Favorite CMA Awards Moments from the Opry House

By Dan Rogers

Celebrate 60 years of the CMA Awards! Join us for a look back at the years when “Country Music’s Biggest Night” took place on the Opry stage, with live performances from your favorite stars and vintage footage from the award show’s past.

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A MESSAGE FROM DAN ROGERS

I am just one of millions of country music fans who grew up five decades ago watching the CMA Awards on television, emanating live from the Grand Ole Opry House every fall. It truly was “country’s music’s biggest night” even before the show claimed that title. I’ll never forget the show opening year after year and seeing the brightest stars in country music all gathered together in those Opry House pews. They were all there: Johnny and June, Dolly, Loretta, Crystal, Don Williams, the Oak Ridge Boys … all of them. I’m certain those shows planted a seed and made me think I might like to one day produce country music shows myself. When our friends at the Country Music Association began thinking ahead last year to its 60th annual awards broadcast, I thought back to those years when the awards were held at the Opry House and asked the CMA if we could celebrate those years with a special Opry show before Lainey Wilson hosts this year’s awards later this month. I was thrilled when they excitedly obliged.

 

There’s a whole lot from the era to celebrate. The award-winning songs from the period (1974-2004) have proven timeless, and memorable moments from those shows are now forever included in country music’s history books. As we prepare to mark the “Opry House era” of the CMA Awards Sunday night, here are just a few of my personal favorite moments from back then.

 

MY INTRODUCTION TO SONGWRITERS

The very first time I ever considered that country songs might not necessarily be written by the artists who sang them may have been when Don Schlitz won CMA’s Song of the Year for “The Gambler”. Walking on stage, Schlitz looked nothing like anyone else on stage or in the crowd of the Opry House that night. “This is the first song I’ve ever had recorded, and I find this all very encouraging,” Schlitz deadpanned. When Schlitz later won the same award for Randy Travis hits “On The Other Hand” and “Forever And Ever, Amen” I began to understand country music had its songwriters, and then it had its songwriting giants. What a joy it was more than 30 years later to hear our friend Don perform those songs and others for Opry audiences night after night… and get a standing ovation almost every time.

 

YOU DON’T KNOW ME; I’M THE OPENING ACT

I vividly recall watching as the Opry House crowd leapt to its feet in 1990 in support of an all-time personal favorite, Mary Chapin Carpenter, after she took a chance on delivering her ode to opening acts everywhere. Years later, Carpenter recounted the night for the Opry’s 4,000th Saturday night broadcast, a show celebrating country comedienne Minnie Pearl. “The very first time I ever appeared on the CMA Awards,” Carpenter said, “I sang an original, albeit irreverent song about being everybody’s ‘opening act’. The song was about the travails of being treated like you were invisible, or more to the point, as if you were chopped liver. In an earlier, club-audience version, it was a bit nastier, and it had been necessary to clean it up for television. I had my doubts about whether or not it would translate. I didn’t know if by tidying it up, it would lose its bite, you know, just kind of lay there. As it turned out, at the end of the performance the audience stood up from their seats—I was stunned! But what really, truly astonished me was the sight of Minnie Pearl herself, standing there in the wings, with both arms outstretched waiting to greet me as I walked offstage, and her smile as wide as the world. The imprimatur of Miss Minnie made up for every sorry opening act slot then, now, and forever in this ol’ girl’s career.”

 

WHERE WERE YOU?

While millions across the country watched from home as Alan Jackson debuted his “Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning” two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I was honored to be sitting in the mezzanine of the Opry House with a view of Jackson’s fellow artists watching his performance and hearing the words he was singing for the first time. The moment was absolutely stunning as every single person in the Opry House felt like part of a very special community—one that extended beyond the venue and to everyone tuned in across a country that continued to hurt.

 

A HOP, SKIP, AND A JUMP

Everyone loves an excited winner, and perhaps no one has ever shown her jubilation over a win more than Deana Carter when Ricky Skaggs called her name in 1997 as Single of the Year winner for “Strawberry Wine.” Her barefooted leaps across the stage ended in a leg-wrapping leap into Skaggs’ arms.

 

JUST THANKS

Deana Carter’s authentic jubilation with her ’97 win was seemingly matched in authenticity by Vince Gill’s quiet acceptance speech for his Song of the Year win for his now-classic “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” written after the deaths of Keith Whitley and Gill’s brother. Gill simply shared that the song was too difficult to talk about and said simply and genuinely, “Thanks.”