Stuart donates his 22,000 artifacts to the Country Music Hall of Fame
Country Music Hall of Famer Marty Stuart often holds a “Late Night Jam Session”concert at Ryman Auditorium before CMA Fest’s opening morning. On Tuesday afternoon, the “Hillbilly Rock” vocalist held a miniature version of the event at the Hall of Fame and Museum’s Ford Theater in downtown Nashville.
• The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has added Stuart’s collection of 22,000 items related to the country music industry and its iconic performers to its permanent holdings. The artist’s collection is the world’s largest private assemblage of country music artifacts. The museum now owns the collection, holding it in the public trust and providing what a press release calls “the highest level of artifact care and collection management.”
The event was highlighted by an incredible set of performances highlighting country’s history and Stuart’s collection’s still resonant power. Those included:
• Poplarville, Mississippi-born country trio Chapel Hart covering The Carter Family’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” accompanied by recording artist and songwriter Charlie Worsham playing a 1970 Fender Telecaster once owned by Pops Staples, the legendary family gospel and R&B act the Staple Singers, who recorded the song.
• Country Music Hall of Fame member Vince Gill performed “Marty & Me,” a newly written song by Gill and Stuart. Gill played a 1958 Martin D-28 guitar once owned by George Jones, featuring mother-of-pearl inlays and
Jones’ name on the fingerboard.
• Grammy-winner Chris Stapleton performed a take on the Kris Kristofferson- penned “Why Me Lord,” while playing a Martin D-45 acoustic guitar once owned by Johnny Cash and Hank Williams.
• Stuart closed the ceremony with a performance of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs’ “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” backed by members of bluegrass favorites the Earls of Leicester, including Mike Bub (bass), Shawn Camp (acoustic guitar), Charlie Cushman (banjo), Jimmy Stewart (dobro), Johnny Warren (fiddle) and Jeff White (mandolin). Camp played Flatt’s Martin D-28 guitar from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s permanent collection.
Many dreams fulfilled
Notably, the merging of artifacts allows the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to have both the most extensive private collection (Stuart’s) and the world’s most comprehensive public collection held by the museum.
In total, that now equates to 40,000 moving images in film, video and digital formats, 500,000 photographs, 300,000 sound recordings, 650 oral history interviews, over 3,000 stage costumes, 600 musical instruments, 75,000 posters and 5,000 linear feet of print materials, plus 50 original song manuscripts and Stuart’s vaunted collection of museum-exhibited and printpublished photographs.
The acquisition was made possible through the generosity of Stuart, a lead preservation gift from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation and support from Loretta and Jeff Clarke.
Delighted by the power of the moment, Stuart offered that he was overwhelmed by how the moment forever aligned his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi and a 500-mile stretch of Interstate 55 has evolved from country music’s “Old Testament” land where songs and themes are handed down from “heaven” to the “hillbillies.” The length of interstate encapsulates the lives and careers of everyone from Jimmie Rodgers and B.B. King to Chapel Hart and HARDY.
To the singer-songwriter, the moment now represents something more in line with an allusion he later made to the first two verses of the 12th chapter of the Holy Bible’s Old Testament Book of Hebrews. That section reads: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
Dial the moment even further back to another piece of Stuart’s collection, an essay he wrote in the sixth grade about his career aspirations, and the profoundness of the afternoon gains added heft: “A musician is what I have been wanting to be. That is my true goal for life, and I hope to accomplish this goal and do it well because music will be my love forever.”
“Marty Stuart has fulfilled those childhood dreams many times over,” added Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young.
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Congress of Country Music, forever partnered
The acquisition agreement also allows the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to collaborate with Stuart’s forthcoming Philadelphia, Mississippi-based Congress of Country Music. Alongside showcasing many of Stuart’s artifacts, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will loan additional pieces from its permanent collection for display. The museum will also provide preservation, education and administrative consultation and support to the Congress.
“This is a top-of-the-world moment for me,” added Stuart. “To have my collection live alongside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s is monumental, to be a part of a ceremony and witness the Congress of Country Music and its people formally welcomed into the family of country music is a spiritual high. And, to share such a gathering with family and friends from both Nashville, as well as Mississippi, is just the best. Such a day only comes along once in a lifetime.”
It’s the culmination of sorts of five decades of collection and curation of an incredible array of country music’s folklore and truths relinquished to him as a keeper of a century-long faith-hood.
During a 2021 trip to Meridian, Mississippi, that yielded him Merle Haggard’s Fender Telecaster and Ralph Mooney’s Sho-Bud steel guitar, he offered the following about his journey and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s broader purpose alongside his own: “The beauty of country music is that there’s something in it for everybody. Whether that’s the old-time classics, country-pop, bluegrass, rockabilly, Western swing, folk music, or countrypolitan music, it’s all somehow still one church under one roof,” he said. “The Country Music Hall of Fame- and Museum is a cathedral where we can all share common ground, and when we leave its doors, we leave there unified by the sound. Truly, country music casts a profound shadow and is far bigger than any of us, as country artists, will ever be.”
What’s included in Stuart’s collection?
Stuart’s collection recently arrived in Nashville from Mississippi via two climate- controlled tractor-trailer truckloads. The pieces carry stories as epic as their former owners were legendary.
Of the 22,000 pieces, the following dozen are included:
• Jimmie Rodgers’ leather satchel containing manuscripts from his final RCA Victor recording session – the satchel was claimed from Rodgers’ casket after his 1933 funeral in Meridian, Mississippi.
• Hank Williams’ song manuscript (with his corrections) for his 1947 recording “I Saw the Light.”
• Dolly Parton’s rhinestone-embellished dress – made by Nashville seamstress Lucy Adams, who began designing exclusively for Parton in the late 1960s – worn on a 1970 episode of “The Porter Wagoner Show.”
• Johnny Cash’s first black stage suit, c. 1955.
• Patsy Cline’s two-piece cowgirl outfit, designed and sewed by her mother, Hilda Hensley
• The 1963 sunburst Fender Jaguar electric guitar Luther Perkins – a founding member of Johnny Cash’s backing band the Tennessee Two (later the Tennessee Three) – played on Cash’s classic recording of “Ring of Fire.”
• Marty Stuart’s rhinestone-covered and Manuel Cuevas-designed jacket – further enhanced with embroidered western scenes and playing cards – worn in the 1991 music video for his country hit “Tempted.”
• Charley Pride’s 1967 Fender Coronado II hollow-body electric guitar, with its distinctive “Antigua” sunburst finish.
• Glen Campbell’s 1966 Mosrite Dobro D-100 Californian acoustic-electric resonator guitar used at recording sessions with the famed “Wrecking Crew” of Los Angeles studio musicians that was hand-built for him by guitar maker Semie Mosley.
• Bob Dylan’s wide-brimmed – and Manuel Cuevas designed and embellished – fedora hat worn during his Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour in 1975.
• George Jones’ 1969-era Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors-made boots given by Jones to Stuart in 1987. As Stuart offers in a press statement, “When (George) gave me the boots, they were in perfect condition” and were “the nicest boots I’d ever owned.” By the end of 1987, which Stuart called “the roughest year of his life,” the boots “were a perfect reflection of me, worn out.”
For more information about Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music, visit http://www.congressofcountrymusic. org. For more information on Stuart’s collection at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, visit http:// www.countrymusichalloffame.org.
