Jeannie Seely performs on the Grand Ole Opry stage during the venue's first audience-less broadcast
Jeannie Seeley is used to sharing a room with over 4,000 people each evening. As a regular host at the Grand Ole Opry, Seely sings, entertains crowds, and introduces acts to the Opry stage. The venue’s regulars are her family, and this week, she planned on taking to the stage for a joint 80th birthday and album release celebration.
"I’m just so homesick for the Opry, for the people, the building, for the show,” Seely says. "When I come from backstage and look at the audience going all the way to the rafters, I want to do everything I can to help them have a good time.”
Instead of spending her 80th birthday in front of a crowd at the Opry, Seeley will take to her patio with a glass of wine, reminisce and watch the Cumberland river run. Many music listeners, with an excess of time during the pandemic, have turned to the music of their pasts for comfort. Jeannie’s done the same. On August 14, she plans to release an album of musical memories called An American Classic. The album includes both new compositions and newly-recorded versions of hit songs from Seely’s career. It’s a collaboration with other songwriters and friends, a chance to reflect and revisit life moments in song.
“Country music has changed, but I look at it differently than a lot of artists from my age,” Seely says. “I believe in change. Every generation changes us, and everyone has to bring their own style, their own songs, their own ideas. If you just copy everything that’s been done, you lose the artistic slant.”
The music industry has surely changed over the course of Seely’s career. Imperial Records hired her in the early 60s as a secretary. Soon, though, she wrote “Anyone who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand),” which was picked up by singer Irma Thomas and hit the Billboard charts; the song’s best chart year was actually 2018, after TV soundtracks picked up the soul tune. Seeley signed as in artist in 1966, and moved to Nashville, with only $50 and a Ford Falcon to her name.
Seely found her home in Nashville when she joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1967. She was the first female country artist to host half-hour segments at the Opry, and the first to wear a miniskirt on its stage. Seely says it was an accident — she didn’t know the Opry’s dress code, and girls in Los Angeles wore miniskirts everywhere. But once she did it, other women were able to choose their own wardrobes.
An American Classic touches moments across Seely’s career, and creates new ones with old friends. Among the memories are “Don’t Touch Me” and “Can I Sleep in Your Arms Tonight, Mister“ — hits from 1967 and 1974, respectively, written with her then-husband Hank Cochran.
Some of the album’s new works were years in the making. Seeley had a close friendship with Dottie West, an influential country singer-songwriter who died in 1991 after a car accident. West left a journal of song ideas that Seely, Steve Wariner and Bobby Tomberlin drew from for “If You Could Call It That.” In the song, Seely ventriloquizes her old friend, who would often sigh and respond with the phrase.
Among the album’s actors are Nashville songwriters young and old, like Penn Pennington and Mitch Ballard, Paul McCartney, and Don Cusic. A new composition by songwriter Dallas Wayne, “Not A Dry Eye in the House,” is performed as a duet with Willie Nelson.
Seely hopes, some day, to perform these songs at the Opry. After the mayor implemented stay-at-home orders in Nashville, Jeannie worried about the venue before anything else. She immediately emailed Scott Bailey, the president of Opry Entertainment Group, and begged him to let them host a broadcast that Saturday, March 14. She didn’t want to break the venue’s 95-year record. The Opry’s live Saturday night show has been cancelled only once, during a Nashville curfew imposed after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. These days, with Nashville back under Phase 2 restrictions as of July 3, the Opry continues to stream its Saturday show.
“It signified so much, that the circle won’t be broken,” Seeley says, referring to the song that either kicks off or closes Opry performances. “That first night we worked without an audience, I didn’t perform any different. We have an audience, they’re just all over the world.”
