But through it all, Calvin Gilmore has remained a country boy at heart. His childhood in the Ozark Mountain farming community of Lebanon, Missouri, reads like something out of Mark Twain. Living on the same small farm where his father had been raised before him, he participated in a vanishing Norman Rockwell lifestyle which centered around the old one-room schoolhouse and the little country church his family had helped to found.
It was singing in church every Sunday that inspired Calvin's love of music, and from a young age he dreamed of a professional music career. By the time he was twenty, he had taken his guitar to Kansas City, and was performing in restaurants and night clubs. When a Nashville label encouraged him to do a quality demo tape, Gilmore decided to raise capital by trying his hand at real estate. His life took an unexpected detour when he met with almost immediate success; within a year he had bought the real estate company for which he worked.
With a successful business and a growing family he had no desire to climb aboard a tour bus for a life on the road, but music was still his greatest love. He hit upon the idea of a live country music variety show located in a resort area where a tourist audience could come to him. Fond memories of earlier vacation trips led him to Myrtle Beach, and thus The Carolina Opry was born.
