Soap Box

As I sit here, it is a little after 4:30 AM on the morning of Tuesday, March 29, the year of our Lord 2016 and it will be a day like no other I've ever lived in my soon to be 80 years.

I am flushed with many different emotions, excitement, anticipation, expectation, humility and a humble gratefulness to my God for granting me another desire of my heart, one like no other.

About 10 o�clock this morning it will be announced that I will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

I have known for a couple of weeks but was bound by secrecy so that the Country Music Association can make the announcement at a press conference which takes place this morning.

I know I will be asked a lot of questions today, questions about what the induction means to me and how I feel about it and, to be truthful, I just don't have the words to articulate the depth of emotion and gratitude I'm experiencing.

For one thing, I never forget the shoulders I'm standing on, artists like Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, Kitty Wells and the list goes on, artists who took the music to the world on two lane blacktops, who traversed the length and width of this nation on a weekly basis and made it back for the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night, no matter what it took.

The Opry performers were devoted and dedicated. They loved the music they made, the people they played it for and they turned the eyes of the nation and the world toward Nashville and made it the dream destination of legions of fans who religiously dialed their radios to 650 AM every Saturday night and tried to imagine what it would actually be like to be sitting in the Ryman Auditorium when George D. Hay, �The Solemn Old Judge,� started the shindig with, "From Nashville, Tennessee, it's the Grand Ole Opry, let �er go boys.�

I know, because I was one of the ones who dreamed that dream, as a boy at my home in rural Carolina when Nashville seemed a million miles away and the Grand Ole Opry an unattainable fantasy that came over our radio every Saturday night.

I moved my family to Nashville on April 13, 1967 with all of twenty dollars in my pocket, and mine is just one of such stories of the young hopefuls who come to Music City with a guitar and a dream to answer the siren call of the music business.

Some stay, some leave, some are successful, some are not, but all find out what they're really made out of as they pit their talent against the talents of the other army of hopefuls who come to Nashville every year.

I was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008 and told the audience at my induction that God tells us, �He will give us the desires of our hearts, and tonight you've seen that come true on this stage."

That is an honor I will never take lightly or for granted, the Grand Ole Opry has been part of my life as long as I can remember and I will be a part of it as long as the Good Lord allows.

But the Country Music Hall of Fame represents yet another echelon of achievement, the dream you're afraid to dream, the place where the few are commemorated, enshrined and honored in perpetuity for generations of country music fans who visit there to wonder about and hopefully remember fondly.

To be a part of that few is an almost overwhelming thing, the culmination of a career that stretches some 58 years behind me, that spans continents, styles, war and peace, good times and bad that has brought me to this place, this time, this morning when it is announced to the world that Charles Edward Daniels will become a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

I thank you Bob Johnston for bringing me to Nashville, thank you Earl Scruggs for taking me on the Opry stage for the first time, thank you CMA and the Country Music Hall of Fame for this honor and thank you heavenly Father for granting me this very special desire of my heart.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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