The Lucy Opry was founded in 1967 by Doug Cole, Joe Taylor, DeWitt (Dee) Franklin, Bill Beck and others, who were looking for a place to play Bluegrass Music in Memphis, Tennessee. They had been meeting on a weekly basis at each other's homes for several years, until the gatherings had become too large to handle the numbers of people who showed up. They needed a "place" to play that could accommodate all the pickers and family members, as well as any interested spectators that might show up.

One day in 1967, Doug Cole was out looking for a practice field for the Little League Baseball team that he coached. He happened to drive by a frame building called the "Brunswick-Lucy-Woodstock Community Center" in the Lucy Community, on Pleasant Ridge Road near Millington in rural North Shelby County, and thought it might be a good place to use for a picking venue. He contacted the owner of the building and found out that the rent for the building was $4 per night. Since the "price" was right, Doug got together with his musician friends and they began to rent the building on a weekly basis. The weekly meetings were always on Friday nights, so that the musicians could be free to play "paying" jobs on Saturday nights. They paid for the building rent by "passing the hat". At first, the only people to show up were the pickers and their families and the "rent" was paid by the musicians themselves. Eventually the word got around about the music and the family atmosphere and people began to come just to watch the informal shows.

For a long time, the shows alternated between Bluegrass one week, and Country Music the following week. This was done to preserve the acoustical aspect of the Bluegrass Music and to allow the Country pickers a chance to hear and learn Bluegrass music. Most of the musicians just came to "Jam" on the Bluegrass nights, and soon the informal "Jam" sessions came to attract as many people outside in the parking lot, as did the "shows" inside. Many people found out that if they wanted to learn to play a Bluegrass instrument and learn Bluegrass tunes, that there were plenty of people in the parking lot who were willing to show them what THEY knew.

Some of the musicians that played at Lucy in those early days were Doug Cole (Guitar), Bill Beck (Mandolin), Joe Taylor (Mandolin, Guitar, Electric Bass), Robert Dickey (Guitar, Fiddle, Mandolin) and his wife Myra (Bass), Archie Fondren (Guitar), Hollis Floyd (Banjo), Troy Castleberry (Mandolin), Bob Bowen (Banjo), Steve Barnes (Guitar), DeWitt "Dee" Franklin (Guitar) and his wife June (vocals), Johnny Moon (Guitar), David Boots (Banjo), David Bryant (Guitar, Banjo), Carl Collins (Banjo), Tommy George (Banjo), Donny Catron (Guitar), Mack Boyd (Dobro), Gerald Goforth (Dobro), Don Halford (Bass), Bill Blackard (Guitar), Roy Blackard (Mandolin and Guitar), Jim Light (Fiddle), Art Sweat (guitar and mandolin) and The Morton Twins, Greg (Guitar) and Randall (Banjo).

The early days were pretty crude and every one just pitched in and did what was necessary to run things. There were no "sound men" because the only sound system was a thrown-together sound system that wasn't much more than a "guitar" amplifier with a couple of stand microphones. You just adjusted the thing so that it was "loud enough" and hoped the feedback "howls" weren't too bad. They did sell some snacks, like popcorn and soft drinks, but the cost was nominal, and the "concessions" were operated by the musicians' wives and girlfriends. The shows were simple, consisting of 30 minutes to an hour by each band that showed up that night, AND a regular "free-for-all" jam session. Completely unrehearsed, this "free-for-all" consisted of most of the "yard pickers" and most of the people who played with the organized groups, and was as much fun for the audience as it was for the musicians themselves. Response from the audience was spontaneous and enthusiastic and members of the audience sometimes showed their appreciation of the music by getting up and doing a furious "Buck" dance. I fondly remember Donna Morton (sister of the Morton Twins) and Freeman Gray "cutting a rug". No one received any pay for their performance.

In the Spring of 1973, a large article on "The Lucy Opry" was published in the Memphis' Commercial Appeal and the attendance at Lucy jumped. Doug planned a special event for the Friday night after the Commercial Appeal article appeared - he contacted well-known fiddler Vassar Clements to come and play for the crowd. I discovered Lucy as a result of this article and saw Vassar on stage at Lucy that Friday night. I was hooked, big-time! Soon, there were so many people coming on Friday night that the parking lot could not accommodate all the cars, and people were parking down at the feed store, about half a mile from the community center building. Also, the ground next to the "BLW Community Center" building, got pretty soft when it rained and many cars got stuck. If you were a Lucy "regular" (like I was), you carried a tow chain with you so that you could help pull people's cars out of the muck and mire.

Since I was employed as the Chief Engineer of a little Public Radio Station in Mississippi, WNJC FM 90.1 in Senatobia, Mississippi, operated by Northwest Mississippi Junior College, I began to tape record the programs for broadcast on Saturday evenings. I was only interested in the Bluegrass part of the show and usually taped enough for two, half-hour shows. I did very little editing of the tapes; I just presented the programs as they were done on stage. Soon, I became interested in playing an instrument, and decided that what I needed to learn was the Dobro, since I had always listened to the Dobro and Steel Guitar players that were on the Bluegrass and Country records of that time. I was especially fond of the Dobro playing of Burkett "Uncle Josh" Graves, who played with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs as a member of their band, the Foggy Mountain Boys; Beecher "Pete" Kirby ("Bashful Brother Oswald") a long-time stalwart of Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys; and Harold "Shot" Jackson, who played Dobro with Johnny and Jack's Tennessee Mountain Boys, as well as Steel players like Leon MacAuliffe, "Little" Roy Wiggins, Jerry Bird, Bud Isaacs, Buddy Emmons. Jimmy Day and John Hughey.

Soon, there were several regular bands playing at Lucy. These were "The Dixie Bluegrass Boys", "The Wildwood Rhythms", "The Tennessee Gentlemen", "Dee and June Franklin", "Jim and Sheila", "The Downhome Grass", and "The Morton Twins". The "Dixie Bluegrass Boys" consisted of Doug Cole, guitar and lead vocals; Bill Beck, mandolin and vocals; Don Halford, bass fiddle and vocals; and Carl Collins, banjo. "The Wildwood Rhythms" consisted of Robert Dickey, fiddle, guitar and vocals; his wife Myra Dickey, bass fiddle and vocals; Donny Catron, guitar and vocals; Archie Fondren, rhythm guitar, Tommy George, banjo; David Bryant, banjo and guitar; Maurice Crouse, clawhammer banjo, and Mack Boyd, Dobro. "The Tennessee Gentlemen" consisted of Troy Castleberry, mandolin and vocals; Bob Bowen, banjo and vocals; Joe Taylor, electric bass; and Steve Barnes, guitar and vocals. "Dee and June Franklin" had DeWitt "Dee" Franklin on guitar and vocals; June Franklin, vocals, and usually had other pickers, such as Doug Cole, Joe Taylor, Don Halford and others to back them up. "Jim and Sheila" consisted of Jim Phillips, guitar and vocals, and his wife Sheila, vocals. "The Downhome Grass" consisted of Randall Butler, guitar and vocals; Keith Butler, bass and vocals; Roy Blackard, mandolin and vocals; Reggie Williams, fiddle; and Carl Collins, banjo. "The "Morton Twins" consisted of Greg Morton (guitar) and Randall Morton (banjo).

Sometime around the Spring of 1974, it was decided that The Lucy Opry should move, because the owner of the building kept raising the rent. He had gone up from the original $4 a night to over $8 a night! Therefore, The Lucy Opry was moved to another location at 869 Fite Road, where it stayed for many years. At this time, the alternating Bluegrass and Country format was abandoned, concentrating on Bluegrass only.

The early days of Lucy were marked by a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie. Every one pitched in and helped. We all set up the sound system, the chairs, swept the floors and picked up the trash. At first, we gathered up all the folding chairs we could find and set them up before each show, and we all pitched in to dismantle everything AFTER each show. Then, we all went out to eat! We finally got some old church pews to use for the shows. These church pews came from a church building that was being torn down. The pews were sawed up to fit in the back of a pickup truck so they could be hauled to the building. Our next task was to build a "stage" that would support the numerous pickers in the bands and in the on-stage "free-for-all" jam sessions. Sometimes, there were as many as thirty people on that little stage, so you can bet that it was solid! Peter Smith and some non-picker volunteers, Virgil Leppard and his buddy Ronny, built the stage one Saturday morning and it was still there when we left. It was just too dang heavy to move!

The open friendliness of the musicians was a major factor in encouraging new pickers to develop their skills. Many times a new "picker" would approach one of the more established and experienced musicians, to find out how HE "did" it. Many of the regular performers, like Carl Collins (banjo), Bob Bowen (banjo), Doug Cole (guitar), Joe Taylor (mandolin), Mack Boyd (Dobro), Robert Dickey (fiddle) and others spent extra time with beginning musicians to show them the various techniques and "licks" associated with that particular instrument. An important part of the learning process was the jam sessions in the parking lot and on the stage. This is where aspiring pickers were given a chance to show what they had learned and were given a little bit of a boost by playing on stage, in front of an audience, with the "veterans". A partial list of the beginners' names at this time would include Mike Kisner (fiddle), Peter Smith (guitar), Paul Copeland (Dobro), Charles Cook (mandolin), Lucky Donahoo (guitar), Tommy Burroughs (mandolin and fiddle), Richard Bailey (banjo), Mike Morton (banjo), Randall Butler (guitar), Keith Butler (guitar and bass), and David Boots (banjo).

The first band I played with at Lucy was made up of Billy, Terry and "Pop" Winsett (Billy played guitar and sang lead vocals, his son Terry played mandolin and sang, and his father, "Pop" Winsett played banjo, fiddle and sang). I played the Dobro, Reggie Williams played fiddle and Dean Daneworth played upright bass. Other musicians who played with us from time to time were David Fitzhugh, banjo, and Hal Womble, banjo.

Then, we built an outside stage, so that the pickers could play outside on nice Spring and Summer evenings. This lasted until the mosquitoes got so bad we couldn't stand it, and the show moved back inside, for good. Our next "improvement" was to "pave" the parking lot. We actually didn't pave the parking lot - what we did was arrange for some waste material from a nearby processing plant to be deposited in the yard. This waste material was the by-product of a near-by Chromium processing plant. The raw Chromium ore, in VERY large chunks (boulders the size of an automobile!), was dipped in an acid bath to remove the rock in which the Chromium ore chunks were imbedded. This left a very dense waste material that was similar to macadam paving. It was hauled to the Fite Road building parking lot via dump truck, deposited, and then spread by hand over the grounds, using shovels, hoes, and rakes. This surface did an excellent job of keeping the parking lot in good shape when it rained. It was intact and in good shape when we finally left several years later.

We began to book various professional groups such as Bobby and Sonny, the Osborne Brothers; Bill Harrell and the Virginians; and The Nashville Grass. These groups were booked for special shows and their shows were opened by the various "regular" Lucy groups. The regular Lucy Shows were still free admission, with "passing the hat" being the only means of paying the rent, and no "Lucy" group was paid for playing a regular Lucy Opry show.

We stayed at the Fite Road location until 1981 or 1982, when the owners of the building decided they didn't want us, and so we moved to the Kiwanis Club building in the Raleigh area of Memphis. This building, although small, had a nice stage and was in fairly good condition, unlike the Fite Road location. We stayed at the Raleigh Kiwanis Club until 1983, when we moved to the UAW Union Hall, near the International Harvester plant in Frayser (North Memphis), where the Opry stayed until January of 2000.

This period of time also marked a period of time when Lucy groups played many different venues around the Memphis area. There was the Schlitz Memphis Music Festival, which took up the entire downtown Main Street area of Memphis over a whole weekend. This festival featured area bands and musicians as well as nationally-known acts, and was a showcase of Jazz, Blues, Country and Gospel Music. Plus, there was plenty of cold Schlitz beer, free for the asking. The newly-renovated Orpheum Theatre hosted a series of Country Music and Bluegrass performances (sponsored by WMPS AM-680) that included such acts as The Kendalls, Ronnie McDowell, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, Rex Allen, Jr, Charlie McCoy, and Connie Smith. Each performance was "opened" by a regular Lucy Group such as The Dixie Bluegrass Boys, The Tennessee Gentlemen, and the Down Home Grass.

For several years, The Lucy Opry ran a Bluegrass Show at the Mid-South Fair. This show featured the local Bluegrass bands and a Fiddle and Band Competition, as well as established acts such as Gunilla Hutton, "Nurse Goodbody" and Archie Campbell of the popular nationally-syndicated TV show, "Hee Haw". There was also the Memphis in May Festival, which included a large, world-class Barbecue Cook-off at Tom Lee Park on the banks of the Mississippi River. Coinciding with this Barbecue Cook-Off, The Lucy Opry ran a Fiddle Championship staged at the Orpheum Theatre, just up the hill from the Barbecue Cook-off. Many nationally-ranked fiddle players such as J. T. Perkins, Dick Barrett, Frazier Moss, Billy Mitchell, Mark O'Connor and Randy Howard competed. Judges were professional fiddlers, such as Art Davis, Speedy McNatt and Merle "Red" Taylor. This marked a period of time that I call the Lucy "Glory Years".

Some time in the middle or late 1980's, Doug Cole began to do sound system work for outdoor bluegrass festivals and the operation of the Lucy Opry was taken over by Joe Taylor and Ken Bingham. They ran it for several years, until Doug "retired" from the sound system business. During this time, the format changed, going from a weekly performance using non-paid performers with expenses being paid by passing the hat, to that of professional and "semi-pro" groups who were paid by admission ticket sales. The Lucy Opry stayed at the UAW Union Hall until January of 2000, when it moved to the Bartlett Performing Arts Center, in Bartlett, Tennessee. The last show at the Harvester UAW Union Hall was a special one, featuring Randall Hylton and Eddie and Martha Adcock. The "old timers" who ran the show for many years, Doug Cole, Joe Taylor, Lewis Gillespie and others "retired", turning the operation of the show over to Beth and Will Mays. The format was changed even further, finally settling on a more-or-less monthly performance, utilizing only paid, professional performers. The "amateur" aspect of Lucy has continued under the banner of The Memphis Area Bluegrass Association, who sponsor several weekly "picking" events and who also help run the show at the BPAC. Regarding these changes, Doug said, "It's in good hands".

Each performance of the Lucy Opry opens with a filmed presentation of the "early days" at Lucy, taken at the old Fite Road site. Doug Cole narrates this presentation. It is a fitting tribute to the tradition that was established by Doug and the other "pioneers" of The Lucy Opry, and serves as a bridge from the present to the past "Glory Days" of Lucy.