In July, when Ricky Skaggs surprised Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) artist Steven Curtis Chapman with an invitation to become an official member of the Grand Ole Opry, it marked a full-circle moment for the Paducah, Kentucky native. Chapman grew up listening to the sounds of the Grand Ole Opry each week on his father’s radio. Chapman’s father ran a small music store in Kentucky and on the weekends, he would play music with friends including dobro player Jack Martin, who played with bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt and performed on the Opry.
After receiving his invitation, one of the first things Chapman did was call his parents back home in Kentucky to tell them the news.
“I said, ‘You’ll never believe what happened tonight.’ And [my father] said, ‘I know exactly what happened–I’m still crying. I was listening.’ He was so proud and excited,” Chapman recalls. “They are going to make plans to be there and [I’ll have] my whole family to celebrate the moment. It’s going to be very special.”
When Chapman is officially inducted as the 239th member of the Grand Ole Opry on Friday (Nov. 1), he will be the first CCM artist to receive that honor.
Chapman made his Grand Ole Opry debut at 18, as a performer at Opryland USA theme park, singing Skaggs and George Jones songs during a matinee. He estimates he’s appeared at the Opry 50 times in the last four decades.
Over the last 40 years, Chapman has become one of CCM’s foremost architects, thanks to songs including “The Great Adventure,” “For the Sake of the Call,” “Dive” and “Love Take Me Over.” He’s had nine projects reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums chart and earned five Grammys and nearly 60 GMA Dove Awards.
“We felt it was time for Steven to become an Opry member, looking at his incredible career and his connection to the Opry since he was a teenager. He loves every style of music that’s played out here and can play that style of music,” the Grand Ole Opry’s senior VP/executive producer Dan Rogers tells Billboard. “He brings his own genre to the show, and his credentials are impeccable, but we often say when someone’s inducted, that at its core Opry membership is about relationships — relationships with fans of the Opry, between members and the between artists and the ideal of the Opry.”
Chapman’s induction also acknowledges the deep shared history of faith-based songs and country music. Over the decades, country artists have recorded gospel albums or included gospel songs in their sets—an approach that counterbalances country music’s songs of alcohol, broken relationships and cheating, highlighting the duality of Saturday nights are for sinning and Sunday mornings are for redemption that the genre is known for.
Hank Williams, Sr.’s “I Saw the Light” traces a spiritual conversion story, while Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me” is a plea to a higher power for grace and mercy. The country music anthem “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” looks at death through a spiritual lens. Dolly Parton’s “Silver and Gold” and “He’s Alive,” the Brad Paisley/Parton collaboration “When I Get Where I’m Going,” Johnny Cash’s “Jesus Was a Carpenter,” George Strait’s “Love Without End, Amen,” Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel” and “Something in the Water,” Garth Brooks’s “Unanswered Prayers,” Morgan Wallen’s “Don’t Think Jesus,” and Jelly Roll’s “Need a Favor” all weave in sentiments of faith.
“One of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar was [Cash’s] ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’” Chapman notes. “Songs [with lyrics about] ‘I was on my way to prison… but I saw the light,’ you have to have both of those. And that is the Grand Ole Opry in a nutshell, those songs are so baked into the DNA. You listen to Bill Monroe and all these songs… ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken.’ ‘I Saw the Light,’ ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ those songs are synonymous with the Opry.”
One of the Grand Ole Opry’s earliest homes-from 1943 to 1974- was the church-turned-music venue the Ryman Auditorium. The building, originally known as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, was built by riverboat captain Thomas Green Ryman and opened its doors in 1892, seven years after Ryman attended a tent revival in Nashville led by evangelist Samuel Porter Jones. Ryman was inspired to build the Union Gospel Tabernacle as a place people could join in worship (the building was later renamed the Ryman Auditorium).
In 1994 came the first incarnation of the Ryman’s “Sam’s Place—Music For the Spirit,” (named after Jones), which welcomed some of the top names in Christian, gospel, bluegrass and country. Two decades later, Chapman helped revive the series at the Ryman.
In 2008, the Grand Ole Opry released How Great Thou Art: Gospel Favorites From the Grand Ole Opry, a collection of country artists’ Grand Ole Opry performances of gospel standards. For the past four decades, the Opry House has also hosted the annual Sunday Mornin’ Country, with country artists expressing their faith in song.
In recent years, several CCM and Gospel artists have made their Grand Ole Opry debuts as the Opry continues welcoming a breadth of genres to its stage, including Wilson, for King & Country, We the Kingdom, CAIN, Blessing Offor and Naomi Raine. Opry inductees in recent years have included bluegrass/southern gospel group The Isaacs, bluegrass icon Rhonda Vincent and comedians Henry Cho and Gary Mule Deer.
“Half of our crowd is here because they love country music and the other half is in Nashville and they know the Opry is a microcosm of the music of this town,” Rogers says. “We try to program the best country music show we possibly can, but also give them a real taste of the different styles under the country music umbrella.”
Lady A’s Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood will induct Chapman, while Friday’s performance lineup will also feature Skaggs, Carly Pearce, Russell Dickerson and alternative rock band Colony House, which includes Chapman’s sons Caleb and Will.
One of the songs Chapman will perform is “The Grand Ole Opry Stage,” a song he crafted for the induction, which chronicles his journey.
“The song ends with the lyrics, ‘We’ve all been invited to the unbroken circle of the Grand Ole Opry stage,’ and I’ll go into ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ and my family and Ricky Skaggs and any artists that are there that will join me and finish out my induction by singing that song,” Chapman says, adding, “Of course, I’ll be a blubbering mess by the end of it, just taking it all in.”
