Like many sidemen, Bob Moore left his mark on the Opry--and vice versa - Bob Moore doesn't remember the very first time he heard the Grand Ole Opry. Growing up
in Nashville, the Opry was like humid summer days or hackberry trees--a natural part of the landscape. "From the time I was a little boy," Moore says, "I knew I wanted to be a musician, and I knew I was going to be on the Grand Ole Opry. I never thought anything else."
    Moore not only met his goal of becoming a musician and playing the Opry, but went on to become one of the most recorded musicians ever, with over 17,000 sessions to his credit. As a member of Nashville's "A-Team" of crack studio musicians, Moore's bass playing has graced hundreds of hit singles, from country to R&B, from pop to rock 'n' roll. But to Moore and many other musicians of his generation, the Opry remains the "mother church" of music.
    "I used to listen to it on the radio, but the first time I saw the Opry live, I was around 6 or 7. I remember going to the Tabernacle out on Fatherland. I was really impressed with it at that young age. I still can tell you who played that night, and I can close my eyes and still see it."
    Moore's association with the Opry would continue when he started his own shoeshine business at the age of 9. Setting up at the corner of Fifth and Broadway, he was literally working in the shadow of the Opry when it moved to the Ryman Auditorium in 1943. "Many of the musicians lived at the Clarkston Hotel," he recalls. "The main one I can remember getting started with was Jack Craig, Ernest Tubb's bass player. We became friends, and I used to ask him all kinds of questions about how to play a bass."
    Moore's first appearance on the Opry would follow in just a few years. At the age of 15, he landed his first professional job as a musician playing for Opry regulars Jamup & Honey. "I played what they call a `walk on-walk off´ for them on the Grand Ole Opry, and I made $3. Boy, I thought I was hot stuff then."
    The Opry would continue to be Moore's Saturday-night home as he landed regular jobs with Paul Howard and His Arkansas Cotton Pickers and then Little Jimmy Dickens. Moore also learned the sideman's secret to increasing his income on the Opry: "There wasn't a house band on the Opry, but there were always enough people hanging around to play. I would hang out at the Opry after my spot with Dickens. Somebody would use me on their spot, and then ask me back for their next one. We'd go back in the dressing room and run over the song a couple of times, and then hit the stage. You'd start with one and pick up another and before you knew it you had eight or 10 spots every Saturday night."
    Some artists would use their regular road bands on the Opry, while others would only use only one or two members, depending on the pool of regular sidemen to fill out the ranks. This freewheeling atmosphere continued until the late '60s. Former Opry president and general manager Hal Durham recalls when the practice changed: "A `spot´ [or half-hour segment] was a show. If you played one song in a show, you got paid the same amount as if you worked every song in the show. The musicians would work it out where different ones would play different songs, so instead of having 10 or 12 musicians on a show, you´d have 20.
    "Bud Wendell decided he had to get a handle on that when he became Opry manager in 1968, and he narrowed the number down. Bud designated certain people who could play for artists who didn't bring their own band. If an artist had a road band, they could bring their band on with them, but [the musicians] wouldn't be allowed to play on other spots.
    "It eventually evolved into a staff-band situation, but it wasn't called that for years. Nobody was in charge of the group. They were kind of a co-op, and they developed their own arrangements." Over the years, regular members of the "house band" included such greats as Harold Weakley, Jimmy Capps, Spider Wilson, Leon Rhodes, Buddy Harman, and many others. These and the hundreds of other sidemen who have appeared on the Opry over the years have supplied the foundation that every Opry performance was built upon. It's easy to forget the people behind the stars, but for every lead performer that has "played the Opry," there are many more who can lay the same claim--even if their names weren't listed in the program.
    Bob Moore's regular appearances on the Opry dwindled after he joined Red Foley's band in 1952 and moved to Springfield, Mo. When Moore returned to Nashville, most of his time became occupied by session work. But the stamp the Grand Ole Opry left on him is still felt almost 50 years later. "It was my home," Moore says. "I can still close my eyes and walk from the dressing room to the stage. And I can still smell that hardwood floor of the Ryman."

Visit Bob Moore's Web site at www.nashvillesound.net, and visit the Bob Moore and Grady Martin Fan Club Web site at www.rockabillyhall.com/BobGradyFC.html.