(Photo : Wikimedia Commons / Roger Mommaerts)
Roger Miller exhibit
It all started in 1961, when the Country Music Association (CMA) announced the creation of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Three inductees were chosen that year - Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Fred Rose and their names were announced at a CMA banquet. For the next six years, plaques for the three, as well as plaques for the next classes of inductees were displayed at the Tennessee State Museum.
In 1967, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum became home to America's music in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2001, a brand new, $37 million landmark building was completed. The museum houses a vast amount of collections including:
Moving Image Collection - containing over 23,000 moving images on over nine different formats, including 16mm film, digibeta, DVD, and early video, visitors can see the history of country music from the 1920s to now.
Bob Pinson Recorded Sound Collection - with over 200,000 recorded cylinders and discs, including 98% of all pre-World War II country recordings ever made, this is truly a library of country music sounds.
Oral History Project - containing over 650 interviews with performers, songwriters and industry people, the oral history collection has grown each year since launching in 1974.
Still Images and Photograph Collection - with images that go back as far as the 1920s, visitors could spend days just looking at pictures and still not see them all.
Artifact Collection - holding over 800 stage costumes, 600+ instruments, and hundreds of other country music artifacts that range form microphones to cars, this collection truly documents the history of country music.
With so much to see and do, it's no small wonder that attendance records for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum have been growing. In 2011, annual visitors crossed the half-million mark for the first time. 2012 saw another increase and 2013 was yet another banner year. A total of 668,557 visitors crossed the threshold last year to explore the roots of country, and brought with them revenue that was just shy of $10 million.
With a planned expansion in the funding stage, with nearly $80 of the needed $100 million already secured, the future looks even brighter. Once completed, the 140,000 square foot facility will have more than doubled in size to 350,000 square feet.
