03 Nashville, Music City USA
Nashville Tennessee is known as Music City USA for a very good reason. This city is built around the music industry, or at least seems to be. We spent 8 days here and could have spent a lot more enjoying good country music.
One of the “must-sees” in Nashville is the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It contains a multitude of displays pertaining to major entertainers.
There is a special display on Marty Robbins. The fancy outfits are called “Nudies”, named after the company which does and did the custom design and sewing of these outfits.
One of Minnie Pearl’s dresses.
Carl Perkin’s blue suede shoes.
Webb Pierce’s Silver Dollar Convertible.
Elvis Presley’s solid gold cadillac.
A special display on Hank Williams (Sr.) one of the major influences in country music.
One of Porter Wagoner’s outfits.
Dollie Parton and Porter Wagoner outfits.
Charlie Rich, “The Silver Fox”
Garth Brooks outfit (note normal shirt instead of Nudie.
Johnny Cash’s outfit.
Willie Nelson.
Loretta Lynn’s dress.
Some of the Hall of Fame plaques.
A real fun (and cheap) thing to do in Nashville is to visit Broadway and the several bars located on a one block section thereof. It is in these bars that very talented wannabees, if they are lucky and good enough, play and sing for tips, waiting to be discovered by the agents and talent scouts who frequent these places looking for the next “super star”. For the price of a beer and a tip for hte enterainer, one can sit for hours and enjoy good music. Tootsies in one of the better known of these bars.
A good barbeque joint next to the bars.
A visit to The Grand Ole Oprey is mandatory, and very much worthwhile. They had shows on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. This is a live radio broadcast and is the longest running radio show in the country.
George Hamilton IV
Vince Gill
Jimmy C. Newman
Whispering Bill Anderson
Connie Smith
Montain Heart
Jim Ed Brown
Jack Greene
And the star of the show, Brad Paisley, currently the number one of all the entertainers in country music. There where large groups of high school kids in the audience and the experience was not unlike an Elvis show.
This wraps it up for Nashville. What a terrific place!! Next update to the BLOG will be the Knoxville, Tennessee area, specifically Oak Ridge (Manhattan Project nuclear stuff) and the Museum of Appalachia. Hope you enjoyed this.
