What was playin on The Opry at the Ryman like?
I was thinking back one day, while I was taking my morning walk, to when I came to Nashville in the spring of 1955 and started playing on the Opry. I had just started working with the Louvin Bros. I was 20 years old and everything was exciting and fresh and I felt like I had realized my dream of coming to Nashville. Playing the Opry in those days was interesting from a guitarists standpoint. WSMs Ryman Auditorium had a box connected to the floor it had I think four inputs. Right above it, about eight feet high, hanging down, was the monitor speaker. So when you played you plugged in the box and then stood under the speaker. As I remember it really sounded good. There was an engineer in the booth over at stage left listening to WSM over the radio to hear how the mix was. It would be a lot better today if they still did it that way. Surprisingly there was never a sound check. No one had heard of such a thing in those days. Nobody knew what they were All the great stars were young and in
