A Word on Words; 3903; Leila Grossman

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with johnson ellen johnson npr and welcome once again to award on words or infer

treated as we take a look back at the history of nashville with wonderful images while an acclaimed photographer bob ryan is the book is a stark photos of national in the fifties sixties and seventies in the book features blobs vintage photographs of city landmarks and milestones life and character the tower on the construction the opry at the ryman harvey's department store many many more and with us to help navigate the history of music city is laila grossman the owner of the arc of the bob wren garverick lana welcome to world war ii thank you for having me so nice to have you here and banking they're nervous very brilliant take these pictures partially how did you come to purchase i was working in a photo lab that was connected to bob graham it's a stadium greenhouses komodo photo and i was trying to be a photographer as well and i would visit behind to his studio and ask if i could help in some way and

the woman who was running it joanne miller who's wonderful and still with us i would always say we can't do anything right now because mr grannis is ill they had just begun to diagnose and the ball's timers although he was still working it was that kind of gray area and down which i would visit and try to help them when it came time for them to sell and they asked me if i would buy me and then well we're excluded devon for us and he was a part of and then yes he was a photographer at a school and you know and he turned into a long marvels so that the eye you know he'd just then the island we saw that the image of that billboard that you put up to promote and sell and he was a chubby man and always had a smile and says and then dump and he could catch you and candid moments graham <unk> is that would just make your family happy you know

and he's also glad you get is the show we take some looks some of some of these images and talk about little bit of that that is the elements in its fields first skyscraper and i don't know when the what time of the year we took that photograph where it's pretty clear that it's at dusk the lights are just coming on it would be very much like bob runners to go down there in a moment from foreign he knew the lights would help decorate and the end is at risk the creating the other talking about those photographs of all or was it too late for him really to relate to what he had done it was to lahey and irony and it's i've come to also honors that i've learned a lot from his family and from jo ann miller one of the most interesting things i think and i hope it's correct historically is that he went to the army i

believe in nineteen thirty nine and because he was heavy set they gave him the camera and i think that's how his career began because they want to put him on the front lines he was not athletic no he was never outlive you were made a nice guard are tackling those days but the body was much happier on the sidelines photographing that he was playing context boards on but he he had a headache like big antlers and nuns in his pictures sell for dale sullivan well our baseball park hi anil of natural and the days when we were on one large over and they're they're in their lair that's where you're having an arm and one of the we'll be on our own over a bad call and they were playing against the little rock that day not surprising number one in on the

action and captured they'll draw with his mouth open there's another photograph of that this is a crowded van gogh state in what you think this is you know what this is and this is when billy graham visited and a lot of people have commented on this photo a lot of people that i had one customer come in recently that were called being there as a child and the photo actually brought back memories of his mom and he tears up a little bit and he bought a copy of it just or you know cherish the memory a little further when you look out and you can see right there that's that night the first miners of the crusade the billy graham crusades see those lights up there are lots of lights given a buildup to deploy night football as billy graham crusade brought those lights the vanderbilt and former porn on bandit was on the saudis and governs

song saturday nights but as the great again i i have heard people say there was never an article like there was that first night of the billy graham crusade where everybody poured down out of the palestinian armed and then there is a photograph that still as well as well we don't see it very often from that direction that's union station and say the shin writer let's shed was was a symbol of historic preservation accepted its aren't falling down finally finally became our story oh nobody really sort of pseudo know i was sort of sorry to see it i thought it was really interesting a lot of people i know that i wanted to go and it was a quite a country big

controversy about i mean they're worth i can remember we have lettuce of the other very upset when we suggested that maybe tennis and suggest well maybe you know it's gonna fall down somebody pratchett knock him down home might upset the store closes all over the all over the city buttons then there was some in those days when bobby was photographing it was and it was still a passenger station and that's a that's called the dixie flour and it was sung he was trying to gain through follow st louis and i guess those are us some older those soldiers are very they had a global center ella which way around but it's interesting that bobby

he won places where you wouldn't expect them you know this isn't trying to an end with some soldiers entered it happened several times a day in those days yes it was right there it is right there with a song you know what that is high place but harvey's department store i love that for the house eleven low completion the view looking down church or an arm which is so i mean just today in the distance son of a competing department store called angel and kane song was on the side of the street and gang song and armies are great competitive and fred harvey who said stuart neville completion captured across the alley a weekend and a little billing call the next huge part of youth party in song but there

was a lease and fred army still is hostile index and pencil lead them will cost richard street and rebuild or liver cells on the charts for a bit of history that was smart but let's go back to david richard goes over personal memory aleppo but that's david st anything there you're in those deal now and when i found that shot i didn't find it completely interesting that people have commented on this town what it is and i don't recall why i know what it i got my first haircut from sentimental film as a child and my dad of shale layer that they are every saturday night for years and years and year is that barbershop in that picture it is that barbershop in that picture that says as say health and i think sam bodman and so having you come and bring these you thought of rose takes me back to where i was a long time ago

that's what's wonderful about these voters and that's why i really wanted this book to be done now is so that people who would remember these voters had a chance to visit with them the main flow of the rio is a really it's a triple may not appreciate you from the eyes so appreciative when you know mommy and then low and body was out in the snow and that photograph is looking toward downtown nashville from twenty years and west and just before your broad street yeah i wondered a lot about this focus a lot of people talk about this blizzard and how they had to walk miles to get food or they ran out of water it was a real red cross type of incident and i wonder why mr grannis was there and how did he or even why was he had not spied i've wondered about that will you know and if you could see

just a variety you'd see a cathedral of reincarnation where he went to church yes sometime david and so it will might've been the body was in church and looked up the thing about the picture that that's reminiscent for me is the sky in those days no fuel have almost constant small initial sort of built a little ball and so we rely mostly on coal and young adults and also train at union station you could smell national you smell what's more around every day in the paper the tennessean when a little box was launched barksdale home so balmy saw the city in many different ways and then

and then we have the capital i'm trying to think of a forty minute shopper it must be filled with its influence in toronto seems it would have had to have been hijacked to have gotten an angle right would eliminate an enemy i guess it could possibly come to life and joe should tell us that angle of the line confirmed that come from inner jackson want to learn the job though did you read the caption that ashley have ended the captions for the book to their writing that i said that there is a time capsule under there from nineteen twenty seven that they're gonna on earth than ninety thousand twenty seven and you know in nineteen twenty one year old boy is that you know i didn't know that that's coincidental will easily in that time capsule know i'm not a gun deaths on a lover of in july made any news anywhere it's all wonderful if you brought these pictures only

just the nigerian megan oh man think back about his misspent years and nobody ran as a misspent youth and as we go along we'll soon little bit of where that will lead to come on board i think that's a great shot and i'm wondering is that might not been taken from here yes i think so and the story goes that he had a friendly is a pilot and that they played poker together were good buddies and occasionally they would go up an mr grannis we get these great aerial photos that was all for fun i'm sure he was paid to photograph a farm here in their aerial view that he did a lot of wonderful aerial views of green hills of the west and downtown i don't know if anybody else was doing that at that time i think i've never seen a photograph in the book

slightly different angle and my guess is a different time nobody would recognize this as a thin church yeah unless they recognized thats series before it moved to our fifth street and just fun it is the paramount theatre where in those days every saturday there was something all my clothes what was it was a club for kids at that in her and so they had thirty cents a day the streets are fair downtown streetcar for owning literally to is kind of a popcorn popeye globe was a wonderful love the movie always a serial killer jeffrey comedy is a fellow who played the organ you

you come over i know for plenty already and surprises and i would be surprised renters hadn't been in there you know the series was located there until long i think until mid sixties and then it moved down to a fifth straight to a place where there's no buildings no longer that going in bismarck north korea on their tears and there is the opry the grand ole opry and to choose if you are a little bit fact it's interesting body knew what historic landmarks were and took full advantage above the camera angles that's of course were going up from prison braun and you know it's probably a day on the floor of the opry and no crowns but

the boys also one by now i think is interesting about that is that across a strange some sort of like triple x or some sort of you know undesirable place no one ever comments on that but it seems strange to me that here is this beautiful church building and then right across the street is some undesirable also though the period in a man named anas sixties when la military with roundtrip says obama was adult years and pork chops right there is no way you know there's a movement across the country to fire mr that sort of commerce to an initial arisen and that's what the and that's what happened here in a balmy also alone in a tennis he loved the fact that he was in his accent is

unknown and there's a photograph of them they are that's a inside the maxwell says the ballroom lack formal photo where it is appearing and on bet you if you come out and some phone bank when a luncheon he yeah he was a great entertainer but grannis again love all those country music stars as this photograph michelle williams that's the original language i don't really know when those places do i think that at that time the opry had these wonderful painted backdrops leave that's what that is so using a long stage the opry well years in i believe performance as rebel operation's of jos

places were his volatile and promising and hey good lookin what i love about it is he's pursing his lips together which is sort of the face that you see when you see him singing he makes that face <unk> granite scott it beautifully i think that's one of the most iconic images in you know it's just it's an image of an icon to die is the fourth time in twenty twenty nine is over for a lot he was drawn to music of the culmination of hank williams and for over a remarkable and there is national zone she's a graduate of you for us to an intimate dinah shore fannie rose shore was originally and she was dynamite like why policeman that i love the city of ways the sour his name is willard jet really knew him i remember

him well at an assistant police before or two policemen before retiring and it was news he was a handsome man figure and you won't have that cap just a little johnny angola know their prism as the outfits to i can tell you the wooden haul haven't walked alongside them as your service and this is a good country music story itself and unnerving as a drama you know president nixon came to the ryman i'm a roll way i always draw a renewal of republican jennifer government it did and he was always promised us later that night when president nixon came to town he'd and why the president to know you know when the president went up there with them but with a lot of light on tehran will live short committee for graft the head and

only now have at least four filing cabinets full of negatives and then a closet full of one set of sort of begun to catalog i've been going through them for the thirteen years or so that have had the studio and i don't think i've even touch the surface of your mother's looking posters who they actually picked them publishing picked him yes a lot of them i had already scanned and more arty fresh that they actually sent two people and i went through my catalogs and they picked the selections puerto rico isn't a great job with this takes me back and i don't know who made the selections on i congratulate you for letting them do it because it makes one difference they have a formula that seems to work and i've had such great comments on this book people love it and everybody has a story although i do now that many stories as i do imagine not open a book about and that's where i got my

first heard the degeneracy of the grandest dance yes he was known to be a very light on his feet he was a band that seizure growth that's norwegian about like barbara perry was something amazing and what was amazing about it was he was quite edgy last month here feel that looks like and looked like a place that was just hit by floods and you know it was that's aptly named that's opera then under construction by mating after all these years you say that photograph again i think bobby must've been up on their planned with his friend that day and at the end of that sharp and again he was fascinated by country music and that's it it's like he was

everywhere the us economy a little flame one of those at the old sixteenth it was there for a while it was there when i moved home and then the lenders as a place to have our love to be a precious asset for liz allen and the number of allowing their word there were i call joints all also the mystery but very nice joins and they went in there at the volatile it was a law is all go and it was a number and in those days we didn't have like above a dry and so anybody won them from italian almost there but in blue linen but in nashville one umbrella valley for one down the volatile moment and just up the block was those maxwell so tell us the lobby in mary the ground on a holiday i can't remember which resonates

across majestic nineteen sixty one percent say yes because i was in washington and learn about it on television watching television and i heard that one person that died the only men in solitary who had been rewarded for my grandfather solace the gravy and that's that's looking into my class from bastyr many presidents save a life whilst it was a great there's a great historic hotel the value almost chameleon of art that is another place where dollars routinely violated i wondered about this is his cross keys is that right art that he'll do the same restaurant no prosecution restroom just down from a hermitage building solar this was a doable as key to love and thats the war is standing behind the counter and an eighty

eight it was a long while and he was a great citizen he was widely respected and everyone in new london and a great personality but here in to join the violent along every night now so let's go on to finally little brusque and i think i may be wrong but no rise to bring the ground i think this was taken before somebody out there in gaza the more money you know i think that's a new one i think that's not i could be wrong but i think that was nineteen sixty one and i believe that the old high school burned in the fifties say exactly right don't think i was a reporter and covered the knighted burton of that within sixty one that's british journalist similar to that now and then finally the valley mentioned

still lehr now great tourist attraction really will says underage of a big issue please state it when you know i did it and i'll be doing older and go through rows of those wonderful engrossing mysteries are more money <unk> i'd like to i'd like to put out a book eventually that is just the grandest nashville as seen through the eyes of the grandest cause he has sixty years really of photos that are just really unwell sixty seven because fifty years of letters and there's such a span of time and places and i would really like to do another book someday would just as voters again well i'll be here and if you do have to come by and it would run out of time thank you so much for being a thank you for having me thanks to all of you for watching for word on words and johnson and the war he really did