There are several events coming up at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn. this month. Marty Stuart will be signing his book, “Country Music: The Masters,” on Saturday May 10, 2008 from 11:00 am to noon. Also happening on May 10 is a concert “The Music of Marty Robbins” featuring Jesse Lee Jones and Brazilbilly along with Marty Robbins son, Ronny Robbins.

There are also several songwriting sessions and instrument demonstrations that will feature Beck Hobbs, Mike Webb, Charlie Collins, Alan Rhody and Leroy Troy. A complete listing of Hall of Fame events through May 25 is below.

Friday, May 9, 2008

• Curator’s Exhibit Talk: Marty Robbins: Among My Souvenirs - 1:00 p.m.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

• Book Signing w/ Marty Stuart (Country Music: The Masters) - 11:00 a.m. (FREE)
• Songwriter Session w/ Alan Rhody - Noon
• Concert: The Music of Marty Robbins featuring Jesse Lee Jones & Brazilbilly with Ronny Robbins - 2:00 p.m.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

• Film Loop: The Drifter (1965) featuring Marty Robbins - All Day (FREE)
• Guitar and Fiddle Demonstration w/ Owen Morrison and David Coe - 1:00 p.m.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

• Songwriter Session w/ Becky Hobbs - Noon

Sunday, May 18, 2007

• Film Loop: Best of the Marty Robbins Show (1968-69) - All Day (FREE)
• Dobro and Guitar Demonstration w/ Mike Webb and Charlie Collins - 1:00 p.m.

Saturday May 24, 2007

• Songwriter Session w/ David Lee - Noon
• Family Program: Country Costuming with Katy K - 1:00 p.m. (FREE)

Sunday, May 25, 2007

• Film Loop: Marty Robbins’ Spotlight (1977) featuring special guests Brenda Lee and Porter Wagoner - All Day (FREE)
• Banjo Demonstration w/ Leroy Troy - 1:00 p.m.
• Film Screening: Tribute: Grand Ole Opry Stars of the Fifties hosted by Marty Robbins (1954-55) - 2:00 p.m. (FREE)

The Country Music Hall of Fame ® and Museum tells the story of one of the world’s most popular art forms. Here, the music and its makers speak through timeless art, the latest interactive exhibits and live performances. Visitors may also dine at SoBro Grill, located in the conservatory, which offers a wide variety of contemporary southern cuisine.

The Museum is located at 222 Fifth Ave. S. in downtown Nashville, and is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. The Museum Store is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily and the SoBro Grill is open from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. A snack bar, Sobro2Go, is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily.

Admission is $17.95 for adults, $9.95 for children ages six to 17, and free for children under six. The Museum offers discounted admission ($16.15) to seniors (55 and older), the military and students (with valid IDs). Group rates are available for tours of 15 or more. There is no charge to visit the Curb Conservatory or the Museum Store.

Share This

Emmylou Harris along with Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman were welcomed into the Country Music Hall of Fame April 27, 2008. Photo by Fabio lovino.

Nashville, Tenn. — On country music’s most prestigious night, the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted two of its four new members in a poignant, music-filled ceremony that emphasized family and, in a larger sense, the creative bonds that provide the foundation for enduring, celebrated careers.

Contemporary country adventurer Emmylou Harris and American stringband music pioneer Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman were welcomed into the Hall of Fame on April 27 in a two-and-a-half hour ceremony before a crowd packed with family members, friends and business associates. Those filling the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum’s intimate, 213-seat Ford Theater heard emotional stories about survival, shared goals and the close relationships that develop from those who spend a lifetime making music together.

The two careers, which occurred generations apart, both feature a visionary leader who collaborated generously and genially with other talented musicians while building a one-of-a-kind artistic legacy. Harris forged a path that merged the sounds of the mountains and the honky-tonks with rock and folk music to create a newly progressive form of country music that turned her into one of the most influential musical stylists of her generation. Stoneman helped create an audience for country music with his popular stringband recordings in the 1920s and 1930s, then went on to become the patriarch of a hard-working family band that entertained fans across generations.

“I feel like that guy in the Verizon Wireless commercial with this sea of people behind me,” said Harris as she accepted her medallion, summing up the evening’s theme of major figures who achieved greatness while shepherding the talents and contributions of others. “They’re there, to the right of me, the left of me, and backward and forward. They’ve been there since the beginning, and they’re with me still. And now they’re going to be with me up in bronze on the wall.”

Among those celebrating the inductions were Tom T. Hall and the Statler Brothers, 2008 members-elect who will be inducted in a separate ceremony on June 29.

Backing the performers were music director John Hobbs on piano and the Medallion All-Star Band, featuring drummer Eddie Bayers, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, harmony singers Tania Hancheroff and Wes Hightower, guitarist Brent Mason, bassist Michael Rhodes and fiddler Deanie Richardson.

Among the Country Music Hall of Fame members present to welcome the newcomers were Little Jimmy Dickens, Ralph Emery, Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, Jim Foglesong, Vince Gill, the Jordanaires’ Gordon Stoker, Ray Walker, Louis Nunley, and Curtis Young, Charlie Louvin, Frances Preston, Earl Scruggs and Jo Walker-Meador.

Sam Bush, Guy Clark, Jack Clement, Vince Gill, Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale and the Jordanaires, Buddy Miller, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jon Randall, the Stonemans and Lucinda Williams made up all-star cast honoring the new Hall of Fame  inductees.

Speakers during the evening included the Museum’s new chairman, Steve Turner, and Country Music Association CEO Tammy Genovese.

Kyle Young, the director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, began the evening by welcoming all the new inductees. “As a class, the 2008 Hall of Fame inductees represent a historical spectrum encompassing the earliest days of commercial country music recordings, the modern evolution of the country gospel quartet tradition, the arrival of more complex themes and social consciousness in country music songs, and the revival of a belief in the integrity of country music’s root forms that transcended the genre in a way that few others have matched,” Young said. “That’s a pretty complete spectrum. These artists have created a rich and enduring tapestry of music that will always recount the story of our homeland and its people over a period of almost 100 years.”

Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman

To help honor Stoneman, a list of prestigious artists performed songs he helped popularize. Those honoring him in song included Jack Clement (“Blue Ridge Mountain Blues”), Jim Lauderdale with the Jordanaires (“Are You Washed in the Blood”), Old Crow Medicine Show (“Tell Mother I Will Meet Her”) and a group featuring Clement and Stoneman’s three surviving daughters: Donna Stoneman, Patsy Stoneman Murphy and Roni Stoneman (“The Titanic”).

In a hilarious down-home speech, Patsy Stoneman Murphy spoke of how her family struggled through the Depression by playing music together and staying positive, loving and full of good humor. “When we lost everything we had and went to Washington, D.C., Daddy didn’t jump from windows in tall buildings like a lot of folks were doing,” she said. “He still had friends and family. Besides, it’s awfully hard to commit suicide jumping out of a basement window.” After the laughter subsided, she added, “Daddy worked his heart out to feed us young ’uns. We all got by because of him.”

In describing Stoneman’s important impact on country music, Young traced the multi-instrumentalist’s career from impoverished Virginia farm boy to durable cultural patriarch. “The recorded music of Ernest Van Stoneman, known later in life as ‘Pop,’ is one of our most tangible connections to the stringband tradition that still informs so much great country music today,” Young said.

Stoneman already had recorded several ballads and mountain songs by the time he joined Victor Records executive Ralph Peer in Bristol, Tenn., for the famed Bristol Sessions, which launched the careers of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in 1927. Stoneman cut more songs in Bristol than any other artist.

Having learned to make instruments from his uncles and cousins, Stoneman became proficient on several, including autoharp, banjo, fiddle, guitar and Jew’s harp. But his most notable talent was as a strong lead vocalist. Stoneman married his wife, Hattie, in 1918, after a five-year courtship and a pledge never to touch tobacco or alcohol. His family has always proudly boasted of how Pop Stoneman never cussed, drank or smoked throughout his life.

Stoneman traveled to New York in 1924 to record for General Phonograph. His song “The Titanic,” a narrative about the disastrous sinking of that grand ship in 1912, became a massive hit and earned him a five-year recording contract. He went on to record for several labels, sometimes in bands with family members, including Ernest V. Stoneman and His Dixie Mountaineers. His success allowed him to buy his family an automobile and build a home on two acres of land he purchased in Galax, Virginia.

But the Great Depression hurt record sales and brought hard times on the growing Stoneman family—Ernest and Hattie would have 23 children in all. After World War II, his career revived and he formed a band featuring many of his children. Eventually known as the Stoneman Family, the band featured Pop on vocals and autoharp, Donna on mandolin, Jim on bass, Roni on banjo and Van on guitar.

In the 1960s, the Stoneman Family recorded two albums for Starday Records and proved to be a hit at folk festivals and on college campuses. In 1966, they starred in their own musical television show, Those Stonemans. The same year, the Stonemans won the CMA Vocal Group of the Year award. In 1993, history professor Ivan M. Tribe wrote a biography of the family, The Stonemans: An Appalachian Family and the Music That Shaped Their Lives, which chronicles the clan’s musical heritage and legacy.

Stoneman died in 1968. His Hall of Fame medallion was accepted by his daughters Donna, Patsy and Roni Stoneman. In a continuing tradition, the medallion was presented by a Hall of Fame member, Frances Preston. Before putting the medallion on the neck of eldest daughter Patsy, Preston said, “Ernest Stoneman had a lifelong motto, ‘Don’t quit.’ And he didn’t. Tonight, Pop Stoneman’s perseverance is being rewarded.”

Emmylou Harris

For Harris’ segment, the indelible veteran was surprised with performances by Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller (“Love Hurts”), Lucinda Williams (“Boulder to Birmingham”), Guy Clark (“Bang the Drum Slowly”) and a band of friends featuring Sam Bush, Vince Gill, Griffin, Miller and Jon Randall (“Green Pastures”).

“Because Emmylou Harris has chosen to share her ethereal voice and gentle spirit with the world, we now know what singing must sound like in heaven,” Museum director Kyle Young said in beginning her segment of the program. Fifty years after Stoneman’s heyday, Young added, “Emmylou Harris would lend modernist irony to traditional country themes, dramatically blend Appalachian stringband instruments with stark rockabilly and Bakersfield country rhythms and invent a new country sound for the ages.”

Young outlined Harris’ life and career, from her birth in 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama, to her present-day role as a charitable activist of the Nashville community. Young told the little-known story of Harris’ father, a U.S. Marine pilot shot down in 1952 during the Korean conflict and held as a prisoner of war for 16 months. He was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1953.

Four years later, Major Harris’s distinguished career earned him a permanent post at the Marine base in Quantico, Va. After his death in 1993, it was revealed that Major Harris had served as a presidential command pilot for every president from General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter. His Secret Service mission was unknown outside the immediate family.

Harris began playing guitar in high school, where she maintained a 4.0 grade point average. She grew up hearing the country albums of her brother, Walter Rutledge “Rutty” Harris Jr., but she initially was drawn more to folk music in the early 1960s. After attending the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she moved to New York’s Greenwich Village in 1967, only to find the folk scene had largely disintegrated by then.

In the early 1970s, she met Gram Parsons, who would become a collaborator and mentor. Parsons showed Harris how meaningful, soulful and poetic country music could be, playing her songs by Merle Haggard, George Jones, the Louvin Brothers and Buck Owens, among others. She toured as a harmony singer in Parson’s band and joined him on his landmark recordings, including his second solo album, Grievous Angel.

Parsons died in September 1973, several months before the release of Grievous Angel in early 1974. Heartbroken, Harris dealt with her grief by continuing Parson’s legacy with a series of indelible solo albums produced by her second husband, Brian Ahern, that remain hallmarks of 1970s country music. She also began a legacy of hiring top musicians and discovering the songs of young songwriters, many of whom went on to become important pickers, artists and writers in American music.

In 1980, after being named the 1979 CMA Female Vocalist of the Year, Harris terrified her record label by releasing Roses in the Snow, a bold bluegrass and acoustic album recorded without drums that went against all the conventions of the “Urban Cowboy” era. It, too, became a hit album.

In 1983, she moved from Los Angeles to Nashville, where she later recorded the live album, At the Ryman, released in 1992, the same year Harris accepted an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry. “Her Ryman album renewed public interest in the historically important Ryman,” Young said. “It led to it being restored, and it now lives on as the winter home of the Opry and as one of the most prestigious concert halls in the world.”

Harris has been an active duet partner over the years, and she’s participated in several special recordings, including 1987’s Trio album with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt and 2001’s Grammy-winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? Young also spoke of how Harris responded to the encouragement of producer Daniel Lanois, who worked with her on the 1995 album Wrecking Ball, by writing more of her own songs, which have surfaced on recent albums Red Dirt Girl and Stumble into Grace.

Clark, who co-wrote “Bang the Drum Slowly” with Harris, recalled that it was written for her father after his death. “I already was a big fan of his,” Clark said. “There’s nothing that stands up straighter than a Marine Corps fighter pilot.”

Clark confessed that he didn’t write much of the song. Instead, he said, he sat there listening to Harris come up with these beautiful, poetic lines about her father’s life and what he stood for. “I was basically the cheerleader for this song,” he said. Clark dedicated his performance to Harris, her mother, Eugenia, and Harris’ brother, Rutty.

Young cited the many artists, musicians and songwriters Harris has helped by hiring them in her famous bands or by recording their songs. She also was commended for using her music and celebrity to bring attention to the need for landmine removal, animal rescue and other causes close to her heart.

As with the Stoneman family, Harris was surrounded by family, friends and associates for her induction. Besides her mother, brother and those who performed her songs, Harris was joined by daughters Hallie Slocum and Meghann Ahern, ex-husbands and collaborators Brian Ahern and Paul Kennerley, and band members and associates Mike Bowden, Tony Brown, Steve Fishell, Tracy Gershon, Ken Levitan, Mary Martin, Barry Tashian, Hank DeVito and the Whites (Sharon, Cheryl and Buck).

Harris received her medallion from Hall of Fame member Charlie Louvin, who recalled that one of Harris’ first hits, “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” came from the Louvin Brothers repertoire and helped revive interest in the historic country duo. He expanded his statement to note how Harris has done the same for all of country music. “She takes the best parts of our music, expounds on them and makes them better,” he said. “Because of her passion for this music, she has, in a way, been a welcome ambassador for all that we stand for. With much pride, I welcome Emmylou into the circle of inductees of the Country Music Hall of Fame.”

Lucinda Williams encapsulated the special resonance the evening carried because of the honors being bestowed. “I’ve been in tears listening to all these songs performed here tonight,” she said before her moving solo version of “Boulder to Birmingham,” a song Harris wrote in tribute to Gram Parsons, which brought more tears from the crowd. “It’s just such an honor to be here.”

The event was taped for future broadcast by the Great American Country cable network and WSM-AM 650.

Share This

Grammy-award winning artist Vince Gill will take a lesson from another “artist” of sorts, Johnny Carrabba – who has “cooked up” a full menu for Vince to prepare for the love of his life, Amy Grant.

“The Art of Expression: A Celebration of Music, Culinary and Visual Art,” which will take place on Friday, May 9, from 6:30 - 11:00 p.m. at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. An intimate crowd of spectators will watch Johnny Carrabba, founder of Carrabba’s Italian Grill, take center stage for a cooking demonstration with Vince Gill. Guests will enjoy an assortment of food and beverages followed by an acoustic performance from Vince Gill in the Ford Theater. Tickets are $200, and proceeds from the event will benefit The Campus for Human Development and Room at The Inn, serving Nashville’s homeless community since the 1960s. Only 200 tickets are available and are on-sale beginning Friday, April 25, at 10:00 a.m. EST.

For more information on the event or to purchase tickets, please visit www.carrabbas.com.

Share This

Kitty Wells in a 1943 publicity photo.

Nashville, Tenn. — The Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum will pay tribute to the genre’s first female superstar, Kitty Wells, with the cameo exhibition Kitty Wells: Queen of Country Music. The exhibit will open in the Museum’s East Gallery on August 15, 2008, and will run through June 2009.

“Kitty Wells is, quite simply, a trailblazer,” said Museum Director Kyle Young. “Her many hits were sung from a woman’s point of view, something that was new to country music at that time. She was marketed as a solo performer in an industry where women previously had performed as members of family groups. And her success in selling records and concert tickets led record companies to open their doors to women artists. Many of contemporary country music’s biggest stars are women, but Kitty Wells is the prototype.”

Born Muriel Deason, the Nashville native grew up surrounded by music: Her father and uncle were country musicians, her mother a gospel singer. In 1934, during the height of the Great Depression, 15-year-old Wells dropped out of school to take a job ironing shirts at the Washington Manufacturing Company. She also formed a group – the Deason Sisters – with her cousin Bessie Choate, and they began performing regularly on the radio.

Three years later, Wells married singer Johnnie Wright, and the two of them, along with Wright’s sister Louise, performed as Johnnie Wright and the Harmony Girls. In 1939, Wright and Jack Anglin formed the duo Johnnie & Jack, and Wells performed with them as the “girl singer” on radio shows throughout the South. It was during this time that Wright began to refer to his wife as “Kitty Wells,” a name taken from a popular old-time country song.

Johnnie & Jack took a hiatus during World War II, but reunited postwar and, accompanied by Wells, moved to Shreveport to join influential country radio show the Louisiana Hayride. During this time, RCA Records signed both Johnnie & Jack and Wells to the label, but the eight sides cut by Wells were poorly promoted and distributed, and no hits materialized. Johnnie & Jack, however, scored a breakthrough in 1951 with their Latin-flavored tune “Poison Love,” and the Grand Ole Opry lured them back to Nashville.

By this time, Wells had three children and was ready to halt her career. Instead, a chance meeting between Wright and Decca Records executive Paul Cohen in 1952 jumpstarted it. Wells had previously sent a demo to Cohen, but had not received a reply. When Cohen attended a Johnnie & Jack performance on Ernest Tubb’s Midnite Jamboree, Wright asked Cohen if he would be interested in signing Kitty. Cohen said yes, and mentioned that he had a song in mind for her: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”

Wells wasn’t enamored of the tune, an answer song to Hank Thompson’s hit “The Wild Side of Life,” but decided to take a chance on it. The epochal single, with its premise that deceitful men are responsible for fallen women, gave voice to the feelings of countless women in postwar America and soared to the top of the country charts, where it remained for six weeks. The record sold more than 800,000 copies.

The song’s runaway success earned Wells an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry cast, and during the 1950s she became the Opry’s first female singing star. More importantly, her unbridled success opened the doors of Nashville’s recording studios to dozens of female artists. Wells’ sales triumph decimated the heretofore prevailing notion that women could not sell records, and she paved the way for subsequent superstars such as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and many others.

Wells’ follow-up hits, all produced by Owen Bradley and featuring her trademark gospel-touched vocals and tearful restraint, included “Release Me,” “Makin’ Believe,” “A Woman Half My Age” and dozens more. She garnered top female vocalist honors in country trade magazines from 1952-1965, and starred with Wright in their own syndicated television show in 1968. Wells was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1976; in 1991, she was presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the first female country artist to be thus honored. Wells and Wright continued to perform throughout the 1990s.

More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is available at www.countrymusichalloffame.com.

Share This

Nashville, Tenn. — The Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum’s successful quarterly program series Nashville Cats: A Celebration of Music City Session Players returns on Saturday, May 3, with a salute to legendary guitarist Reggie Young. The 2:00 p.m. program, which will be held in the Museum’s Ford Theater, is included with Museum admission and is free to Museum members.

The interactive program, hosted by Stringed Instrument Curator Bill Lloyd, includes a public performance and an in-depth, one-on-one interview highlighted by vintage recordings, photos and film clips from the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive. Immediately following the program, Young will sign autographs in the Museum Store.

Acknowledged as one of the great guitarists in popular music history, Reggie Young lent his guitar to the rockabilly explosion in the mid-1950s; Memphis’ hit-producing American Studio in the 1960s; and the expansion of Nashville’s recording scene in the 1970s. His guitar work can be heard on Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away,” Waylon Jennings’ “Luckenbach, Texas,” Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind” and Reba McEntire’s “Little Rock,” among hundreds of others.

Raised just fifty miles north of Memphis in Osceola, Arkansas, Reggie Grimes Young Jr. was first influenced by the sounds of his father’s Hawaiian guitar. Radio impacted Young’s life immensely. His father met his mother while performing in the 1930s on KLCN in Blytheville, Arkansas. In 1950, Young’s family relocated to Memphis, where he began playing guitar and listening to WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips, who spun rhythm and blues on the radio show Red Hot & Blue. He soaked in the sounds of Muddy Waters, Ruth Brown and Howlin’ Wolf, and was later influenced by WSM’s live broadcast Two Guitars, with guitarists Chet Atkins, Jerry Byrd and Ray Edenton.

In 1955, Young joined his first band, Eddie Bond and the Stompers, scoring a hit the next year with the song “Rockin’ Daddy.” The band eventually signed with Mercury Records and Young found himself touring with Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. After the tour, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he found work as Johnny Horton’s touring guitarist and befriended fellow musicians Jerry Kennedy, D.J. Fontana and Billy Sanford.

Young returned to Memphis in 1959 to help form the Bill Black Combo, who went on to open for the Beatles on their historic 1964 U.S. tour. By 1965, Young was almost exclusively a session musician and becoming a key member in American Studio’s house band, which compiled a seven-year run totaling some 400 chart-making discs. During those years, he contributed to sessions by recording artists the Box Tops, Neil Diamond, Wilson Pickett, John Prine, Dusty Springfield, Joe Tex and Bobby Womack, among many others. Young also played on the memorable Elvis Presley sessions that delivered “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds.”

Young relocated to Nashville in 1972 where he became a first call session guitarist, backing artists as diverse as Jimmy Buffett, Joe Cocker and Herbie Mann, to country staples Merle Haggard, George Strait, Conway Twitty and Hank Williams Jr.

In 1992, Young took a much-needed break from session work and joined the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson) on a European tour. Today, the 71-year-old remains active recording and producing sessions, while touring worldwide with original members of the Memphis Boys. In 2005 he married fellow musician Jenny Hollowell. The two are currently writing and recording music together.

Share This