By Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin
By Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin
Growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Nashville Palace was always a mysterious, forbidden place to me. For all I knew, this country bar and Opry-singer hangout was the den of original sin. I didn't quite understand what happened inside that barn-wood building, but I knew it didn't jibe with my family's Free Will Baptist ways. How was I to know that it wasn't anything more dangerous than a tourist Mecca where country fans listened to honky-tonk music (sinful) and drank (even more sinful)?
The Nashville Palace, on Music Valley Drive, was just a couple of miles from the house where we lived in Donelson, and within site of the pool at the Fiddler's Inn Motel, where my siblings, cousins and I ate bologna sandwiches, drank Capri Suns and terrorized motel guests each summer. We knew that our family had something to do with the Palace—when my grandfather died, my mother and her siblings had inherited the land the Palace sits on, along with a share in the business—but we also knew that nice people didn't go into places like that. The same piece of property, which had once been the family farm, also boasted clean-living businesses like the Fiddler's Inn Motel, and my relatives were quick to lay claim to these.
Later, when I was a young adult and a bar columnist in Nashville—something that also didn't jibe with my Baptist upbringing—my mother would occasionally urge me to stop in the Palace and mention it in one of my columns. "Maybe some people will read about it and go there," she'd say, hoping to increase her bottom line. She and I were some of the only members of our family in open rebellion against church rules, and by then I'd given up on convincing anyone that I was righteous, anyway. All I really cared about was being trendy and cool. So when my mother would suggest that I write about the Palace, I'd always say something about a conflict of interest and leave it at that. But the real reason I didn't go was that the Palace was neither trendy nor cool. I wanted no part of a bar that I imagined was full of tube tops, tan lines and Fan Fair passes. I had little reverence for all that had happened there, and little patience to listen to the stories.
Later, when I was a young adult and a bar columnist in Nashville—something that also didn't jibe with my Baptist upbringing—my mother would occasionally urge me to stop in the Palace and mention it in one of my columns. "Maybe some people will read about it and go there," she'd say, hoping to increase her bottom line. She and I were some of the only members of our family in open rebellion against church rules, and by then I'd given up on convincing anyone that I was righteous, anyway. All I really cared about was being trendy and cool. So when my mother would suggest that I write about the Palace, I'd always say something about a conflict of interest and leave it at that. But the real reason I didn't go was that the Palace was neither trendy nor cool. I wanted no part of a bar that I imagined was full of tube tops, tan lines and Fan Fair passes. I had little reverence for all that had happened there, and little patience to listen to the stories.
So I never went in. Not even once. Not even with the promise of free drinks. In fact, the very first time I walked through the doors was in March. My mother, Mary Frances Rudy, and my uncle, Frank Rudy, had just bought out their partners and become the sole owners of the Nashville Palace. They outbid Gaylord and Wal-Mart for the property, which included a strip mall. Then they closed the Palace to a flurry of news stories about the legendary honky-tonk shutting its doors. The day after it closed, I went inside for the first time. We had a big family party with all my aunts, uncles and cousins, and all of our many kids. The walls were lined with pictures of the countless people who'd performed there, and I recognized most of them. As my young cousins sang karaoke onstage, I imagined what it would've been like to see Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard there in front of me. I thought about George Jones sitting at that very bar. And I felt a little, well, ashamed that my family had just closed down a local institution with so much history.
At that point, it did appear to be the end of an era. My mother and uncle weren't sure what they were going to do with the Palace. Tourists had stopped coming in when the Opryland theme park closed in 1998, and the bar hadn't made money in years. If people headed out that way, they were much more likely to go shopping at Opry Mills. Country music had moved back downtown, thanks to the revival of Lower Broad.
When they took over Tootsie's in the mid-'90s, Smith and Taylor capitalized on a new generation of country music fans, young listeners who'd suddenly found out that Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams were as cool as Kurt Cobain and Snoop Dogg. (Way cooler, actually.) Just look up and down Broadway on any weekend night now. There are lines to get into honky-tonks, and people wearing beat-up cowboy hats are body-to-body in the bars.
Call it serendipity, but the same week that they bought the Nashville Palace, my mother was out one night and met Steve Smith and John Taylor, the half-brothers who own Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. And that's when the wheels started turning.
When they took over Tootsie's in the mid-'90s, Smith and Taylor capitalized on a new generation of country music fans, young listeners who'd suddenly found out that Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams were as cool as Kurt Cobain and Snoop Dogg. (Way cooler, actually.) Just look up and down Broadway on any weekend night now. There are lines to get into honky-tonks, and people wearing beat-up cowboy hats are body-to-body in the bars.
Knowing this from lots of, ahem, "field research," my mother had an idea. Why not bring back the Nashville Palace? And who better to help her than the guys who brought back Tootsie's?
So they got together and formulated a plan to reopen the Nashville Palace by the end of this year. It will once again be a honky-tonk capable of hosting big-name country artists and after-Opry shows. Together with my mother and uncle, Smith, Taylor and their partner Al Ross want to bring the cache of old Nashville country music to an audience that will likely include both septuagenarian Opry fans and tattooed hipsters.
In time, they hope the Music Valley Drive area will rival downtown, appealing especially to guests at the area's many hotels who want to hear live country music but don't want the hassle of going across town. They're even talking with other people about opening more bars in the area. The mood is decidedly optimistic. Having dodged the Wal-Mart bullet, stores are opening up in the same strip mall that just five months ago was empty and being used for storage.
So now, on the verge of this revival, I'm eager to hear the story of the Nashville Palace—and to tell it to other people. I'm older, wiser and soberer, and I'm proud of all that happened there, just a few miles from my childhood home.
Jake was the son of a Swiss immigrant father and an Ohio-born mother of German descent. He had inherited his family's passion for making sausage, and he passed that passion on to his own sons, Frank and Dan. This was during the 1920s and '30s, and life was hard on the farm; Frank and Dan began working as soon as they were large enough to share in the chores.
To know the whole story of the Nashville Palace, you have to go back more than 150 years, when my ancestors, the Clees family, came to America from Luxembourg. The first Clees here lived in the Bells Bend area; they operated a large sawmill and ferry, Clees' Ferry, which is also the present-day name of the neighborhood (though local maps and signs refer to it as Cleece's Ferry). The ferry was a success and, in 1885, two of the brothers, Joseph and Francis, moved to the Pennington Bend area to start another ferry.
Joseph and Francis passed down that land to their heirs, and my great-grandmother Katherine inherited the middle section, farmland that included most of what is now Music Valley Drive and past where Briley Parkway runs today. She had already married my great-grandfather, Jake Rudy, and together they established their home on the property.
Jake was the son of a Swiss immigrant father and an Ohio-born mother of German descent. He had inherited his family's passion for making sausage, and he passed that passion on to his own sons, Frank and Dan. This was during the 1920s and '30s, and life was hard on the farm; Frank and Dan began working as soon as they were large enough to share in the chores.
By the time Briley Parkway was built in the 1960s, taking 10 acres of Rudy property, there was very little traditional farming there. Then, in the 1970s, several more acres were sold to the company that developed the Opryland theme park. By that point, Frank and Dan had already sold Rudy's Farm to a company that was later bought by the Sara Lee Corp.
After their father died, in 1936, they took over his practice of making sausage, using the same recipe that had been passed through their family for more than a century. They even grew a special breed of corn so they could package and sell the meat in the husks. In time, the sausage became popular and, in 1944, my grandfather and his brother were able to devote themselves full-time to making sausage. The company Rudy's Farm was born.
Frank and his wife Oleda had four children, Caroline, Patricia, Mary Frances and Frank. Mary Frances, my mother, was born in 1949. (I mention her birth year because I know she'll forgive me.) For years their family struggled financially; they didn't even have indoor plumbing until the 1950s.
But eventually the company thrived, and the success of Rudy's Farm is inextricable with the popularity of the Grand Ole Opry. My grandfather used his daughters, dressed alike in red-checked dresses, to literally sing the praises of pork on the stage of the Opry and on radio and television. Nashvillians of a certain age still fondly recall watching the Rudy Sisters' TV commercials. With the national attention that came from advertising on the Opry, Rudy's Farm sausage was soon being shipped to restaurants and grocery stores across the country.
By the time Briley Parkway was built in the 1960s, taking 10 acres of Rudy property, there was very little traditional farming there. Then, in the 1970s, several more acres were sold to the company that developed the Opryland theme park. By that point, Frank and Dan had already sold Rudy's Farm to a company that was later bought by the Sara Lee Corp.
All of this history in that little bend of the Cumberland helped pave the way for Nashville Palace, which opened its doors in 1974 to a first-night crowd of 3,000 people. It was the same year that the Opry moved from the Ryman to its present spot. "Every star in town was there," according to John Hobbs, who owned the bar with two partners. (Dan and Frank Rudy were partners in a separate corporation that owned and leased the land to the Palace.) Ralph Emery emceed the opening-night festivities, and Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn, Nashville Mayor Beverly Briley and Davidson County Sheriff Fate Thomas were all in attendance.
The place got off to a roaring start. In the first year alone, Jerry Reed played there more than 30 times, and a pretty 17-year-old named Lorrie Morgan got first-time jitters on the Palace's stage. The daughter of country singer George Morgan, she already had her own band, which included famed steel guitarist Roy Wiggins, and she continued to perform there regularly for five more years, before her own career started to take off in the 1980s.
Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, all of Sawyer Brown, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Dean, Eddy Arnold, Jimmy Dickens, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Patty Loveless and many, many others were also performers or frequent customers during the Palace's 31-year run. Dottie West had been scheduled to play there the Monday after she was killed in August 1996; Webb Pierce was such a regular that he had his own cooler in the back of the bar; Porter Wagoner came by often because it wasn't far from his house. (He's my grandmother's neighbor on Pennington Bend, and he once let my brother borrow one of his sequined suits for show-and-tell at our elementary school.)
One day in the early '80s, a young man named Randy Traywick came in, wanting to perform but willing just to wash the dishes. He later changed his stage name to Randy Ray and finally to Randy Travis, and the rest is—well, let's just say that as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, this man's career will be linked to the Nashville Palace. Other unknowns also found success there, and you can count on Hobbs to tell a story about every one of them. Ricky Van Shelton came in one time, when Hobbs and country veteran Johnny Russell, writer of the Buck Owens hit "Act Naturally," were hanging out. The young singer told them that he wanted to be a star and asked them for advice; a few months later, he had a hit. One night, Hobbs says, Russell turned to him and asked, "What did I tell Ricky to do? I need to do that."
An unknown Alan Jackson, who then worked in the mailroom at Opryland, used to hang out at the Palace, too. He told Hobbs that he wanted to sing and would wait around until they needed someone to get onstage. He often slept in his van in the Palace's parking lot, waiting for his chance. "We'd go out and wake him up when it was time," Hobbs says. "He was a heckuva nice guy." Two years ago, Jackson did a live radio broadcast from the stage of the Nashville Palace. When the DJ asked him why he chose the Palace, Jackson said because it's where he got his start.
"We never 'made' a star," Hobbs says, "but we gave a lot of artists an opportunity for exposure. A singer has to do a lot of work in smoke-filled bars to be a good singer."
One night, Boxcar Willie came in and saw a 67-year-old woman named Anna Mae Johnson singing onstage. "My God, Johnny, where'd you find her?" he asked Hobbs. Boxcar Willie suggested they bill her as "The Singing Grandma," and soon Granny Johnson, with her homespun presence and reverence for country music tradition, became a mainstay of the Nashville Palace. When she died, she was to be buried in her home state of Ohio, but she had it written in her will that she wanted the funeral procession to stop by the Nashville Palace so all her old friends could say good-bye. On the way to the airport, the undertaker stopped the hearse in the Palace's parking lot, and everyone came out to pay their respects. The undertaker gave Hobbs the wreath that was on her casket, and that wreath hung over the cash register for 10 years.
Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, all of Sawyer Brown, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Dean, Eddy Arnold, Jimmy Dickens, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Patty Loveless and many, many others were also performers or frequent customers during the Palace's 31-year run. Dottie West had been scheduled to play there the Monday after she was killed in August 1996; Webb Pierce was such a regular that he had his own cooler in the back of the bar; Porter Wagoner came by often because it wasn't far from his house. (He's my grandmother's neighbor on Pennington Bend, and he once let my brother borrow one of his sequined suits for show-and-tell at our elementary school.)
"It was an interesting, interesting place for many years," Hobbs says. "It wasn't nothing to see stars in there. I could go on for 100 hours and not tell you all the things that went on in there."
By February 1993, Smith had bought Tootsie's and began work to restore it. Today, it's hard to imagine that he had to rebuild most of the walls; he was able to save the legendary signatures and notes that have been a hallmark of Tootsie's for the past 45 years. He also had to rebuild the floors, ceilings and roof, rewire the electrical work, and install new sound systems and stages. But he tried hard to preserve the original feel of Tootsie's, and most people think he succeeded.
Hobbs is quick to credit the demise of Tootsie's in the 1970s with the subsequent rise of the Nashville Palace. Tootsie Bess, the first owner of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, died in 1978. "We took over a lot of the business that Tootsie's had," Hobbs says. So it seems fitting that two bars with such interconnected histories now share a management team.
The history of Tootsie's is every bit as illustrative as that of the Nashville Palace, but it all would have been lost if the bar hadn't been saved. Hank Williams, Faron Young, Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Jim Reeves and Ernest Tubb are among the many who used to walk the famous 37 steps from the back door of Tootsie's to the Ryman Auditorium. Back then, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge was known as the "green room" for the Grand Ole Opry. These days, the back room of the bar is used to showcase up-and-coming country talent; Terri Clark was discovered after playing there.
Tootsie Bess bought the bar, which had been called Mom's, in 1960. One of her first moves was to hire a painter to freshen up the outside of the building. She returned to find that he'd painted the bar the color of an orchid, and so "Tootsie's Orchid Lounge" it became. Both Tootsie and her establishment were known for helping struggling writers and performers who came there to drink, commiserate and be inspired. But hardly a pushover, she kept a hat pin handy, given her by Charley Pride, so she could jab unruly customers when they got out of line.
After she died in 1978, the bar changed hands several times before eventually falling into disrepair. By 1992, the best plan anyone had for Tootsie's Orchid Lounge was just to knock it down and develop the land into something else.
When Steve Smith came home to Nashville in 1987, after spending 11 years running a nightclub in New York City, he heard that Tootsie's was set for demolition. Walking in there for the first time, he saw that the only light in the whole bar came from one 100-watt light bulb dangling in the middle of the front room. But by the light of that bulb, he could just make out the smoke-covered pictures of Willie, Hank, Patsy, Loretta and some of the other country legends who had once whiled away their time and money in Tootsie's. He wandered through the bar, noticing that squatters had set up cots in the back room. But when Smith came back down the stairs into the front room, he saw five or six tourists standing by the bar, looking around. Over the next few months, as he continued to drop by the practically abandoned building, he was amazed to find that, despite its condition, country music fans were still visiting Tootsie's. That's when he realized the bar could be saved, and profitable.
So there's about to be a new-old country bar in Nashville. It's got garish signs, barn-wood paneled walls and more stories per square foot than just about any place in town. Lord knows how many songs were written there, how many marriages started—and ended—there, how many babies were conceived, if not there, then as a result of being there. It's the kind of place that, well, country songs are written about.
By February 1993, Smith had bought Tootsie's and began work to restore it. Today, it's hard to imagine that he had to rebuild most of the walls; he was able to save the legendary signatures and notes that have been a hallmark of Tootsie's for the past 45 years. He also had to rebuild the floors, ceilings and roof, rewire the electrical work, and install new sound systems and stages. But he tried hard to preserve the original feel of Tootsie's, and most people think he succeeded.
"Steve saved downtown," his half-brother Taylor says. "When Opryland [theme park] closed, everybody thought Nashville would dry up. Steve Smith made Tootsie's a sponsor on the Grand Ole Opry, and he advertised it worldwide. He told people why they should come to downtown Nashville."
And that's what he hopes to do for the Nashville Palace and the Opryland area, but there's a lot of work to be done. The boom days of the late 1970s and '80s have long since long gone. There are still a number of empty buildings and storefronts.
Things are starting to look up, though. Businesses are gradually moving back in. Store by store, there's a retail industry growing there, including Cooter's Place, a general store owned by Ben Jones, the actor who played Cooter on TV's The Dukes of Hazzard. The fact that there's a remake of the show in movie theaters right now certainly can't hurt business.
The strip mall that my family bought in the Nashville Palace deal has become something of a hub for the wedding industry, with several wedding-related stores and a huge bridal-gown gallery now open. Restaurant owners are making plans to renovate existing space in the area, and there are even plans for at least two large nightclubs to be built near the Opryland Hotel. By this time next year, Nashvillians may very well have another entertainment district, one with a distinctive country influence and a whole lot of history.
Taylor says he and Smith hope to have the Nashville Palace, outfitted with a bigger stage, new sound system and room for about 100 more people, open for business in the next four or five months. They're hopeful that they, and the Nashville Palace, can do for the Opryland area what they, and Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, did for Lower Broad 10 years ago. "Music City is Music City wherever you are in the city," Taylor syas. "The Nashville Palace gives us a place to take the young acts we develop downtown and take them to a bigger stage."
So there's about to be a new-old country bar in Nashville. It's got garish signs, barn-wood paneled walls and more stories per square foot than just about any place in town. Lord knows how many songs were written there, how many marriages started—and ended—there, how many babies were conceived, if not there, then as a result of being there. It's the kind of place that, well, country songs are written about.
