Bluegrass Nights - Ricky Skaggs And Kentucky Thunder With special Guest The Whites

The Ryman Auditorium, the Mother Church Of Country Music and the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, is sacred to the history of country music.

Especially important to the history of the Ryman is its significant role in the history of bluegrass music. Although Bill Monroe had been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1939, it wasn't until a Saturday night in December of 1945 when bluegrass music as we know it today was born when a twenty-one year old young man by the name of Earl Scruggs stepped up to the WSM microphone on the Ryman stage playing the five-string banjo with a three-finger roll. This was the final ingredient in what we now know as bluegrass music.

Although it wasn't known as bluegrass at the time, there was something very unique and special about this edition of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys with Earl Scruggs which also included guitarist/lead singer Lester Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise, and bass player Cedric Rainwater. Their weekly broadcasts on the Opry at the Ryman Auditorium over WSM, their Columbia recordings, and personal appearances through early 1948 provided the architectural ground work for all of bluegrass music.