Taking a Walk Nashville.

Hi, I'm Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville, and today I'm here with the senior director of Editorial and Interpretation at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Paul Kingsbury.

Thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville.

O.

Well, thanks so much for having us, Sarah.

Yeah.

So we're here and the new Muscle Shoals Low Rhythm Rising Exhibit.

It just opens and.

It's going to be here at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

For three years.

Crash right, Yeah, yeah, so people have lots of opportunity to come see this.

We're really excited because we worked.

On this exhibit for about three years to do all the research and contact everybody we need to fill this up.

Wow.

So all of the artifacts that we're seeing as we walk through here today are from the Shoals.

Yeah, well they are now.

In some cases we had to reach farther afield than North Alabama.

We got some items for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

They loaned us some we got some from other places, but we definitely had a lot of interaction with the North Alabama community.

All around Muscle Shoals to make this happen very cool.

Well, I am excited to walk through it.

Let's definitely explore it and tell listeners about the artifacts we're seeing today.

Yeah, I'll just tell folks that, you know, when you walk in the exhibit, you can maybe maybe listeners can barely hear in the background we have Wilson Pickett's famous Land of a Thousand Dances playing, because we have a little looped video that gives people the taste of all the many folks who worked to record it in Muscle Shoals and made major hits.

And then we've got this wonderful.

Wall display of of lots of photos of some of the famous people who came to to Muscle Sholes to record, like they're rolling Stones and Bob Seeger and Arthur Alexander and Wilson Ficken, Percy sledgend Aretha Franklin, and we'll hear about those as we walked through.

Yeah, there's so many different artists that have come down to the Shoals to record.

And you know, Muscle Shoals is only about a two and a half hour drive from Nashville, So when the Hall of Fame decided to do this exhibit.

Was it because there's such a strong connection between Nashville and Muscle Shoals.

Well, yeah, there is.

And also, you know, we've long been aware of the powerful music that.

Was made there.

An interesting connection that we talk about in this exhibit is that one of the key the first key studio in Muscle Shoals, the Fame Studio, the rhythm section.

The guys who were who were playing backing on the sessions there.

They were so that in nineteen sixty four, after they've been recorded there for about five years, they moved.

Up to Nashville and became a team session players up here.

Wow.

And we got to see some of those session players here the other night.

During the exhibit celebration concert.

It was such a great night there were they were celebrating the songs with the Shoals with by Levette, Maggie Rose, Wendy Mountain, Shenandoah, many other artists, and it was so cool just saying spinner all of them there.

Did you have a favorite moment of the night during opening concert.

Well, I really loved when Betty Levette, you know who's I guess she's in her late seventies now, got up and she was when she was singing, she was dancing all over the stage and she really brought the energy.

I'll tell you that.

You know a guy who's been in Nashville a long time, Jimmy Hall, I mean he he knocked it out of the park too when he's sang things like Land of a Thousand Dances.

I mean, yeah, there was a lot of energy.

In that show, so much energy.

Everyone was great.

It was such a great kickoff to this exhibit.

And there's so many great artifacts in here.

As we're walking around, I saw you had a costume from Wilson Pickett.

What other artifacts can we expect to see?

Oh my gosh, Well, when people walk in, they're going to see a costume from the seventies from Kandy Stayton, who was one of our artists who performed at the concert.

She told us she's eighty five years old.

She was fantastic and she recorded a lot of great songs that were covers of country music songs that she did in her own R and.

B wa and yeah.

In terms of artifacts, I mean, we're walking past a case that shows the roots of muscle shoals music and famous people like Sam Phillips, who starred Sun Records in Memphis, and Arthur Alexander, one of the first big artists to come out Ofussel Shoals.

They're represented here with artifacts.

We've even got Arthur's passport and the ledger he used to keep up with the royalty payments that he made.

Very cool.

And I think over there we have Aretha's piano that she.

Played in Yes, that's a centerpiece of the exhibit.

So Aretha Franklin turned around her whole career when she came to Muscle Shoals in nineteen sixty seven.

And she had been recording for years but never had a hit until she came to Muscle Shoals and she recorded the famous song I Never loved a Man the Way I Love You Ye with Muscle Shoals musicians in that launched her whole career to become the.

Queen of soul.

Wow, he's so special.

Yeah, So we've got that on loan from the Fame Studio.

We've got a beautiful dress from the early seventies from Maretha.

We just passed Wilson.

Pickett's fabulous costume here that he wore on the cover of his Best of Wilson Picket Bollion two album, the album that includes.

His famous cover of the Beatles Hey You, where he sings his heart out and he's matched lick for lick by Dwayne Almon of the Almond Brothers, who was then a session musician.

And not only do we have Wilson Pickett represented here, but if we walk down here, you'll see we have two guitars that Dwayne Almond plays, Yeah Erry, which you know, those are both on loan and we're really excited to have them both.

And people know the Almond Brothers music, but they may not know that for a period before the Almond Brothers got started, Dwayne was really site to be able to be a session musician playing behind great R and B artists, muscle Shoals.

There's so many great artifacts here in the museum.

What do you hope people will take from this when they explore this exhibit?

I think you know a subtext to this exhibit is that music brings people together.

And the people who made the big hits and muscle Shoals, both the artists.

And the producers, the entrepreneurs, wanted to cross racial boundaries right and so early on with so.

Many hits from Muscle Shoals.

It was.

Black R and B singers getting together with crack session musicians that were white in Muscle Shoals.

And they kind of did this all under the radar because this was in the era when civil rights was still trying to take hold and before the Civil Rights Act was passed in sixty four, and so you had black artists, white musicians making incredible music.

And eventually, as this exhibit tells the.

Story, it went beyond just black artists and white musicians.

It muscle shows became a magnet for artists from not only all over America.

And we're talking about artists like Paul Simon and Bob Seeger and Cher and the Ozman Brothers.

We're also talking about artists that came over from England like the Rolling Stones and Traffic with Stevie Winwood and Joe Cocker all recording and.

Muscle Shoals because the music was.

So powerful and they wanted to get into the studios with these players.

Yeah, and speaking of under the radar, Muscle Shoals is a pretty small town, so it was definitely.

A great way to for multiple artists.

Of different genres to come together record, but I also heard Rolling Stones.

You know, they were coming over from the UK and they had a little bit of trouble recording in LA because of their green cards.

So Muscle Shoals was the perfect place for them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They talked to some folks who said, hey, you know, we can kind of get on under the radar if we go to Muscle Shoals.

Nobody's paying attention there, right, And so they came in recorded three songs, two of their biggest they recorded.

You know, they recorded a Brown Sugar.

You recorded wild Horses there while they're Muscle Shoals and both big hits.

And Tierra Kennedy did a great job of wild Horses.

He sure did it that concert.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well what else is there for us?

Well, so we're actually looking at a case right here.

I'm sure a lot of people still know the classic R and B song I'll take you there by the Staple Singers.

Well, we have the dresses for the three sisters.

And the Staple singers, along with the suit in telecaster guitar of Pops Staples, their father who was in the band.

So we've got the costume stage costumes, Cleotha, Yvonne and Mavis Staples.

Right here in front of everybody.

We've got well gold I'm sorry, a platinum record that Bob Dylan got for recording in Muscle Shoals for his album Slow Train Coming.

Very cool.

And you said this exhibit is five thousand square feet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in addition to all.

Of the artifacts that are on display, people will get to see clips of interviews.

We get fifty hours of interviews with people in Muscle Shoals and they can see clips that we've cut on TVs here.

We've got also clips from a very well done documentary on Muscle Shoals back in twenty thirteen.

We've got touchscreen interactives.

And if you want, we can walk up to those and you can play with them for a mo.

We've got a sixty song jukebox people can listen to.

We've got information on the session musicians, on the songwriters, on the recording studios.

Because it's more than one studio that was active in Muscle Shoals.

Yeah, you have the Fame Studios, Muscle Shoal Sound Studios, quite a few studios happening.

Yeah, I think we have thirteen studios featured in or interactive.

Let's see if we go to studios, you'll see we've.

Got a whole thing here where of course we've got Fame.

And we've got Muscle Show Sound Studio, and.

People can read a little bit of history, they can swipe through photos and these places, and if they.

Want to hear music, they can go to our jukebox.

You could play anything you like here.

I mean, here's a famous song.

This is I'm Your Puppet by James and Bobby Purify, written by Dan Penn and Spointer Oldham.

I like that you selected that one.

That's a song my mom would always play for me and sing to me when.

I was little.

Really, that's wonderful, one of my favorites.

Yeah.

Well, this is a great way for people if they're coming in Nashville to see this exhibit, and then they can even just drive down to Muscle Shoals.

Sure it can.

Check out you you can go and get tours of Fame Studio and Muscle Shoal Sound Studio.

They regularly have music events there that people can go here.

I would hope that people would.

Come here, experience some of this and take some of these stories and music with them.

We've got a great, uh full color companion book that.

We created to go with the exhibit.

If people can pick up in our museum store or buy online.

In fact, it's don't come here, they can get it on Amazon if they.

Will, of course, and this is going to be a very popular exhibit.

But people are coming here to visit.

What other exhibits do you recommend that.

They explore while when we are in a museum.

So we have a fabulous exhibit on Dolly Parton.

We collaborated with her last year or earlier this year on that we've.

Got Dolly Parton.

We've got a huge exhibit on Landy Wilson, we have a great exhibit on Roseanne Cash, a pretty new exhibit that we open this fall on one hundred years of Grand Ole Opry history.

And we also have our permanent exhibit in the museum that's kind of a walk through country music history from the earliest commercial origins and pre commercial origins at the beginning of the twentieth century on up to the present day.

And then every year we refresh an exhibit in the early spring called American Currents, which covers the big events and prominent artists of the previous year.

So if people want to see who we've.

Got represented for the year twenty twenty four.

You've got that all up in American currens right now.

Too.

Very cool.

There's always so many different exhibits coming in and out of here.

In addition to that, there's always events happening here.

You at the Taylor Swift Education Center, you have shows on the weekends, usually songwritere rounds on Sundays, so people have kids, Can they do any sort of workshops?

Yeah, we have lots of We have lots of education workshops on the weekends, and we encourage folks to go to our website Country Music Hall of Fame dot org.

Go Look, we have a calendar of events really easy to access and people can see any particular date they want to visit.

But for families and kids the weekends, see the Saturday and Senator you get.

Time to come through.

Yeah.

And the a concert we saw on Friday was at the CMA Theater, which is always a wonderful venue to see shows as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's an eight hundred CED theater and with many different kinds of shows appear there.

And I believe coming up December twentieth, we have singer songwriter Steve Earle coming in to.

Do a show for us.

Okay, if you get a membership, then you can attend to all of these programs and attend the museum for free.

You get a discount at our store.

It's it's a pretty great deal.

I have several friends who are members and they just be like, Wow, this is an amazing deal.

You come in see concerts, one of the con concerts you couldn't see anywhere else for free, and then you get you could drop in with your friends and family any time.

Wonderful.

That's something to look forward to.

I love to see the rest of the exhibit.

Paul, You've been in Nashville for quite a while, and you know, throughout the Country Music Hall of Fame's time, it moved from Music Row to downtown.

It's been through so much change.

What do you think of the change you have seen in.

Nashville over the years.

I'll tell you one change that I love that people don't talk about very much is I've been in Nashville many years, and it didn't used to be the music town that it is now.

It used to be, I can tell you in the eighties and into the mid nineties, there just weren't that many concerts and nightclub shows available.

But over time, the music industry has refocused and you could hear any kind of music you like here in Nashville.

Now we have dozens of great venues, and that's one thing I love.

The other thing that's surprised me over the years is how vibrant downtown Nashville has become, because in the eighties and nineties it was a little sketchy downtown.

And we like to feel like when our museum moved from Music Row here downtown in two thousand and one, we were part of the whole revival of downtown Nashville, and we take some pride of ownership in how Nashville has come back so big in downtown.

Yeah, and it's not just country music here in Nashville anymore, which is why I.

Think it's special.

The Shoals exhibit is here because so.

Many different genres came out of the Shoals, and I think that's what's happening with Nashville.

So many genres of music are coming out of here now.

Yeah.

You know, I would say even people who are not sure that their hardcore country fans would enjoy the country music Hall of fame and certainly this Muscle Shoals exhibit, because it's not just about country artists like Willie Neilson or Shenandoah or Bobby Gentry who recorded here.

It's about Carl Simon, it's about grolling Stones, hit about It's about Wilson, Thicket, Percy Sledge, the staple singers.

All different kinds of music came out of Muscle Shoals.

And I think.

Folks will also find as they go through the museum that many artists that they might have some awareness of Blaney, Wilson, Roseanne Cash, Dolly Parton.

They're going to find out about them in depths and see how they connect with the wider world.

Abusic.

Yeah, very cool.

Absolutely, And Paul, we're on taking a walk Nashville.

So I always love to ask this to our guest, but do you have a favorite place you.

Like to take a walk in Nashville?

Is it here in the museum?

Well, I can't say that.

I mean I love the museum.

I walk through the museum regularly because I like seeing some of these things over and over again.

I'll show you a thing that we are proud to be able to display.

We have the original song.

Manuscript that Chris Stofferson wrote have helped me make it through the night.

And if you could see he wrote it on the stationary of his publisher, Monument and Who's also his record label.

And this was a very transformative song because he started to talk about real adult relationships sexuality to some extent in a way that country music hadn't gone to before.

But he did it in a very poetic way.

And of course it's become a standard.

So I love walking past this and looking at this.

I mean, if I'm trying to get people to come to Nashville, I will also say we are blessed with amazing forest parks all over in Nashville.

And because I'm an outdoor guy, I mean loved to go to Radnor Lake, loved to go to a Warner Parks.

But hey, can you let you some indoors please come to the Country Us A Call of Fame.

Absolutely, there's always something new to check out here.

I think, Well, Paul, thank you so.

Much for being on taking a walk in Nashville today, and everyone can check out the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the Muscle Sholes exhibit.

For the next few years.

All right, Thank you, Sarah.

Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with singer songwriter Sarah Harrel Simmer, and check out our other podcasts, Music, Save Me, Comedy, Save Me, and Taking a Walk.

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