THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508270050
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
DATELINE: NASHVILLE, TENN. LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
A hard afternoon shower hit the Music City with a backbeat of thunder and lightning. In the heart of Music Row, the Country Music Hall of Fame was collecting more than its share of rain-soaked refugees from the downpour.
The license plates on their cars came from everywhere. North Carolina. Michigan. Missouri. New Jersey. But on this day, they were united by two common threads: they all looked like soggy puppies. And, they all love country music.
In one sense, the Country Music Hall of Fame isn't much different than any shrine to greatness. Bronze plaques hang in soft light, tributes to the likes of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff.
In Nashville for a family reunion, I took time out to tour the place. There are scads of memorabilia: Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner's matching tripleknit tacky green stage costumes, Chet Atkins' guitar, Hank Williams' custom-made suit and trademark white Stetson.
One of the regular visitors, Ken Mann of Nags Head radio station WHNW, is always moved when he sees the displays.
``It's really touching when you pass by things that belonged to the artists that have gone on,'' Mann said. ``When you see Marty Robbins' guitar, or Patsy Cline's cowgirl outfit, you can't help but be touched by it. I know some folks don't like country. But country music is genuine.''
Another exhibit celebrates country music and the movies, a collection of westerns and trailer trash, of Roy Rogers and Urban Cowboy.
You can hear Roy Acuff sing ``The Great Speckled Bird'' or Cline's ``Sweet Dreams'' and you can stand on the very spot of the Ryman Auditorium stage where Acuff and Cline wowed audiences of working folks who saved their pennies all year for one Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry.
But in keeping with an industry that gave us sequined jackets and tunes like ``D-I-V-O-R-C-E,'' the hall has also cornered the market on tacky.
Parked on one room is Webb Pierce's white convertible, complete with cowhide interior, horseshoe gas and brake pedals, and pistol grip door handles. The ``King of the Honky Tonks'' rode in, ahem, style.
Only a few stops across the room, Elvis Presley's solid gold Cadillac sits like an automotive Holy Grail, under a white spotlight.
A woman with a towering hairdo, and wearing a blue muumuu spots the King's Caddy and reels backwards.
``It's Elvis' car!'' she gasps. A gaggle of women in her tour group stops, and stares in awe at the '63 convertible equipped with gold records, a shoe-shine machine, a bar, television and record player.
But country kitsch reaches its zenith in the gift shop. You can buy guitar-shaped nail clippers, an Elvis clock where hips gyrate with every tick-tock, a Slim Whitman cassette, and Goo-Goo Clusters, that magical mix of chocolate, caramel, marshmallows and nuts.
But at the heart of the Country Music Hall of Fame hangs a mural by artist Thomas Hart Benton, depicting working people picking banjos, strumming guitars, playing fiddles. Black folks and white, men and women, young and old, making music as a railroad train and a steamboat pass on the horizon.
On the faces, you can see that only the music matters.
You leave the building thinking about the painting.
You get in your car and drive down 16th Avenue. Past the seemingly endless row of tiny recording studios. Past the hotel marquees trumpeting no-name acts. Past pretty girls who the folks back home say can sing ``just like Patsy Cline,'' and cowboy-hatted young men who ``sound like Garth Brooks.''
And then it hits, like a cold Nashville rain.
Every night, the pickers and singers no one knows play and sing songs that everyone knows. Their fingers, shredded by steel strings, bleed. Their voices, worn out by two shows a night in smoke-filled places like Tootie's Orchid Lounge, disappear.
They'll put up with the tacky Caddys and Goo Goo Clusters. They'll endure the half-drunken customers in half-filled rooms. They'll endure anything to be next to Patsy and Roy and Hank.
The Country Music Hall of Fame may be tacky to some, touching to others.
But for the guitar-toters on 16th Avenue, it's a dream. A beautiful dream. by CNB