Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #129 (April/May 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Country Music Hall of Fame

The Country Music Hall of Fame

From the Homemade to the Glitz and Glamour

by Kerry Dexter

There's a cowgirl dress with fringe that Patsy Cline's mother made for her. A silk jacket from Ray Charles is there, and Elvis' gold Cadillac. Mother Maybelle Carter's guitar, that famous archtop Gibson she holds in all the photographs of the Carter family and played on their recordings, is there along with Bill Monroe's mandolin and Ralph Stanley's banjo. There are artifacts and memorabilia by the dozens, by the hundreds, on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame. But it is not about the artifacts. It's about the music, and telling the story of country music in the context of American history and in the context of the contemporary lives of those people who come to visit the museum and those who investigate its publications, recordings, and programs.

The story is told through sound, sight, and touch. It begins on the third floor of the museum's home in downtown Nashville with a well-worn fiddle and a handmade banjo, instruments played by people sharing their songs and stories from the back porch and around the fireplace in the rural South a century and a half a ago. At the same time that the visitor is moving along to see the sheet music, recordings, stage clothes, and instruments that were used as country music came down from the hills and in from the plains, he or she may pause to consider videos of country stars -- including Loretta Lynn, Garth Brooks, Charlie Pride, and Patty Loveless -- talking about their own childhood memories of growing up with music. All that is just in the first few feet of the main exhibit. From that third-floor vantage point there are sights and sounds of what lies ahead in the journey, as well as a view at the core of the building of the sound and print archives, and, sometimes, an archivist or sound recordist at work.

[cover #129]