Tuesday July 21, 2009, was a great day for WSM, the Grand Ole Opry, Country Music, and the city of Nashville, as all were represented at The White House in Washington, DC.

Getting an invitation to play for the President Of The United States at the nation’s most famous residence (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) is one of the highest honors imaginable.

Grand Ole Opry stars Charley Pride, Brad Paisley, and Alison Krauss, along with yours truly, received this invitation to come to Washington as part of The White House Music Series. This new six-part series, of which Country Music was the second installment, will feature different styles of music that are popular in America including Jazz and Classical.

Part of this series focus is on music education. A select group of Middle and High School students from around country were chosen for this unique opportunity to come to The White House for a workshop held in the State Dining Room and be close up to some of the greats of our time in the music business. In addition to hearing Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley both sing and play that afternoon, they watched as each artist was asked questions by Jay Orr from the Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum who moderated the session. Questions were then taken from the students in the audience. There was some wonderful music and a lot of great knowledge shared in this intimate setting which those attending will remember for a lifetime.

This day was a collaborative effort between the Grand Ole Opry, Great American Country (GAC) television, the Country Music Association, and the Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum.

The workshop ran from 2 until 3 PM, and was recorded in both audio and visual formats. This was followed by artist interviews with the press and on-camera conversations with Storme Warren for GAC, and separately with myself for WSM and www.wsmonline.com. The individual interviews with Charley Pride, Alison Krauss, and Brad Paisley can all be found here on our website for your viewing. All three of these artists had been to The White House previously. Charley had been there the most (four or five times—he couldn’t recall exactly), Alison performed there twice-- once for President Bill Clinton and later for George W. Bush-- and Brad had been a guest of George W. Bush twice but had not performed there previously.

Following the interviews, a sound and lighting check with each act took place for an upcoming evening concert in the East Room for the President, his family, and invited guests.

We were free to basically roam the whole main floor of The White House, from the East Room where the concert would be held, to the adjoining Green Room where the control board was set up to record the performance which also served as a holding room for all of Brad Paisley’s group’s equipment, to the Oval Room, continuing into the Red Room, and finally to the State Dining Room. While there wasn’t any of our equipment in the Oval, Red, or the State Dining Room’s, when we each had a spare moment it was fun to walk around and look at all the pictures on the walls and the beautiful furnishings in each room. Talk about history—we were in the midst of it! It’s one thing to see the residence on television or in pictures, but it’s completely different when you’re there in person. Even though I had grown up in Maryland only twenty-two miles away from The White House and had been in the building on several occasions through the years, I was struck this time by how much smaller all of the rooms seemed—especially The East Room.

In June of 1939, country music was first performed at The White House in the East Room by the Coon Creek Girls, then one of the most popular radio acts of the genre. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the President at the time. Mr. Roosevelt was still President when Wade Mainer (one of the very important country music stars of the 1930’s and early 1940’s) appeared there in 1942. However it would be thirty-one years before country music returned to The White House. On March 17, 1973, country music came back to the East Room of The White House with Merle Haggard & The Strangers, along with Grand Ole Opry stars the Osborne Brothers—who were the first bluegrass group to ever play there. Since 1973, both Country and Bluegrass Music have been played at The White House many times. However, in most instances the performances have been outdoors on the South Lawn of the residence. For any performer to appear in the East Room, it is the "formalist of the formal" settings and it is considered to be the ultimate honor. On July 21, when our package of entertainment appeared there, it had been six months and one day since Barack Obama was inaugurated President. It was also the first time that Country Music had been performed at The White House in his administration.

The participants of the evening show and the technical crew were all ushered to a buffet dinner held outside to the East of the residence under two large tents. We returned inside to a reception held in the State Dining Room that extended out into the Grand Foyer. About 150 people were there--everyone from Presidential Cabinet Members, Governors, Senators and Representatives, as well some music industry executives, special invited guests, and of course the media. Both Tennessee Governor Philip Bredesen and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean were in attendance, as was U.S. Representative Jim Cooper from Tennessee.

Prior to the evening’s concert at 7:30 PM, those who were scheduled to have a quick meet and greet and photograph with President Obama gathered in The Red Room. The group photograph representing the Grand Ole Opry would include Gaylord Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Colin Reed, Steve Buchanan—Vice President Of Media And Entertainment, Vice President and Grand Ole Opry Manager Pete Fisher, Grand Ole Opry Technical Services Manager John Mire, and myself. We were the first group introduced to the President and the First Lady and he shared with us that he loved Nashville and was very happy we were there. We lined up quickly with the President in front of a table in the center of the Oval Room for a photograph and we were ushered out to make way for the others behind us to be photographed. It was the first time that I had seen or met a President in person. It all happened so very quickly. Processing what we had just been a part of, I was surprised how tall the President and the First Lady (with high heel shoes on) both were. I'm 6' 3" tall, and we all seemed to be about the same height.

The time came for the concert, and the President was introduced. He made a short speech from a podium with the Presidential seal from center stage that had a built-in teleprompter. The East Room appeared to be full to capacity. People were assigned where to sit and were seated in groups of four around small round tables. The stage area was on the South side of the East Room while television cameras were set up on risers at the opposite end of the room.

Following President Obama’s speech, he took a seat at a table not more than eight feet from the front of the stage with the First Lady, her mother, and their two daughters.

I came out and introduced Alison Krauss & Union Station Featuring Jerry Douglas. Alison’s angelic voice is amazing and it was easy to realize why she is the most awarded female Grammy Award winner to date. Thus far, Alison has won twenty-six Grammy’s. Her voice was so captivating that you could have heard a pin drop as everyone was listening intently. Equally impressive was her great fiddle playing, which is not praised in print nearly often enough. The group performed a total of four songs—one of them being “I’m A Man Of Constant Sorrow,” which featured Dan Tyminski, the Union Station guitarist and vocalist who has been in that spot now for fifteen years. Even though they hadn’t played together much in the last year, Union Station and Jerry Douglas proved once again that individually and as a collective unit, they are among the best musicians in the country.

Returning to the stage, I shared some historical facts about the history of Country Music there at The White House while the stage was being reset to make way for Brad Paisley’s band who would accompany both Brad and our next guest, the legendary Charley Pride. Charley is one of a handful of individuals that transcends the country music genre--in that his name is known in households in the United States that don’t even listen to Country Music. Charley has received two of the highest honors awarded to a Country Music artist—membership in the Grand Ole Opry as well as induction into the Country Music Hall Of Fame. Charley’s four timeless songs and his great voice reaffirmed to all of those present that he’s one of the all-time greats of our industry.

The President was clearly having an enjoyable evening. He was smiling a lot, moving back and forth in his seat to the sounds he was hearing, and keeping time with the music by tapping his hand on the table, and patting his foot as well.

The final act of the evening was Brad Paisley. People often refer to Brad as a triple threat—in that he's a wonderful songwriter, phenomenal musician, and a great singer, too. He certainly proved that at The White House. As the great music keeps emerging from this enormous talent, he has thus far tallied fourteen Number One hits—the last ten of those have been consecutive Number One hits in a row. He's the reigning CMA and ACM Male Vocalist Of The Year, and on the evening of The White House show, Brad had the Number One country album in the nation with "American Saturday Night." One of the four songs Brad did that night featured Alison Krauss on their hit version of "Whiskey Lullaby."

Like Union Station, Brad Paisley’s band members have remained constant over the years and have always been a very cohesive unit musically. They are wonderful musicians who not only did their usual first-rate job behind Brad, but stepped up to the plate to provide the perfect musical accompaniment to Charley Pride with a sound that was very reminiscent of Pride’s RCA Victor hit recordings.

Alison, Charley, and Brad each received a thunderous standing ovation following their respective performances. The lighting and sound (both on-stage and in the East Room) could not have been better.

At the conclusion of the show, the First Family was escorted out of the room while the President stayed behind to shake a few hands and sign a few autographs—including a program for Opry Manager Pete Fisher that will be displayed in the Grand Ole Opry Museum.

As President Obama was making his way across the room in front of the stage, he saw me standing in front of the doorway he was going to exit through into the Green Room. He stopped and said to me, “I’ve got to stop and talk to you.” Thus, we started a conversation which lasted one-and-a-half to two minutes. He was extremely pleased with the show and was very complimentary of all of us on what he felt was a job well done. He said, “I promise you that I will be coming down to Nashville and to the Grand Ole Opry.” The President was genuinely sincere in all that he said to me, and I feel every confidence that he will in fact be coming to Nashville. I also got a strong sense from what I observed and what he said that there will be more country music shows taking place at The White House during his administration.

Following the program, the guests, minus the President and First Lady, all went into the Oval Room for refreshments. The participants went over into The Red Room and visited and took a few more pictures. Everyone in attendance was raving about the show they had just witnessed.

In conclusion, the whole experience at The White House was an anointed day. It could not have gone any better. Judging from the people who were involved that we’ve chatted with since, the day came and went much too quickly for all concerned. It was a memory that each of us will treasure for the rest of our lives.