ENTERTAINMENT

Country Music Hall of Fame celebrates 50 years

Saturday mornings at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum tend to be fairly calm, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering all the country songs about Friday night hellraising.

Juli Thanki
USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee
Fans streamed into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on April 1, 2017 in Nashville, Tenn.

Saturday mornings at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum tend to be fairly calm, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering all the country songs about Friday night hell-raising.


But today was different.


The museum was celebrating its 50th anniversary with a full day of festivities.

Fans paid $1.50 for admission (the same price a ticket cost on the museum’s opening day in 1967) and crowded into the museum’s conservatory for live music, cupcakes and commemorative Hatch Show Print posters.


After a trio of songs from bluegrass duo Dailey and Vincent to kick off the morning, Kevin Triplett, the Commissioner of Tourist Development presented museum CEO Kyle Young with a commemorative plaque — shaped like a giant record album, of course.

“Tourism is the second largest industry in the state…because of great facilities like this,” said Triplett.


Young, who began his tenure at the museum’s original Music Row location 41 years ago as a ticket taker (a role he briefly reprised Saturday morning), he never could have imagined “these grand surroundings.”

But, he noted, it’s not the steel and stone that makes the museum such a special place. Rather, "the main ingredient for our success is the very music we exist to uphold.”


He ended his speech by referencing country music’s anthem. The song was recorded by the Carter Family more than 80 years ago and introduced to a new generation 74 years ago courtesy of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; its lyrics now encircle the museum’s rotunda, where Hall of Fame inductees are immortalized on bronze plaques: “Will the circle be unbroken."

Hundreds of gold and platinum records hang inside the Country Music Hall of Fame.