DeFord Bailey

…inducted as members: harmonica player DeFord Bailey (one of program’s earliest performers), singer Charley Pride (1993), and singer and guitarist Darius Rucker (2023). Pride was the first Black solo singer to appear at the Opry, in 1967; two years later singer Linda Martell became the first Black female artist to…

…performed country songs; harmonica virtuoso DeFord Bailey, for instance, had been a feature of the Grand Ole Opry as early as the late 1920s and blues-oriented songsters such as Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt also sang country or country-flavored repertoire. When Pride relocated to Nashville in the mid-1960s, however, there…