Charlie Daniels Recalls His First Time at the Grand Ole Opry
Since January of 2008, Charlie Daniels has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry -- but when he was a young kid, it was almost inconceivable to imagine what the Nashville landmark was like.
"There was a time when I could not imagine even going to the Grand Ole Opry," Daniels told The Boot and other media outlets at his 40th anniversary Volunteer Jam in 2015. "I used to sit around as a kid, thinking, 'What does it look like? What is it like? What would it be like to actually walk in there and sit down and see the show?'"
The famous fiddle player explained that, back in the days before television, the only visual evidence he had of the Grand Ole Opry were photographs from Country Song Roundup magazine.
" ... You try to imagine what it's like," he says.
Daniels grew up in Chatham County, N.C., and every Saturday night, he and the whole neighborhood would tune in to the radio show.
"The first radio show I ever listened to was [the] Grand Old Opry," Daniels recalled. "And I don't even know what age I was -- I was a baby.
"... I was inspired by everybody on there," he continued.
Daniels' dreams of the Opry first came to fruition in 1954, when he and friends from high school drove to Nashville to see it in person -- and they enjoyed it so much that they repeated their road trip.
"Everybody who walked onstage was a performer," Daniels said, "from the fiddle players and the square dance band to Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb and all those guys [who] were alive then."
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