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The Grand Ole Opry is the longest-running radio show in the country and an American institution. It was first broadcast in 1925 and featured music performed by amateur musicians. By the 1930s, the amateurs had given way to full-time, professional performers. The show, which is still broadcast today on WSM, grew to become the radio home of some of the most prominent and influential artists in the country music genre, and an important and enduring part of radio history.

During World War II, southerners took country music with them to factories in the North and to military bases overseas. The Grand Ole Opry’s broadcast range grew and the show became more professional. In later decades the show expanded into television and other entertainment venues, but the 1950s were its heyday.

Grand Ole Opry is an exhibition of 30 photographs taken between 1952 and 1960 by Gordon Gillingham, a commercial photographer from Madison, Tennessee, hired to photograph the program. Many of the images feature Texas performers, such as, Tex Ritter, Buck Owens, Moon Mullican, and Jim Reeves. The resulting collection of almost 5,000 negatives documents the show and the country music business during the zenith of country music’s postwar boom. These images, modern reprints from the original negatives, wonderfully capture the spirit, energy, camaraderie, and sheer joy of performing that permeated both musicians and fans of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1950s.