Edwin W. Craig

WSM began as an advertisement. The call letters stood for We Shield Millions, and the fifth-floor studio held a one-thousand-watt station stronger than 85 percent of those nationwide. In 1927 power rose to five thousand watts and NBC programs arrived. Free tickets to the barn dance became a tool for National Life agents seeking customers, and the show helped the company sell insurance to rural buyers through a new plan of monthly rather than semiannual premium payments.

What the plaque says

Edwin W. Craig (1893-1969) Nashville insurance executive Edwin W. Craig launched radio station WSM on October 5, 1925 and made plans for a radio program called the "Barn Dance," which first aired on November 28, 1925. WSM program director George D. Hay renamed the "Barn Dance" the "Grand Ole Opry" on December 10, 1927. Until October 1934, the Grand Ole Opry was performed and broadcast here in the National Life and Accident Insurance office building that once stood on this site.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — steps away
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• Ryman Auditorium — 0.3 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 0.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• War Memorial Auditorium Building — steps away
• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
• Avon N. Williams, Jr. — steps away
• Downtown Presbyterian Church — 0.2 mi