In their final televised performance, The Fruit Jar Drinkers, among the longest-tenured of the Grand Ole Opry's "original" cast, furnishes the music for the dancing of The Tennessee Travelers on March 14, 1981. Introduced by Hank Snow, guitarist Hubert Gregory, a member of the group since 1945, leads the band as Kirk McGee, the band's primary fiddler throughout its last three decades of existence, plays "Saturday Night Hop", one of his favorite square dance fiddle tunes, unrecorded other than in live performances such as this. Opry Staff Band members Weldon Myrick (steel guitar), Billy Linneman (bass), and Harold Weakley (drum) augment the Fruit Jar Drinkers for this performance. The Fruit Jar Drinkers would eventually perform for about 2 1/2 more years, until Kirk McGee's death on October 24, 1983, ended the band's Opry tenure, just a couple of months shy of 56 years of continuous Opry membership. Hubert Gregory would perform with the Opry's last-remaining "original" old-time band, The Crook Brothers, until his retirement from performing in 1986.
One year-to-the-weekend after the death of Ralph Sloan, Ralph's brother Melvin Sloan leads The Tennessee Travelers, the dance team Ralph brought to the Opry in 1952. Melvin would give his name to the group in August 1982 (known as the "Melvin Sloan Dancers" from that point until Melvin's retirement in 2002) and The Tennessee Travelers are the direct, unbroken link to today's Opry Square Dancers.
15 мар 2023
