A Strip Club Owner Was Minutes Away From Blowing Up The Ryman Auditorium – And Much Of Downtown Nashville – In 1979

How have I never heard this story before?

We all remember what happened here in Nashville on Christmas Day back in 2020, when a man parked an RV filled with explosives on Second Avenue, just off of Broadway, before setting off the bomb and destroying much of the surrounding area (and killing himself in the process).

Luckily there were no others killed in the bombing, although many buildings were destroyed and the area is still in the process of being rebuilt nearly 6 years later.

But did you know that wasn’t the first time somebody parked a bomb in downtown Nashville?

Back in 1979, a strip club owner nearly caused another explosion at the other end of lower Broadway – and had he been successful, it would have taken out the historic Ryman Auditorium.

Of course Broadway was quite a bit different back in those days. Far from being the tourist destination it’s become, filled with massive bars and live music, by the late 1970s the famous strip of downtown Nashville was mostly filled with strip clubs, adult bookstores and seedy honky tonks. The Grand Ole Opry had left the Ryman in 1974, leaving the Mother Church sitting vacant and removing one of the only reasons for most people to visit downtown Music City.

One of the popular “attractions” in downtown Nashville at the time was the Classic Cat II, a strip club that sat at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, which is now home to the Fifth + Broadway shopping center, Assembly Food Hall, and the National Museum of African American Music.

But on Friday, August 30, 1979, ATF agent Jim Cavanaugh was in the strip club investigating a fire and bombing inside the club a week earlier when a construction worker approached him to tell him about another bomb that was sitting outside the club in a stolen vehicle.

When agents went out to investigate, they found dynamite and plastic explosives rigged to an alarm clock. According to Cavanaugh, he knew they needed to act quickly:

“We knew, ‘Hey, this thing’s ticking, we gotta get the bomb squad here and we gotta get everybody away. Far away.'”

Several blocks of downtown Nashville were evacuated, with agents realizing the bomb had enough explosive power to destroy hundreds of feet away – including the Mother Church of Country Music, the Ryman Auditorium.

Luckily, the bomb was defused by Metro Nashville Police Department bomb squad officer Buford Tune, who stressed in an interview afterwards just how destructive the bomb could have been:

“Somebody meant a helluva lot of business.”

As it turns out, the bomb was about 20 minutes away from exploding when it was disarmed, although that wasn’t the bomber’s plan: It had been meant to go off overnight, but they made a mistake in setting the alarm clock that was used as a timer.

Eventually, five people were convicted in the attempted bombing, and the leader of the plot was determined to be a man named Arthur Wayne Baldwin.

Baldwin owned several strip clubs in Memphis and Nashville, and he wanted to eliminate his competition – by blowing up the Classic Cat II.

Luckily he wasn’t successful, because not only would he have taken out a rival strip club, but he would have also destroyed one of the most iconic venues in country music history.

The post A Strip Club Owner Was Minutes Away From Blowing Up The Ryman Auditorium – And Much Of Downtown Nashville – In 1979 first appeared on Whiskey Riff.