Customer Reviews

Saturday Nights with Daddy at the Opry

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Saturday Nights With Daddy at The Opry by artist, writer, and photographer Libby Leverett-Crew is the biographical story of country music photographer Les Leverett as told by his daughter. As a little girl, Libby's father would take her along with him on his job as the official photographer for the Grand Ole Opry -- a position he held for over 30 years. This is not only a tribute to her father but also to the people (ranging from Dolly Parton and Minnie Pearl to Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe) who touched the lives of her family and the powerful impact a loving father has on the formative life of his daughter. Enhanced with more than a hundred photographs from her father, Saturday Nights With Daddy At The Opry is enthusiastically recommended reading -- especially for dedicated fans of the Grand Ole Opry.

I picked it up to thumb through and couldn't put it down. It's beautifully written, full of photos, and absolutely fascinating. You don't have to be a country music buff to enjoy this book. It has great stories of many others from Andy Warhol to John Ritter. I felt like the proverbial fly on the wall. It's a must have, if only for the history lesson, but it's so much more.

This promises to be something of a backstage look at the Grand Ole Opry, instead it's a more of a personal memoir with comments about country stars the author has known. While she writes quite a bit about Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones, Tex Ritter (hence the foreward is written by Tom & John Ritter, shortly before John's death), Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, and John Hartford, and a few others are pictured and briefly commented on (Marty Stuart, Stringbean, Ricky Skaggs, The Whites, etc.) there are scores of Opry stars that don't even merit a mention. And over 35 of the "over 100 photographs" in the book are exclusively of Leverett-Crew's family without a star in the picture! And that's not counting the hefty amount of pictures that are with stars that also picture family members. Too bad the author did not just make this a book a history of her father's career (Les Leverett, a famed country music photographer) instead of this effort.