Can a Mozart fan find happiness in Nashville’s new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum?

Imagine a 37 million dollar monument to what some have called musical mutiny, a building that jumps and twangs, rocks and throbs through four stories, and incorporates into its soul almost as many generations of box office headliners.

Its massive structure is a centerpiece of the city’s re-created downtown, a mammoth and luminous superstar risen as a replacement for the famous but creaky Ryman Theatre, which still holds its own nearby. Designed by the Tuck Hinton Architectural firm, it is built of Tennessee’s crab orchard stone, brick, aggregate concrete, and rust-colored steel. The composite is symbolic of the earthy textures of the south, which gave birth to the fiddlers and banjo players who first tapped their feet in rhythm to this music.

“Country. Admit it. You Love It,” was the defensive slogan that helped raise the money, and while some were insulted by its implicit apology for heartland music, one million items were collected and installed under the Center’s light-filled dome. The most overwhelming impression is that of its size and its wall of gold and platinum records, those that have sold 500,000 or more copies. It seems to stretch from here to the sky, and is interactive; open a given frame and you can actually hear Johnny Cash or Brenda Lee burst forth on the spot.

That’s just the tip of this musical iceberg. A move in one direction will allow a visitor to step into a private, circular booth and listen to anything from Roy Acuff to Faith Hill, a few steps in another, to watch video clips of performances seen last year or beloved by grandma and grandpa in their day. Turn this way and catch a glimpse of Conway Twitty’s high school graduation photo behind inch-thick glass, or the super-cool worldly goods of the country luminaries: here is Jimmy Rogers’s accordion, Roy Rogers’s jacket, Marty Stuart’s beaded gauntlets and Patsy Cline’s train case. Check out guitars in every color of the rainbow, Minnie Pearl’s hat, Elvis’s “solid gold” Cadillac with its gold-plated TV, and Webb Pierce’s “silver dollar” convertible. This car has had one thousand silver dollars inlaid in the upholstery, and handguns mounted on the hood. Looking at it, one can practically hear him sing, “The good lord giveth…”

An innovative experience here is the possibility of cutting one’s own personal CD. One steps up to one of many small stations, decides through which decade to browse, and with a push of the magic button, gets to hear a sample – Gene Autry? The Dixie Chicks? – before making a final decision. Presto again at the Museum Store, where the CD is ready and waiting for the owner’s credit card. The Store also is the site of a daily live satellite radio program, free to the public.Other live performances and demonstrations, the “Hall of Fame Rotunda,” the new Ford Theater and a cafe, are all part of the glamour. Located at the corner of Demonbreun Street and Fifth Avenue South, the Center is, along with the new Frist Art Museum, putting Nashville, already hot, into a new, cultural perspective.

If it’s not exactly heaven on earth for the Mozart fan, one must admit to country’s genuine heart and strong visceral pull, and raise a cowboy hat in salute to the Center’s paean to the history of American music.

www.countrymusichalloffame.com or www.nashvillecvb.com
Phone: 615-255-2245