Still, after all this time, performances on Cracker Barrel's Opry CD Series stir Bill Anderson's memories

By Brian Mansfield

Bill Anderson has been part of the Grand Ole Opry family for almost 46 years. So it's no surprise the Country Music Hall of Famer is all over Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores' Grand Ole Opry Live Classics series – either as a performer or as a songwriter.

The Live Classics series, available exclusively through Cracker Barrel, presents previously unreleased Opry performances from the '60s, including many of country music's legends. The current batch of discs includes the following star-studded sets:

Great Number 1 Hits, which includes Ernest Tubb's "Walking the Floor Over You" and Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," as well as classics from Tammy Wynette, Sonny James, Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Willie Nelson, Faron Young, Leroy Van Dyke, and Porter Wagoner;

Country Greats, which boasts live version of some of the biggest hits from Country Music Hall of Famers like Roger Miller, Porter Wagoner, Faron Young, Sonny James, Marty Robbins, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette;

Ladies of the Opry, which features a pair of songs from Loretta Lynn – "Blue Kentucky Girl" and "You Ain't Woman Enough" – along with hits by Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Jean Shepard, Tammy Wynette, Sammi Smith, Kitty Wells, and Cousin Minnie Pearl;

Great Love Ballads, containing romantic songs like Wynette's "Till I Get It Right" and Cline's "Leavin' on Your Mind," plus performances by Hank Locklin, George Hamilton IV, Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Dottie West, Jack Green, Freddie Hart and Connie Smith;

Opry Gospel, which features songs from Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Sonny James, and others; and

Legends of the Opry, which contains George Jones' "The Grand Tour" and Waylon Jennings' "Stop the World and Let Me Off," along with songs from Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins, Little Jimmy Dickens, Bill Monroe, the Carter Family, Don Gibson, and Porter Wagoner.

Some of Anderson's hits in the series date back more than 40 years. But if the series were to continue another 40, Anderson would still be on it, thanks to his recent success as the writer of hits like "Whiskey Lullaby" for fellow Opry members Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss, Kenny Chesney's "A Lot of Things Different" and Joe Nichols' "I'll Wait for You."

Anderson's 1961 hit "Po' Folks" appears on Legends of the Opry. A Top 10 hit for him in the summer of 1961, "Po' Folks" helped Anderson get his invitation to join the Opry.

Anderson recalls playing a package show at the City Auditorium in Panama City, Florida, at the height of the single's popularity.

"Unbeknownst to any of us, in the audience on this particular Saturday night was a man named Ott Devine, who was the general manager of the Grand Ole Opry," says the Country Music Hall of Famer. "He had gone to Panama City on a fishing trip. None of us knew he was there. We didn't know he was within a thousand miles of there. For all we knew, he was at the Grand Ole Opry. But he came in and, I guess, bought a ticket and sat out in the audience.

"Well, I was on the first half of the show, and I sang 'Po' Folks,' and I got about three encores. The song was really hot back then, just unbelievably popular. Man, I was walking 10 feet off the ground, just from what happened on the stage. I walked off, and there stood Ott Devine. He was very complimentary about everything that had happened, with the reception we got onstage and everything. This was on a Saturday night, and on Tuesday of the next week, he telephoned me and said, 'How would you like to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry?'

Most of the recordings on the Cracker Barrel's Grand Ole Opry Live Classics series come from a syndicated radio series the Opry produced during the mid-'60s.

"The Opry had lost the NBC Prince Albert Show, which was the network, some time in the early '60s," Anderson says. "So the only reach the Opry had then was WSM. They were looking for a way for people in San Diego and San Francisco and Salt Lake City and places that couldn't pick up WSM to hear the Opry."

Brenda Colladay, the curator of the Grand Ole Opry Museum, says the syndicated show aired on as many as 400 stations during the week. "They recorded the whole Opry live at the Ryman, and they would delete any references to dates or events, like Christmas," Colladay says. "It would have pretty much felt like listening to the Opry. But they had to have it during the week, because people could still tune into WSM and hear the Opry on a Saturday."

The live performances contained on the Live Classics discs often differ dramatically from their studio versions.

"Still," one of Anderson's signature songs, appears on Great Number 1 Hits. Like many recordings of the Nashville Sound era, the studio version of "Still" featured strings and the bell-like backing vocals of the Anita Kerr Singers – attributes that were impossible to replicate on the Opry stage.

"So many of us couldn't go onstage and sound like our records," Anderson says. "That was the heyday of the Nashville Sound. You couldn't take all those players on stage with you, on tour with you, at the Opry and all. We had to learn to compensate and compromise.

"When I first started performing 'Still' on the Grand Ole Opry, I was rather intimidated, because I didn't have that big sound. I remember going out there some nights, just by myself, and I was the only one singing, 'Still … though you broke my heart … Still.' We didn't have the Carol Lee Singers. I didn't even have a band then."

"Po' Folks" also required re-arranging for the Opry.

"Jimmy Riddle, who was Roy Acuff's harmonica player, had played on the record," Anderson says. "If Roy was in town, and they were on the Opry, Jimmy would come out and play with me. If not, then Pete Drake would do a little crazy sounding thing with his steel guitar. It didn't sound like a harmonica, but it gave a little bit of that flavor. Listen to it: Instead of using a steel bar in his left hand, he's playing with a little plastic comb. Somehow, it deadened the strings. I don't know how he came up with it, but it used to give that steel guitar a real unusual sound. And that's kind of how I got by with doing 'Po' Folks.'"

In addition to his own performances on the Live Classics series, Anderson also has a pair of songs that were hits for other Opry stars. Connie Smith's "Then and Only Then," the 1965 follow-up to her breakthrough smash "Once a Day," appears on Great Ladies of the Opry. Anderson also wrote many songs for the Louvin Brothers and Charlie Louvin, whose 1965 hit "Think I'll Go Somewhere and Cry Myself to Sleep" appears on Great Love Ballads.

Great Love Ballads also contains another song with some significance to Anderson  – Billy Walker's version of the Willie Nelson song, "Funny How Time Slips Away."

"That's the only hit song I ever turned down," Anderson claims. "I thought it sounded too much like 'Hello, Walls,' which Willie had written for Faron Young.

"I didn't realize back then that everything Willie wrote sounded alike when Willie sang it."  

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