Nelle and Ruth Poe, natives of Big Creek, are part of a new display at the Grand Ole Opry Museum in Nashville.
The museum was destroyed by a severe flood in 2010. Grand Ole Opry members were asked afterwards to help restore exhibits and the Poe sisters contributed a few pictures and instruments for a display on the second floor of the historic Ryman Auditorium until a new museum can be built.
“I donated our first instruments that we used our first year on the Grand Ole Opry,” Mary Nelle Poe Yandell said, who now lives in Mountain View, Arkansas.
There are 50 cases of displays featuring Grand Ole Opry stars.
“We are honored to be among the stars of the Grand Ole Opry,” Nelle said.
The Poe sisters were raised in Big Creek playing music with their family at home, for local dances, political rallies and other events.
After moving north for World War II production jobs at General Electric, the sisters landed a show on Bridgeport, Connecticut radio station WICC. The radio spots helped them book personal appearances, including the famous Stage Door Canteen in New York, entertaining American and allied soldiers.
After moving back to the South, in June 1944 the PoeSisters secured an audition for the Grand Ole Opry, where they played the timely “We’re in the Army, Too,” and were hired immediately.
They were soon singing on the Opry every Saturday night and traveling during the week with the Opry tent show headlined by Ernest Tubb.
The Poe Sisters made no commercial recordings during their short career (1944-46) due to wartime rationing of materials needed to produce records, but a few live recordings of Opry performances survive.
In 1946, Ruth and Nelle put their careers aside to marry and raise families. Nelle returned to making music after retiring to Mountain View, a folk music center in the Ozarks.
