On the morning of January 8, 2015, the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville filled with mourners. Little Jimmy Dickens, the Opry’s oldest member, had died six days earlier at 94. His hat, his boots and his guitar were set out at center stage, and for two hours the people he had sung beside paid him back in songs and stories.
Brad Paisley had the closing words. He stopped to choke back tears in the middle of them. “At 94, your journey has ended,” he said, “but we’ll take it from here, little buddy.” Then he called the Opry’s stars back to the stage to sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
For anyone who had followed these two men, that song was not a random choice. Four years earlier, they had sung it together on that same stage, standing on a piece of wood that had nearly been lost.
The Circle That Came Back From the Flood
In early May 2010, floodwaters swept through Nashville and into the Opry House. The stage went under 46 inches of water. That included the Opry’s most treasured spot: a six-foot circle of oak cut from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium and set into the Opry House floor when the show moved there in 1974. Generations of performers had stood on it. Crews rescued the circle once the water went down, and it was carefully restored.
Dickens said that shortly after the flood he tried to get into the building to check on the clothes and keepsakes in his locker, but he wasn’t allowed inside.
On August 25, 2010, the circle went home. Little Jimmy Dickens, then 89 and an Opry member since 1948, and Brad Paisley helped a small crew of workers lower it back into the center of the stage. Once it was in place, the two of them stepped onto it, Paisley with a guitar and Dickens at the microphone beside him, and sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
“That is a classic song that’s been sung here for generations and it’s taking on new meaning with all of this.” — Brad Paisley, August 2010
A month later, on September 28, 2010, the Opry reopened. When the curtain rose on the first show back, Paisley and Dickens were standing on the circle again. Paisley started the song, Dickens came in on the chorus, and cast members walked out from the wings to join them while the crowd gave them a long standing ovation.
A Morning of Songs and Stories
The funeral in 2015 brought many of those same faces back to that stage. Vince Gill and Carrie Underwood sang “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” Steve Wariner, Connie Smith, Chris Young and Old Crow Medicine Show performed. Paisley sang “When I Get Where I’m Going.”
There was laughter, too. Underwood told the crowd that before her first Opry appearance, her mother warned her to “watch out for Little Jimmy Dickens, because he likes the pretty girls.” She was in tears by the time she finished the story.
Vince Gill marveled that Dickens lived to 94 and was still singing two weeks before he died. It was true. Dickens played the Opry on December 20, 2014, the day after his 94th birthday, singing “Out Behind the Barn” and telling his jokes. He suffered a stroke on Christmas and died on January 2.
Connie Smith called him “the heart of the Grand Ole Opry.” She remembered watching him stand at the side of the stage so many times, there to support the people performing.
“This Tradition Will Continue With All of Us”
When Brad Paisley spoke, he reminded the room how much the Opry owed Little Jimmy. “Make no mistake, the building that we’re all in was built, at least partially, by Jimmy Dickens,” he said.
Then came the closing. Paisley explained that ending a country music funeral with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” was a tradition Dickens himself had started. Fighting tears, he gave his friend the words people still remember:
“At 94, your journey has ended, but we’ll take it from here, little buddy. … Everyone come back out, and this tradition — that he began — will continue with all of us.”
Gill, Underwood and the other Opry members came back out and sang around him. Paisley stood in the center with his guitar, his voice cracking. He told the crowd they owed it to Dickens’ memory to keep the Opry alive and going, as he put it, “forever.”
After the service, a hearse carried Little Jimmy Dickens away from the Opry House.
The Friendship Behind the Words
The “little buddy” line came out of more than a decade of friendship. Dickens was one of three Opry members, along with Bill Anderson and Jeannie Seely, who invited Paisley to join the cast. Paisley was inducted on February 17, 2001. In the years after, Dickens turned up in Paisley’s videos for “Alcohol” and “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” and in comedy bits when Paisley and Underwood hosted the CMA Awards.
The day Dickens died, Paisley wrote that he was saying goodbye to “my hero and friend.” The next day he added: “Do not mourn Little Jim. Celebrate him.”
He has kept doing exactly that. In March 2026, when the Opry honored Little Jimmy Dickens as part of its 100th-anniversary celebration, Brad Paisley was back on the Opry stage, photographed with Little Jimmy’s own guitar and red glitter guitar case, a gift to Paisley from Dickens’ widow, Mona.