Twenty-six years ago, on Feb. 29, 1992, Travis Tritt fulfilled a lifelong dream when he became an official member of the Grand Ole Opry.
“The Grand Ole Opry stands still as one of the biggest traditional gods, if you will, that we pay homage to in the business,” Tritt writes in his 1994 autobiography, Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof. “In country music, there’s not a single person whose grandfather or father doesn’t have a story about listening to the Grand Ole Opry around a little small AM radio or one of those big console AM radios when they were a kid. My dad told me about it when he was young. I listened to the Grand Ole Opry, watched it on television when I was young. Every person in country music, I think, has got a story like that.”
Tritt’s Opry induction occurred while his single “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin'” — a duet with Marty Stuart from Tritt’s sophomore album, It’s All About to Change — was climbing the charts. The invitation was a pleasant surprise to Tritt, who never imagined joining the revered organization.
“I always thought that I was too rowdy and too much of a rocker, or too heavily influenced by the other side, to be asked to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry,” he admits. “When I was inducted, I was the youngest member that had ever been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. I guess the added excitement of never thinking that I would be there mixed with what tremendously high esteem that that particular institution is held in by my family, and by all the people that I know, to be a part of that institution is just absolutely one of the coolest things that I could ever be associated with.”
On the same day that Tritt was inducted into the Opry, Trisha Yearwood made her debut appearance on the Grand Ole Opry stage. She performed “She’s in Love With the Boy.”
The Grand Ole Opry Through the Years
This Article Was Originally Posted at www.TheBoot.com
