Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum

A guitar once owned by Mother Maybelle Carter, a member of one of country music's most influential families, has been acquired by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The Gibson L-5 acoustic guitar had been on loan to the Nashville museum since 1998 but was reclaimed by the owner in May and listed for sale at $575,000. Philanthropist Bob McLean donated $1 million to the Hall of Fame to purchase the guitar, saying historic instruments such as Carter's guitar belong in the museum.

Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has scored an early holiday gift in the form of a $10-million pledge from the Country Music Assn. that will go toward the museum's ambitious $75-million expansion campaign, officials announced Tuesday. It is the largest single gift in the nonprofit museum's history. The Hall of Fame is in the midst of efforts to more than double its size from the current 140,000-square-foot building to what is planned as a 350,000-square-foot facility that will include an 800-seat performance space that will be called the CMA Theater.

The $37-million Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which celebrates its first anniversary this spring, devotes more than 50,000 square feet to the colorful history of country music, but nothing illustrates that story more vividly than a single sheet of Chaves County, N.M., courthouse stationery. Showcased in a crowded display case near the front of the downtown museum's exhibition area, the 1947 handwritten letter is from a promising honky-tonk singer named Lefty Frizzell to his wife.

After Zac Brown chose to sing "Martin," a love song to his guitar, everyone on stage with him Tuesday night at Club Nokia for this year's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit concert quickly fell in line and served up songs inspired by their own instruments. No surprise there: All musicians have a story about their first instrument. At this annual round-robin "guitar pull" session, rooted in a Nashville living-room music tradition widely credited to Johnny Cash and June Carter, the symbiotic connection between musicians and their tools is a fundamental one. That relationship is more palpable than ever since last year's flooding ravaged the country music capital and damaged or destroyed an untold number of instruments precious to those who not only earn a living with them, but who use them to express their deepest feelings.

Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has scored an early holiday gift in the form of a $10-million pledge from the Country Music Assn. that will go toward the museum's ambitious $75-million expansion campaign, officials announced Tuesday. It is the largest single gift in the nonprofit museum's history. The Hall of Fame is in the midst of efforts to more than double its size from the current 140,000-square-foot building to what is planned as a 350,000-square-foot facility that will include an 800-seat performance space that will be called the CMA Theater.

After Zac Brown chose to sing "Martin," a love song to his guitar, everyone on stage with him Tuesday night at Club Nokia for this year's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit concert quickly fell in line and served up songs inspired by their own instruments. No surprise there: All musicians have a story about their first instrument. At this annual round-robin "guitar pull" session, rooted in a Nashville living-room music tradition widely credited to Johnny Cash and June Carter, the symbiotic connection between musicians and their tools is a fundamental one. That relationship is more palpable than ever since last year's flooding ravaged the country music capital and damaged or destroyed an untold number of instruments precious to those who not only earn a living with them, but who use them to express their deepest feelings.

Country singer Kitty Wells had been recording, touring and broadcasting without major success for more than a decade when she accepted an offer in 1952 to record one more song before she planned to turn her attention to staying at home and raising a family. Mostly she was interested in the $125 union scale pay she'd get for the session, at which she recorded "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," a song that not only turned her career around but also helped upend stereotypical thinking about men who strayed and the women they strayed with.

Hall of Fame: The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has two new inductees: singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and former industry executive Jim Foglesong.

Here, in alphabetical order, are 10 places I'd like to see in 2013. Several are cities, one is a state, three are entire nations, and all have interesting things happening in the weeks and months ahead. Will I get to them all? Probably not. But if I did, in alphabetical order, come December, I'd be able to swagger into some stylish Seoul watering hole, possibly limping slightly from a sled-dog mishap under the northern lights, but gamely standing rounds and spinning yarns of Ecuadorean trainspotting and what I learned from the reenactors at Gettysburg, Pa. Would you listen?

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, a Nashville, Tenn., institution since the 1960s, moves to a fancy $37-million home Thursday. Spanning a downtown city block, the new building is more than twice as big as the old one several miles away, allowing the museum to display more of its million-item collection. It also offers daily live performances, interactive stations with video and music, thousands of archival objects, a 25-minute film, a restaurant and the hall of fame.

A guitar once owned by Mother Maybelle Carter, a member of one of country music's most influential families, has been acquired by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The Gibson L-5 acoustic guitar had been on loan to the Nashville museum since 1998 but was reclaimed by the owner in May and listed for sale at $575,000. Philanthropist Bob McLean donated $1 million to the Hall of Fame to purchase the guitar, saying historic instruments such as Carter's guitar belong in the museum.

The $37-million Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which celebrates its first anniversary this spring, devotes more than 50,000 square feet to the colorful history of country music, but nothing illustrates that story more vividly than a single sheet of Chaves County, N.M., courthouse stationery. Showcased in a crowded display case near the front of the downtown museum's exhibition area, the 1947 handwritten letter is from a promising honky-tonk singer named Lefty Frizzell to his wife.

The Johnny Cash exhibit debuts this month at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, an elaborate biographical salute to the country music legend that will remain on display through 1990.

The late Texas songwriter Cindy Walker has left an unusual and generous gift to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum: her catalog of about 500 songs, many of them pop and country classics. The hall said Wednesday that Walker bequeathed her share of the songs, including future royalties, after her death in 2006. The songs have since earned the institution more than $500,000 in royalties. Walker's catalog is one of the most celebrated in popular music. Bing Crosby, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Eddy Arnold, Willie Nelson and many more recorded Walker's songs.