April 22 - Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Besides being an incredible place inside, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is an incredible building. We were told to allow at least 2 and a half to three hours. We were in there over FOUR hours and still didn't see everything!!! It's an amazing place, honoring so many talented people. And the MUSIC!!!! If you listened to every piece of music offered for your listening pleasure in the museum, I don't think you would be out of there in one day!!!

For more in=depth information on the museum, please click on this link: http://www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/

Elvis Presley's Christmas album sold over 6,000,000 copies. It takes the sales of 1,000,000 copies to make a platinum record.
There is a wall like this on the 2nd and 3rd floors, and on the main floor, in the gift shop, there is another wall of gold and platinum records. If you look closely at the second row from the bottom, you will see a yellow frame around some of the awards. Those ones are actually a little door that opens and the top song on the album plays for you. We listened to them all!
Clive on the staircase above the gift shop.
The staircase and awards wall in the gift shop.
I didn't think to stand back and take a picture of the whole Hall of Fame, but there is one on the museum website, so you can see what the entire room looks like. The plaques vary, depending on the year they were put up. There is a list of the entire "cast" of the Hall of Fame on their website. I just took a few pictures of some of my favorites, starting with the love of my then 6-year old heart.....Roy Rogers!!!! How I adored him!!! Saturday afternoon matinees spent swooning over that handsome young cowboy!!! Except, of course, I now know he wasn't all that young then!!!! And actually, in retrospect, I'm not sure that it wasn't his horse, Trigger, that was the biggest attraction!!!

Twenty-five cents got you into the show and bought a bag of popcorn and a horseshoe sucker!!! Oh my GOSH, I AM getting old!!!!!!!!!!

Just a few, so you can get an idea of what the plaques look like.

A digression:

A few years ago when we were on our way home through upper-state New York, we were driving along towards the end of the day, looking for an RV park for the night, when we saw a sign that said there was a park just a couple of miles down the side road. We decided to take a chance, and turned off the highway and went to the park. Imagine our surprise when we learned that the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was just a 10 minute drive away!!! Needless to say, the "overnight" stop turned into a couple of nights as we decided to visit the museum. The reason I tell this story, is that the Baseball Hall of Fame is set up basically the same as this one, and the plaques are very similar. As this is only our second Hall of Fame to visit, I'm not sure if they are all done that way for a purpose.
End of digression!

Both of us came out of the museum in awe of the collection of talent that makes up the country music world.

Another awesome fact..... the entire center of the building, on two floors, houses the largest collection of country music in the world. They are constantly restoring and re-recording all the old music to standards that will allow them to be kept forever.

A totally amazing place.