This & That: I made it into the Country Music Hall of Fame!

I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous about entering the CMHOF. After all, I grew up in a northern city and came of age with the British rock groups of the late 60's. I certainly didn't consider myself a country music fan. Oh, I admit, I like the contemporary country pop crossover music that is featured in ABC's TV soup opera/drama, "Nashville," but that's not the really twangy stuff that I considered "country." But I guess you can't live for 65 years immersed in American culture without picking up a little country... after all, I watched "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Hee Haw" and "The Glen Campbell Show."

The woman who directed us to the elevator which would take us to the third floor start of the museum encouraged us not to miss the special Kenny Rogers exhibit and video that preceded the main museum exhibits. Ah, Kenny Rogers. That reminded me that Kenny Rogers was one of those country stars that crossed over into the pop charts... a lot of them did... and somewhere around 1980 I actually went to a Kenny Rogers concert in Montreal. From the exhibit, I learned a bit about his early life that I didn't know, including the fact that he was one of the "New Christie Minstrels." (Folk music was big when I was starting college in the late 60's, something else I could relate to.) Humming "The Gambler" and "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille," I wandered into the permanent exhibit outlining the origins of country music.

There on the first screen I encountered was Asheville's own Bascom Lamar Lunsford singing!

In my last post I talked about the quilt that my friends and I were making as a fund raiser for Asheville's Shindig on the Green. The Shindig is performed on the outdoor Bascom Lamar Lunsford stage in Asheville and every week the emcee recounts how Lunsford worked to preserve the music that was indigenous to the settlers of the Appalachian region. Okay, maybe I did know a bit about country music after all.

We did pay the extra fee to get the audio tour, something that we usually do when we go to museums that have a wealth of material in them. The audio wands generally give a fuller explanation to the exhibits and go beyond what is written or presented in the display cases.

One large wall is decorated with Hatch Letterpress Show Prints and reproduced posters from historic concerts. Hatch Letterpress is located in the same building as the museum and is still producing show posters. I took a photo of Patsy Cline, since we plan to go to see the Flat Rock Theater production of her life story this coming week.

There were several vehicles and cars on display, including Elvis' Cadillac which featured a small TV, a freezer that could produce ice, and a phone that could be used to call the driver from the back seat.

One particular display that appealed to me featured Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's collaboration which did much to entice many pop musicians to spend time writing and recording in the Nashville sound studios.

That extensive exhibit was enhanced by the commissioned art work of Jon Langford and was visually as well as auditorily interesting.

And, of course, at the end of the formal exhibits is the actual Hall of Fame where inductees are memorialized by bronze plaques which highlight their accomplishments. The actual hall is a visually pleasing space with a soaring ceiling decorated by an inverted radio tower.

In a central place is a special commissioned painting called "The Sources of Country Music" by Thomas Hart Benton which was lovely to see.

After we left the museum I had a cup of coffee with Johnny Cash.

I loved the photo of a young Johnny holding a coffee cup that graced the front of the cafe that was part of the Johnny Cash Museum and right across the street from the Goo Goo Cluster factory.