The First Star of the Grand Ole Opry

By Dr. Wornie Reed, Ph.D

The first star of the Grand Ole Opry was Deford Bailey, an African American. This fact would undoubtedly surprise most people. But that’s the way it is with American history that is about African Americans.

Bailey was an influential harmonica player in country and blues music. Born in 1899 into a farming family in rural Smith County, Tennessee, Bailey lost his mother soon after his birth, and his aunt and her husband became his foster parents. Polio struck Bailey at age three. He recovered, but the disease stunted his growth. He grew to only four feet ten inches tall.

His aunt gave him a harmonica, which he learned to play at age three when he was bedridden for a year with polio. Bailey grew up in a musical family that played what he called “black hillbilly music,” a tradition of secular string band music that drew upon the same core repertoire shared by rural black and white musicians alike.

Bailey moved to Nashville in 1918 and spent the next six years working odd jobs, including stints as a houseboy, drugstore errand boy, and elevator operator. Meanwhile, he learned jazz, blues, and pop songs from recordings and from live shows he attended in local theaters.

On a trip to Dad’s Auto Parts to buy parts for his bicycle, Bailey met store owner Fred “Pop” Exum, who was fascinated by Bailey’s harmonica playing and began featuring him on his small radio station, WDAD, as soon as he started the station in mid-September 1925. Here, Bailey met harmonica player and string band leader, Dr. Humphrey Bate, a country doctor who began performing over Nashville’s powerful WSM not long after its October 1925 debut.

Within months, Bate persuaded Bailey to come with him one night to appear on the show, then called the WSM Barn Dance, and then convinced station manager George D. Hay to let Bailey perform without an audition. By June 1926, Bailey was making regular appearances, and Hay soon dubbed him “The Harmonica Wizard.” Bailey was a dazzling performer, whose renditions of “Fox Chase,” “Pan American Blues,” and other tunes became harmonica classics. For the next fifteen years, Bailey remained one of the program’s best-loved stars.

One evening in 1927, Hay spontaneously renamed the “WSM Barn Dance” while introducing several down-home performers immediately after a classical music program broadcast over the CBS radio network. Hay introduced Bailey, whose train-imitation piece “Pan American Blues” recreated the sounds of the L&N Railroad express train he remembered from his boyhood. In his introduction, Hay explained, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present ‘The Grand Ole Opry.’” Thus, Bailey helped inspire the familiar name of America’s longest-running radio show.

During the ‘30’s, Bailey toured constantly with several bands, playing tent shows, county fairs, and theaters across the country, always returning to the Opry Stage for Saturday night’s performance. Segregation forced him to eat and sleep separately from his fellow white performers.

When Roy Acuff came to Nashville in 1938 as an unknown, Bailey gave him his first break. He agreed to help publicize Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys by touring with them over the next couple of years, directly contributing to Acuff’s future stardom. Acuff became known as the “King of Country Music.” Bill Monroe also utilized Bailey’s talents and drawing power to publicize his band, and Monroe became known as the “Father of Bluegrass Music.”

The Opry fired Bailey in 1941, though the reason remains unclear. Opry host “Judge” George D. Hay said Bailey refused to learn new music. Actually, DeFord knew dozens of traditional songs that he had grown up playing and had written many more.

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“It’s a terrible thing for the company to say terrible things like that about me,” Bailey told Biographer David Morton. “I can read between the lines. They saw the day coming when they’d have to pay me right, and they used the excuse about me playing the same old tunes.”

Bailey rarely performed in public after leaving the Opry. Instead, he expanded his shoe shine business he had started with his uncle in 1933.

Deford Bailey was eventually elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005, 23 years after his death in 1982.