The Grand Tour by Rich Kienzle Page A

Opry manager Jim Denny, who disliked his performance, suggested he go back to truck driving. At the Ryman Auditorium, unspecified backstage bureaucrats claimed “union rules” barred George from playing his own guitar onstage since he wasn’t a member of Nashville’s Local 257, a red herring conceived to let guests know their place. Sober and nervous, George was terrified. As Ernest Tubbintroduced him, Opry stalwarts Little Jimmy Dickens and George Morgan intervened. Dickens handed George his own guitar; Morgan sent the timorous newcomer onstage, where he breezed through “You Gotta Be My Baby” before walking off. He decided not to push an encore. The Machiavellian nonsense aside, the appearance led Opry management to offer George that coveted membership a week later, making him a part of the show’s artist roster. He performed on August 25 as a member. Over a decade and a half before, George Glenn lay in bed Saturday nights with Clara and George W listening on the battery radio and amusing family members by boldly declaring someday he’d appear on the Opry. Now, like Hank Williams, he was part of the Opry family after just one guest appearance.
    On records, his momentum wasn’t slowing down. “Just One More,” a morose barroom weeper George wrote himself, became his most successful single yet, reaching No. 3 on Billboard ’s country charts. It also showed his voice continuing to develop beyond his roots. The B-side, “Gonna Come Get You,” jaunty and upbeat, had an amiability similar to “You Gotta Be My Baby.” George’s first hit duet with a female singer came well before Melba Montgomery or Tammy Wynette: “Yearning” teamed him with Hayride vocalist Jeanette Hicks, who’d been recording since 1953. Issued in early 1957, the single made it to No. 10, though George simply harmonized behind her lead. Even as his stature grew, his ties to Brother Burl and Sister Annie remained strong. He added melodies to three of Burl’s religious poems and recorded them, adding fervent vocals to “Boat of Life” and turning “Taggin’ Along” into a stunning, tent-meeting-revival tune complete with hand clapping, enhanced by Hal Harris’s electric guitar. George adapted another of Burl’s poems, “Cup of Loneliness,” into a plaintive ballad, one he would record with the same intensity as the other two.
    â€œWhy Baby Why” scored in Billboard ’s Top Country and Western Records of 1956 chart, in the “Best Sellers in Stores” and “Most Played on Juke Boxes and on Radio” categories. George’s original compositions were getting around, attracting attention beyond Starday artists. Ray Price had a Top 10 single with the Cajun-flavored ballad “You Done Me Wrong,” which bore both George’s and his name as composers. Jimmie Skinner recorded George’s “No Fault of Mine.”
    Pappy became the sole owner of Starday after buying out Starns. Don Pierce still remained president, but the company’s fortunes were about to take a turn. Mercury Records president Irving Green and Art Talmadge, the label’s vice president, realized they needed to boost the company’s weak country music presence. Their solution: teaming up with Starday to create a joint Mercury-Starday operation based in Nashville with George as the flagship artist. Pappy, working mainly from Houston, would continue to oversee his business interests and produce other singers. Pierce would handle the business end and do some production. None of this would tempt George to move his family to Nashville. Shirley wouldn’t want it, and he seemed to have little interest in putting down roots there, not when he could hang out and party in local hotels when he was there for the Opry or any other purpose. The Opry connections, however, demanded a greater Nashville presence. His new booking agent, former fiddler