institutions, their primary purpose, museums particularly, are to curate and store and preserve items in perpetuity for the purpose of educating the public about the meaning of these items and to help with other scientific discoveries. However, our bodies, our ancestors' bodies and our cultural belongings were taken without any of our free prior and informed consent and have been utilized for research and displays without any of our input. So we haven't even been part of the conversation for those institutions to do this work. Yeah. The news organization ProPublica runs a database tracking compliance with this law we've been talking about, NAGPRA, and we'll link it to people on our website here at now.org if they want to kind of look and see if there are remains in their local museums or universities.

19:03according to this ProPublica database, institutions across the United States last year returned the remains of more than 10 ,000 Native American ancestors to tribes, making 2024 one of the most active years under this NAGPRA law. Is it your sense that things are improving, things are getting better? Absolutely, things are improving and getting better, and we can relate that directly to changes in the NAGPRA regulations which implement Congress's statute. Tribes and institutions are consulting and items are returning home. That's Shannon O 'Loughlin, Chief Executive and Attorney of the Association on American Indian Affairs.

19:52Shannon, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott.

19:59Well, we also reached out to the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin about their recent success retrieving the remains of 67 ancestors. After the break, Scott speaks with a tribal elder about bringing them home. Stick around.

20:24Business leaders listen. Over half tune into podcasts daily. Reach them with CitySpace Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. CitySpace Productions crafts custom podcasts for businesses that showcase expertise, deepen connections, and drive engagement. Turn your vision into a podcast. Visit wbur.org slash creative studio.

21:19Thank you. And of course, Is Business Broken? Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts.

21:32Let's bring in now David Greeno of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. He is the tribe's historic preservation officer. This month, David helped to pick up the remains of 67 Menominee ancestors from the Milwaukee Public Museum. David, hello to you. I understand you You were also part of a reburial ceremony, bringing these remains back to tribal lands. How does it feel to have them home again? It feels really good to bring them back. They've been sitting on museum shelves for quite a while, and good to get them back and do a feast and ceremony and send them back on their journey to the spirit world.

22:20Has this been an emotional moment for you or other tribe members bringing these remains of ancestors back? I think it's both. It's more of a celebration because now the ancestors are free to go to the spirit world, what it's supposed to be, and be reburied in the earth. Yes. Now, in the 1960s, I understand archaeologists excavated this site, and I want to ask you a little bit more about it. This place is in what's called the Sixty Islands area of the Menominee River on the border of Michigan and Wisconsin. I understand this place is also part of the Menominee origin story? Well, Sixty Islands is a sacred place.

23:09It is upriver from the mouth of the Menominee River where our Menominee creation story took place. It's where the original five clans, bear, eagle, goose, wolf, and crane were transformed into human form. They're the first Menominees. I mean, this is a very important, sacred spot, yeah? Yes, it is. Yeah. And when you think about scholars, archaeologists excavating it back in the 60s, how do you react when you kind of think back to that moment? I just wonder why they did it. There's never been an explanation given why. Yeah, we have asked this question, and a lot of times even the museums don't know.

23:58They don't know. Well, along with the remains of these 67 ancestors, I understand thousands of additional objects also were returned to your tribe. Can you talk about the objects? Well, there were associated funerary objects that were buried with the ancestors, and we also brought those back. Some daily things that they used, some copper items, a lot of spear points, some arrowheads, copper beads, just a number of things that they needed for daily living. Yeah. So now reburied with them, yeah? Yes. Yes, they are. The tribe, I understand, officially asked for the remains back in 2019. So, as best you know, why did it take so long to get him back?

24:53I think there was negotiating through a consultation through NAGPRA. This is the law, right, to facilitate repatriation. The law passed back in 1990. Through the NAGPRA law, yes. And there's consultation that goes on before these remains are returned. and these museums want evidence that those are actually ours. Yeah. So when you spoke to people at the Milwaukee Public Museum, which returned these remains, can you tell me about your conversations with them? Like, how did it tend to go when you talked to the museum people? The consultation meetings were good, and there was a lot of dialogue back and forth.

25:38You could see that would come from the Menominee River. else would they be? And, you know, there was just dialogue went on and eventually they said the tribe could have this. Well, I'm glad they're back with you. David Greenow is Historic Preservation Officer of the Menominee Indian Tribe in Wisconsin. David, thanks so much. Yep, thank you.

26:04That's our show for today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Thomas Danielian and me, Chris Bentley Our editors were Kat Welch, Micaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto Technical direction from Caleb Green, Matt Reed, Andre Peralta, and Marcel Damiano I wrote the theme music along with Mike Moschetto and Max Liebman Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price Thanks so much for listening Lots more in the feed to catch up on over the weekend And make sure you listen to Wednesday's episode, where Scott Tom speaks with Venezuelan exiles in South Florida.