Country music from its earliest beginnings was simple and unadorned with the trappings of other music types, and flourished without the help of stage productions and overexposure. It was a truly southern music that reflected southern cultures and lifestyles. As the forties came and went, it gained a bit of modernity while retaining its innocence and bowing in to the times. By the beginning of the 1950's, with Webb Pierce, Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Carl Smith, Eddy Arnold, and others in the charts, country music had matured.
With the death of Hank Williams, another change came shortly after when rock music got a foothold with Elvis Presley and Bill Haley. The Opry, and country music in general, suffered great crowd loss, but the management of the Opry at that time said, "We will continue to broadcast if one person shows up."
The sixties saw the Nashville Sound come about and by the seventies, the influence of rock music on the public began to come into country music and push out the more traditional sounds that had made it so huge. The change during this period became swift, and by the eighties, there was very little traditional country to be heard.
Today we are at the beginning of a new century, and I hope that in some way country music will return to the way it was, at least in a small way, to the way it was before rock music influenced it. Even the Grand Ole Opry of 2004 is a different program than it was just four years ago. I have a wish to create a haven for and promote only the truest and purest country music that can be heard today, or hasn't been heard in awhile and needs to be heard again.