Music City Barn Dance“Mom! Dad! It's time for the Grand Ole Opry!” In the early 1920s, during the Great Depression, it was a time when the family gathered around the radio to listen to music of all types. It was a small piece of happiness brought into the lives of people experiencing difficult times. There was gospel music, rock and roll, jazz, and yes, country music played on a simple radio. Let's go back to the beginning. It all began on November 28, 1925, on the fifth floor of the National Life & Accident Insurance Building. The room was Studio A. WSM radio was created for advertising promotions, but it also played music. In the interest of trying something new, WSM Barn Dance began with its first live performer, a fiddler named "Uncle" Jimmy Thompson. It was something Southerners called honky tonk or Western music. As more and more people began listening to this style of music, it became known as country music. In this little studio in Nashville, Tennessee, music of all kinds was being broadcast to a world that was fighting a war and emerging from a depression. People began to flock to the studio to watch the Barn Dance. The live audience grew so much that within two years they moved to a larger Studio B. In an effort to discourage crowd size, the Opry began charging twenty-five cents, which following the Depression they said many would not pay that price. Yet the desire for music was so great, people paid the price and the audience grew. The type of music played each night before the Barn Dance was New York opera. In an accidental comment one evening, George D. Hay declared: "For the last hour you have been listening to music taken largely from... middle of the paper... there to rebuild the damaged parts of the Opry, to make sure the music comes back once again Influences from long ago have come and gone from the airwaves, but the ultimate driving force of the country music industry, WSM Radio and the Grand Ole Opry have turned a small town into a big city, nicknamed "Music". City." Today, more than seventy-five years later, the Opry still broadcasts to listeners on the same radio station. Although the Opry is best known for its country music, its history has provided honky tonk, gospel, comedy, and rock 'n' roll Audiences have listened to music during wars and depressions. Floods have brought support from around the world. The desire for music has flourished since the beginning of the Grand Ole Opry the most influential and inspiring program in the history of American music (Jessen, Wade).