Peter Cooper

Guest Columnist

Peter Cooper is museum editor of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

A quiet hero of Nashville music died on Dec. 21.

Her name was Shirley Hardison, she was 80 years old, and she wasn’t a picker or a singer. She was a smiling and selfless force for good. She was, for the last years of her life, a security guard who worked at The Tennessean and the Ryman Auditorium.

And people loved her. Country Music Hall of Fame members Ralph Emery, Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Brenda Lee, and Connie Smith adored Shirley, as did Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Elvis Costello.

She was less impressed by their fame than by their decency. She made them feel welcome as people, not as meal tickets whose shows aided the bottom line.

At the Ryman, Shirley was the first person these performers saw when they entered the backstage entrance off the alley, and when they saw her they knew they were safe, wanted and welcome.

A different kind of security guard

Shirley was an unlikely guard, a little fireplug of a woman who would size a person up before looking for their name on a pass list. She loathed insincerity, though she’d tolerate a slip-up every now and again.

Never a big fan of politicians, she traveled to President Bill Clinton’s Arkansas hometown of Hope, “just to see where that beautiful man came from.” If asked about Clinton’s dubious truth-telling, Shirley would say, “Just listen to him talk about his mother: There’s a good person in there.”

Security guards can be rule-oriented, foreboding, and authority-driven. Shirley was rule-averse, kind, and inherently distrustful of command chains and corporations.

She’d skirt regulations when such a thing was smart, right, and helpful. In the early 2000s, she worked at this paper’s employee entrance with Steel Guitar Hall of Fame member Johnny Sibert, who was long retired from music.

A teenaged steel player named Chris Scruggs often came by, and Shirley would let him into the building so he could chat Johnny up about the steel. Today, Chris plays in Marty Stuart’s band and is the most significant inheritor of Sibert’s musical legacy.

Shirley had been in Nashville forever, and she used to run with the fun crowd back when Lower Broadway bars and cafes teemed with folks like Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, and Tom T. Hall. You name ‘em, Shirley knew them and had stories.

Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers? She dated him, back in 1957, when the Everlys scored smash hit “Bye Bye Love.”

“You wouldn’t know it now, but I was a cute thing back then,” she said.

How Shirley helped boost me up

Shirley was actually an insecurity guard, spotting and soothing those who battled self-doubt.

When I began at The Tennessean, nearly two decades ago, I was coming from a much smaller paper to replace the remarkable and gentlemanly music writer, Jay Orr.

For at least a year, when I’d answer my phone the callers would ask for Jay. When I told them Jay was no longer here, they’d sigh audibly and explain to me the enormity of the shoes I had to fill.

As I shuffled in one day in 2002, Shirley saw me and said, “You know, I read the paper every morning, and when Jay left I thought, ‘Now we’re sunk.’ But you’re doing so well. And you’re so respectful when you write about someone who died. I knew all these people, and you get it right. When I die, I want you to write my obituary.”

I no longer work for the paper, and some rule probably prohibits me from writing about Nashville music greats who have died.

Except Shirley Hardison, Music City’s greatest security guard, said it was okay.

Peter Cooper is museum editor of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. He is a respected country music journalist and a former Tennessean reporter.