Ernest Tubb Record Shop

Ernest Tubb was already an Opry star when he opened a record shop on Commerce Street on 3 May 1947 and, the same night, began broadcasting a live show from inside it. The Midnite Jamboree went out on WSM immediately after the Opry finished, which meant a listener in Ohio or Alabama who had stayed up for the Opry simply kept listening. In August 1951 shop and show moved to 417 Broadway, across the street from the mouth of the Ryman's back alley, and the arrangement held for twenty five years: the Opry ended, the crowd walked down the block, and the Jamboree started at midnight in a record store with a small stage at the back. Tubb kept the shop open late for the same reason, so that people who had driven in for the Saturday night broadcast had somewhere to go afterwards and something to carry home. The show was where performers Nashville had not decided about yet got a warm room. Elvis Presley played it in 1954 after a flat reception at the Opry, and Tubb put Loretta Lynn on it in 1960 on the strength of her first single. In June 1961 Lynn sang I Fall to Pieces on the show for Patsy Cline, who was listening from a hospital bed after a car crash, and dedicated it to her on air. The Jamboree left Broadway in June 1976 for a bigger store on Demonbreun Street and moved again in 1995 out to Music Valley. The Broadway shop was sold in 2022 after a seventy fifth anniversary broadcast, and has since closed, changed management and reopened more than once; the record counters are on the building's upper floor now.