Tunes for Twangers
Music 305 A
A History of Country Music

Module I ~ Murky Waters
The Beginnings

Listening ~ Introduction
Shady Grove: Lee Sexton
Jesus Left His Home in Glory: Indian Bottom Old Regular Baptists

by no means – “guaranteed roots”
combination of forces – period of many decades, many years
even “experts” have disparate sense of valuing the early influences
general themes of – love, love lost, hope and heartbreak
country music has always spoken to the basic emotions of human life

Probable initial/early influences
1. British ~ Anglo-Celtic Influences
2. Influence of Religious/Sacred Music
3. Delta Influences ~ Country Blues

Influences from England, Ireland & Scotland
- folksongs, ballads, dances and instrumental pieces brought to North America
- story telling, oral tradition
- dance traditions - Scottish reels, Irish jigs, and square dances

Influences from Religious/Sacred Music
- the psalmody of the Protestant Calvinist churches
- Bay Psalm Book
- Shape Note Singing – Solfege
- Sacred Harp Hymnal

There has been no greater influence on country music than southern religious life, both as to the nature of the songs and to the manner in which they were performed. The fundamentalist and revivalist sects – the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians – began moving into the southern back country shortly after the American Revolution. These groups, moving down the Appalachian chains into the frontier areas of the South, brought a popular brand of religion to the socially isolated and religion-starved pioneers of the back country. This religion, striking out against the formalism and the maintenance of a church hierarchy, appealed to the democratic instincts of the people ….. The popularity of frontier evangelical groups was due as much to their congregational signing as to any other factor. The Methodist church, in particular, was often times called the “singing church” [from Country Music USA – Malone]

Influences from the Delta ~ Country Blues
- Work Songs
- Call & Response [also present in “church” singing]
- hard times and bad times ~ generations after the Civil War

Listening
Ballad – North Americay – Chieftains
Reel – O’Keefe’s Chattering Magpie
Sacred Harp Hymnal – Sherburne
Work Song ~ Po Lazarus – O Brother Where Art Thou

We Move Ahead a Bit
- geographically isolated
- economically depressed

… transmission – how are varying styles carried – how is the music heard

farm boys “go to town”
Memphis – Beale Street
New Orleans Basin Street
Dallas – Deep Elm
and places like Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville, Galveston, Richmond, et al

Other Factors
- medicine shows
- tent shows
- vaudeville

Some More Early Influences
- Spirituals ~ Fisk Jubilee Singers
- John and Alan Lomax ~ Ethnomusicologists

National Fiddling Contests
- Georgia in 1917 ~ by the Old Time Fiddlers Organization
- Interest of Henry Ford

Early, Early Artists
Blind Lemon Jefferson [Dallas, rumored to have lived in the Black-Bottom section of Nashville]
Leadbelly
Fiddlin’ John Carson [Georgia]

… each artists reflects their own unique background and social identity

Listening
Shout All Over God's Heaven: Fisk Jubilee Singers
Rock Island Line: Leadbelly Ledbetter
Buffalo Skinners: John Lomax
Cross Road Blues: Robert Johnson
Stone Rag: Paul Warmack and his Gully Jumpers
Orange Blossom Special: Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys
Listen to the Mockingbird: Theron Hale & Daughter
C-H-I-C-K-E-N Spells Chicken: McGee Brothers
Tennessee Waltz: Paul Warmack and his Gully Jumpers
Weary Lonesome Blues: The Delmore Brothers

The Early Instruments [from PBS – American Roots]

The Fiddle [Violin]
The oldest and most basic instrument of roots music, however, is not the guitar but the fiddle. For years the fiddle was virtually the only instrument found on the frontier, and in the South is was used widely enough that as early as 1736 we find written accounts of fiddle contests. Though often thought of today as primarily a white instrument - and indeed many tunes and styles came over from Ireland and Scotland - there arose in the 19th century a strong fiddle tradition among blacks. Some of it started out as slave fiddling, in which talented slaves were sent to places like New Orleans to learn how to fiddle standard dance tunes. Blues composer W.C Handy remembered his own grandfather in northern Alabama playing fiddle tunes in the late 1800s, and a strong style of blues fiddle developed and persisted well into the 1930s. Native Americans and Mexican Americans also developed important fiddle styles in the Southwest.

Fiddling has been associated with classic American heroes. George Washington had his favorite fiddle tune ("Jaybird Sittin' on a Hickory Limb"), as did Thomas Jefferson ("Grey Eagle"). Davy Crockett was a "ferocious" fiddler (the tune "Crockett's Reel" is still played today), and Andrew Jackson's victory over the British in the War of 1812 is still celebrated with the popular "Eighth of January." A governor of Tennessee, fiddler Bob Taylor, liked to refer to the old fiddle classics in his speeches: "Every one of them breathes the spirit of liberty; every jig is an echo from flintlock rifles and shrill fifes of Bunker Hill." In more modern times, Henry Ford started a series of fiddling contests in the 1920s to help preserve the old American values.

The Banjo
If the fiddle was the primary contribution to American music from northern Europe, the banjo was the primary contribution from Africa. The banjo has been called "the outstanding American contribution to the music of folklore," and can be traced back in some form to sub-Saharan cultures of the 13th century. It was almost certainly brought to the New World by slaves, and as early as 1781 Thomas Jefferson, writing about slaves on his own plantation, said, "the instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa." Many of these early "banjars" were made from gourds and played with a fretless neck. We have no idea how these sounded, but surviving illustrations suggest they used heavy strings and probably had a deep, mellow sound. By 1847 we have eyewitness accounts of the fiddle and banjo being played together in the South - the origin of the modern string band or bluegrass band.

This early black folk tradition eventually transferred the banjo to whites, especially in the Appalachians. Here, musicians made banjo heads out of groundhog skins and adapted their songs to the instrument's harmonics. A parallel tradition began to develop in the 1840's, with the popularity of minstrel shows, in which professional entertainers performed songs and dances derived from what they interpreted to be black culture. The banjo became the central instrument of these "plantation melodies" and songs like "Old Dan Tucker" entered the pantheon of vernacular music. Early on in the minstrel show era, a Virginian named Joel Sweeny popularized a type of banjo with a fifth, short string and used it to develop a more complex picking style. Billed as "The Banjo King," Sweeny toured widely in the years before the Civil War, and even did a command performance before Queen Victoria.

Long after the minstrel show lost popularity, the 5-string banjo retained popularity with southern whites. An amazing number of regional styles emerged by the 1920s, from the frailing or downstroking style to more ornate 2-and 3-finger up-picking. Some masters, like Uncle Dave Macon, the first star of The Grand Ole Opry and one of the first country musicians top record, could play in as many as 17 styles when he was in his prime. The "banjo entertainer" emerged in the days of vaudeville and early radio, in which the banjo was used by singers who told jokes, did comic songs, and generally "cut up."

The Harmonica
The harmonica, that most modest of instruments, has ancestors that go back to Asia over a thousand years ago. But the "mouth organ" or "harp" as we know it today dates back only to 19th century Germany. In 1822 an inventor and musician from Berlin named Christian Bauschmann made an experimental instrument with fifteen reeds called the aura, designed mainly as a pitch pipe. It attracted the attention of a local clockmaker named Christian Messner. Because of an economic depression, the clock business was bad and Messner was looking for other ways to make a living. He started making cheap copies of the aura to peddle at local fairs and carnivals, and soon other German craftsmen were getting into the act. Then, in 1857, Matthias Hohner figured out how to mass-produce the little instruments, and soon became the leader in the field. By 1977 he was making over 700,000 harmonicas a year, and over half of them were being exported to America.

Americans seem to have taken the harmonica to heart from the very first. They were carried by soldiers in the Civil War, and by1890 were being sold mail order by dozens of catalogue stores. Though the harmonica was one of the few instruments that could not be home-made and harmonica sellers offered instruction books about the "proper" way to play, Americans quickly began to explore unorthodox ways of playing.

Blues musicians learned how to cup their hands over the harmonica to get all kinds of bent and slurred notes; others would "choke" the instrument to get odd, percussive effects. White musicians liked to try the imitations of chickens or trains or a fox hunt.

Pictures
Fiddle
Banjo
Harmonica

Then we have two other instruments very much associated with country music ….. mandolin & guitar

The Mandolin
(information compiled by Rob Meador and authored by Dan Beimborn)

The mandolin can be described as a small, short-necked lute with eight strings. A lute is a chordophone, an instrument which makes sound by the vibration of strings. As a descendent of the lute, the mandolin reaches back to some of the earliest musical instruments.

Deep in the grottos of France are beautiful cave paintings made between 15,000 BC and 8500 BC. These paintings include one of a man with what appears to be a simple one-stringed instrument that is being played with a bow. This musical bow represents the first stringed instruments man invented. They were played by plucking the string with the fingers, and later by tapping the string with a stick. An increase in volume was first gained by holding the bow in the mouth. Later, gourds were attached to the bow to act as resonators. Lute-like chordophones appear as early as 2000 BC in Mesopotamia. These early instruments were fretless. Changes in pitch were made by pressing the strings down onto the neck of the instrument. The strings were sometimes plucked by using hard objects or plectrums rather than the fingers as the plectrums or picks produced a louder, sharper, sound than the fingers.

By the Seventh Century AD a folk lute called the oud was in use. The oud remains in use today, virtually unchanged, in the music of the Near East, particularly in Armenia and Egypt. 'Oud' is the Arabic name for wood, and the oud is a wooden lute. The oud found its way into Spain during the Moorish conquest of Spain (711- 1492), to Venice through coastal trade, and to Europe through returning Crusaders (around 1099). In a gallery in Washington, a painting by Agnelo Gaddi (1369- 1396) depicts an angel playing a miniature lute called the mandora. The miniature lute was probably contrived to fill out the scale of 16th century lute ensembles. The Assyrians called this new instrument a Pandura, which described its shape. The Arabs called it Dambura, the Latins Mandora, the Italians, Mandola. The smaller version of the traditional mandola was called mandolina by the Italians.

The Mandolin Comes To North America

The mandolin entered the mainstream of popular American culture during the first epoch of substantial immigration from eastern and southern Europe, a period of prosperity and vulgarity, when things exotic and foreign dominated popular taste.

It was in vogue in the 1850s, when it shared the parlor with zithers, mandolas, ukuleles, and other novelties designed to amuse the increasingly leisured middle class. A marked increase in Italian immigration in the 1880s sparked a fad for the bowl-backed Neopolitan instrument that spread across the land. The mandolin was even among the first recorded instruments on Edison cylinders. In 1897, Montgomery Ward's catalog marveled at the 'phenomenal growth in our Mandolin trade'.

The Rage of the New Century

By the turn of the century, mandolin ensembles were touring the vaudeville circuit, and mandolin orchestras were forming in schools and colleges. In 1900, a company called Lyon & Healy boasted 'At any time you can find in our factory upwards of 10,000 mandolins in various stages of construction'. From the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, mandolins proliferated across the South. Attempting to beat the competition, the Gibson company sent field reps across America to encourage sales of mandolins, and to establish mandolin orchestras.

From the turn of the century through the 1940s, a handful of American virtuoso mandolinists, mostly immigrants such as Bernardo Dapace, Samuel Siegal, Dave Apollon, and Giduanni Giouale, performed, recorded, composed, and arranged for the mandolin. These artists appeared in concert halls, and vaudeville settings, performing ethnic, popular, and classical music.

By this time banjo, mandolin, and guitar clubs had become the rage among middle-class youth on college campuses and in towns and cities throughout the South, and a variety of playing styles-- some of them borrowed from guitar techniques-- were made widely available in instruction books and on the recordings of such popular urban musicians as Fred Van Eps and Vess Ossman.

The Evolution of The Modern Flat-Back Mandolin

Orville H. Gibson was born in New York in 1856, and moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan as a young man. He began designing and building instruments in the 1880s. In 1898, he was granted a patent for a new design in arch-top instruments. His early instruments were highly experimental and ornate. In 1902, a group of businessmen bought his patent, and formed the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Co., where Orville remained as a consultant, but not a partner, until 1915.

The 1905 Gibson A-4 was a revolutionary instrument in its time, breaking radically away from the traditional bowl-back instruments brought to America by Italian immigrants (disparagingly referred to as 'taterbugs'). Instead of having a flat or bent top and a bowlback, Orville's new design was based on principles of violin construction, using a carved top and back. Though this design was subtly modified over the years, it clearly set the standard for what was to become the preferred style of mandolin used in American folk and popular music. Orville Gibson was apparently obsessed with ornamentation, particularly the scroll. He also emphasized the importance of machines in precision manufacture. His personal hallmark, included as an inlay on many of his early instruments, was an occult star-and-crescent.

The 1910 Gibson F-4 with its lavishly detailed flower pot headstock inlay featured a new scroll 3-point design. In general, this mandolin represented a huge step forward in the development of the modern mandolin look, one that has carried over to the present time. The new mandolin had a full resonant, well-balanced tone with great carrying power.

In 1922, Gibson, under the influence of their new acoustic engineer Lloyd Allayre Loar, refurbished their entire line of mandolins. The new versions had a number of distinguishing features including an adjustable truss-rod in the neck, adjustable two-piece ebony bridge, and a new tapering peghead contour called the 'snake-head'. Perhaps Loar's finest achievement, at least for devotees of bluegrass music, was his F-5, one of his new Master Model style-5 series. There were approximately 170 F-5s signed and dated by Lloyd Loar himself. These mandolins are in great demand, and today are often sold at astonishingly high prices.

The Influence of Bill Monroe

As the popularity of mandolin orchestras and the mandolin as a parlor instrument in the United States began to wane, it began to take somewhat of a back seat to other instruments. In old-time country music, the mandolin was often present, but generally only as an accompanying instrument, playing along with the ensemble.

All that changed with the emergence of Bill Monroe and the Monroe Brothers. Like most of the other brother acts of the 30's, Bill and his guitarist brother Charlie sang sacred and sentimental songs in beautiful two-part harmonies. But in contrast to the sweet, relaxed tremolo style of mandolin playing so common in the other brother duets, Bill played fiery cascades of rapid-fire notes that brought a power and urgency to the music that simply had not been there before. As Doug Green from the Country Music Foundation has noted, he '... drew his inner fire and turmoil into his music, expressing it with his mandolin...'.

Monroe fused the influences of his two childhood mentors, Uncle Pen Vandiver and Arnold Schultz. Uncle Pen played the fiddle, and had a rich repertoire of songs and melodies that Monroe was to draw from throughout his career. His fiddle-playing techniques became an intricate part of Monroe's style of mandolin playing. Arnold Schultz was a black country blues player who Monroe would see whenever he came through Rosine, Kentucky. Through his influence, Monroe spiced his playing with blue notes and blues licks. The fusion of these influences created a unique and unmistakable style.

This was also the time when radio was sweeping the country. Monroe's mandolin playing was getting to a lot of people via the radio, people who didn't know the mandolin was being used that way. People responded to the raw emotion of his playing, and the Monroe Brothers became one of the more popular brother acts of the era. Monroe later went on to create the bluegrass style (named after Monroe's band, The Bluegrass Boys), which put the mandolin securely at center stage.

The Mandolin Today
Today the mandolin continues to be a popular and vital instrument. In country music, the mandolin has made quite a comeback since the heyday of the Nashville Sound in the 60's and 70's. In the early 80's, the syrupy strings and layered vocals gave way to a powerful neo-traditionalist movement that re-introduced the mandolin to country audiences. In rock music, the mandolin has been present consistently since the late 60's. English folk-rock, the acoustic-tinged albums of Rod Stewart, and the heady acoustic ballads of Led Zepplin all made the mandolin a familiar sound to rock audiences. Today, the present interest in 'unplugged' music continues to showcase the mandolin.

There has even been somewhat of a resurgence of interest in classical mandolin. Many young artists are recording albums of classical mandolin music, and recently in New York City, a mandolin orchestra held its 70th annual Spring concert. And of course the vibrant, organic folk musics of Ireland, Scotland, England, and the American South continue unabated. Bluegrass music, while far out of the mainstream, continues to attract young players who keep the music alive and growing. And as long as there is bluegrass, there will be a place for the mandolin.

The Guitar

If American vernacular music has an archetypal instrument it is certainly the guitar. Though figures like Benjamin Franklin played a guitar-like instrument, and genteel ladies like Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel played a gut-stringed "parlor guitar," the instrument didn't really achieve widespread use in the country until the twentieth century. As early as the 1600s, Spanish settlers had brought to the New World a European style guitar with five sets of double strings. By 1800 the six string instrument known today had evolved in southern Europe and was brought over from places like Italy and France. The instrument was popular enough by 1816 that the first instruction book was published. Most of these guitars were smaller than modern models and were strung with gut strings and plucked with the fingers. Though they were seldom known in the mountains or with the white working class of the South, a study of ex-slave narratives reveals a number of memories of guitar-playing by blacks in pre-Civil War times, almost all of them located in the Mississippi River delta. There is little documentation as to how these guitars were played, but the location is significant: it would later be the center for the classic delta blues.

By the turn of the century, improved guitar-making techniques allowed manufacturers like Martin (founded 1833) and Gibson (founded 1894) to offer steel-string guitars. When played with picks, this allowed a much brighter, louder sound and let the guitar hold its own in a string band, at a square dance and as a solo instrument in its own right. It was about this time that the singer Leadbelly an inexpensive Stella 12-string with steel strings and as loud as a piano. Soon mail-order catalogue stores like Wards and Sears-Roebuck were adding inexpensive guitars to their catalogues. Sears' models ranged from $2.70 to $10.30, and one inventory in 1900 reported that over 78,000 guitars had been manufactured that year. Throughout the1920s, American musicians set about inventing new ways to tune and note these instruments.

The first generation of country or "hillbilly" musicians tended to play a style one of them described as "threshing maching," with loud, percussive strokes designed to provide little but rhythm. But soon key players, like blind Riley Puckett, a north Georgia native who made hundreds of records as a singer and band guitarist, showed the guitar was capable of adding melody lines as well as rhythm. And in 1927, at the famous Bristol sessions in northeast Tennessee, Maybelle Carter (of the Original Carter Family) introduced what would become known as "the Carter Scratch," playing a melody on the bass strings and brushing the higher strings for rhythm. It would become the quintessential "lick" for country music. Down in Tennessee, a brash young man named Sam McGee, the traveling partner of Uncle Dave Macon watched with fascination as black section hands near his farm in middle Tennessee played a blues finger picking style. He would soon combine this with ragtime he had learned from a parlor guitar teacher in nearby Franklin to create some of the first solo records featuring the guitar: "Buck Dancer's Choice," "Railroad Blues," and "Knoxville Blues."

Another popular playing style had its origins in the Hawaiian guitar. As early as 1830, Mexican cattle herders had brought the guitar into the Hawaiian islands, and the local natives soon adapted it to their own music, creating a "slack key" or open tuning. A man named Joseph Kekuku began noting the guitar with a comb or penknife, placing it across his knees and manipulating the knife to get different keys. In the early 20th century, this style swept the US as part of a fad for Hawaiian music, and soon American roots musicians like Jimmie Tarlton ("Columbus Stockade Blues") were learning from touring Hawaiian guitarists how to play this style. Both white and black guitarists (from Bashful Brother Oswald to bluesman Son House) developed the slide style, and its popularity gave rise to a hybrid instrument called the resonator guitar, or "dobro."

Along the Texas-Mexico border, another type of guitar called the bajo sexto emerged as a central instrument in popular conjunto string bands. Looking like a cross between a standard guitar and a cello, the large bajo sexto featured twelve strings, most tunes an octave below standard guitar. This gave the player the chance to play bass and chord at the same time, and gave the music a propulsive bass sound. When combined with the button accordion, the drums, and possibly an electric bass, the bajo sexto became a crucial ingredient in the popular tejano music of today.

By the 1930s a number of new guitar styles emerged in the South and Southwest. In 1933 the Delmore Brothers from Alabama began featuring a little tenor guitar in their work on The Grand Ole Opry and on records. The little tenor, noted like a ukulele, was used to take single-string instrumental breaks on the Delmores' records like "Brown's Ferry Blues." In western Kentucky a new style sometimes called "choking style" emerged in which artists like Merle Travis began picking a syncopated melody on the bass strings while simultaneously playing the lead on the higher strings with the index finger. This so-called "Travis picking" was later developed even further by Chet Atkins, and became one of the standard methods in modern country music.

In Texas and Oklahoma a new style of rhythm plating developed using what were called "sock chords" - tight, jazzy 4/4 chords played high up on the neck as opposed to the older "open" 2/4 chords still favored in Nashville. The next major innovation was to amplify the guitar. The earliest attempts at this involved the electric Hawaiian guitar of the 1930s by Rickenbacker, but by the late 30s jazz guitars like Eddie Durham and Charley Christian were using the amplified standard guitar as a solo instrument. By 1946 California engineer Paul Bigsby built the first solid-body electric guitar for Merle Travis, and by 1948 the Fender "Broadcaster" went on sale to the general public. Among the early bluesmen to use this and its successor the "Telecaster," were T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters and B. B. King. It was Waters who brought the delta blues to Chicago in the late 1940s and transformed it with the solid body electric guitar - and made the next step toward rock and roll.

Pictures
Mandolin
Guitar

The Precious Jewel Exhibit Now Open At The Country Music Hall Of Fame® And Museum

"More precious than diamonds more precious than gold"
-Roy Acuff
The Precious Jewel 

Six Instruments That Made American Music History are Displayed Together for the First Time.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., September, 2005 - Five guitars and one mandolin that helped six members of the Country Music Hall of Fame® make American music history are exhibited, for the first time together, in The Precious Jewel, now open at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Included are Jimmie Rodgers' Martin 0-18, Maybelle Carter's Gibson L-5, Bill Monroe's Gibson F-5 mandolin, Merle Travis' Gibson Super 400, Chet Atkins' D'Angelico Excel and Johnny Cash's Martin D-35S. 

The instruments are displayed against jewel-toned, plush fabric panels recalling the protective lining of fine instrument cases. Text panel graphics subtly mimic the shape of the headstock and incorporate design motifs inlaid in the fretboard of each instrument. Dramatic lighting emphasizes the fine craftsmanship of music-making tools integral to the legacy and legend of the revolutionary artists who played them. Embodying the spirit and personality of each of their pioneering owners, these instruments are key infrastructure in American popular music. 

Monroe's mandolin, designed and certified by Gibson acoustical engineer Lloyd Loar in 1923, is the newest treasure in the Museum's collection. The Museum's acquisition of the historic instrument was facilitated by the generosity of Murfreesboro philanthropist Bob McLean, who donated the Cash guitar earlier this year and made possible the Museum's acquisition of the Maybelle Carter instrument in 2004. 

The Museum ceremoniously announced the arrival of Monroe's mandolin on Tuesday, September 13, the 94th anniversary of Monroe's birth. The year 2005 also marks the 60th anniversary of the debut of the Monroe band that gave shape to the music later known as bluegrass. Monroe last played the F-5 on the Grand Ole Opry on March 15, 1996. 

His friend Ricky Skaggs, who had first played his mentor's F-5 at age six, vividly demonstrated the majesty, beauty and power of the historic mandolin's sound as he and his band, Kentucky Thunder, played a six-song set of Monroe classics during the ceremony. The mandolin was sealed in the Precious Jewel exhibit case immediately after the ceremony. 

The Precious Jewel display is exhibited in the context of the Museum's permanent exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: A Journey Through Country Music, which traces the history and evolution of the art form from its l9th century roots to its modern day popularity. 

Bill Monroe's Gibson F-5 Mandolin

Monroe's Gibson F-5 Master Model mandolin is known as the most famous mandolin ever played. Noted for its artful design, meticulous construction, rich tone and powerful projection, it functioned as its master's musical partner for more than 50 years. The instrument inspired him to new levels of artistry as he presided over the birth of a new country music style. The F-5 model reigns as the preferred mandolin for bluegrass and related music styles. Monroe was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970.

Chet Atkins' D'Angelico Excel

In the early 1950s, while establishing himself as a session guitarist and a solo artist, Chet Atkins used his D'Angelico Excel almost exclusively. He also played it as a sideman with Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters. The guitars that New York-based John D'Angelico made by hand in the years 1932 to 1964 are considered works of art, highly prized by both professional musicians and collectors. To Atkins, acquiring a stylish D'Angelico was the equivalent of getting a Rolls Royce. 

Not long after his purchase, Atkins customized the instrument with a metal bridge, a Vibrola bar, two pickups, volume controls, a cord jack and a pickup selector switch. During a radio show in 1953, June Carter accidentally knocked the guitar off its stand and broke the neck. The D'Angelico was later restored, and Atkins recorded with it again on his l966 album, Almost Alone. The instrument is displayed courtesy of the Estate of Chester B. Atkins. Atkins is a 1973 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee.

Maybelle Carter's Gibson L-5

With money from the Carter Family's successful first recordings, young Maybelle Carter bought the finest guitar she could find, a 1928 Gibson L-5 arch top, for $275. Until her death in 1978, "Mother Maybelle" used it on hundreds of recordings, radio and television programs, and live appearances. 

As the first f-hole, arch-top guitar, the L-5 was designed to be twice as loud as any flat-top guitar of the period. Carter used it to revolutionize the role of the guitar, transforming the rhythm instrument into a distinctive lead voice. Her signature "Carter scratch" - heard on classics such as "Keep on the Sunny Side" and "Wildwood Flower" - became the most imitated guitar style in America during the 1920s and 1930s. As a member of the Original Carter Family, Maybelle Carter was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, the same year as Monroe.

Johnny Cash's Martin D-35S

Johnny Cash's customized Martin D-35S was a familiar sight to millions of people who watched The Johnny Cash Show. One of the guitars most used by Cash from 1970 on, it is associated with his transformation from a successful country singer into an American icon, thanks in large part to the primetime network television variety show Cash hosted from 1969 to 197l. 

For the distinctive custom inlay on his Martin, Cash specified the acorn-and-leaf pattern on the fretboard. The guitar's custom ornamentation also included the torch inlay on the headstock and the abalone-trim top. As evidenced by the playing wear on top of the instrument, Cash used this guitar extensively. Cash is a 1980 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee.

Jimmie Rodgers' Martin 0-18

On August 4, 1927, at a makeshift studio in a furniture store in Bristol, on the Virginia-Tennessee border, an unknown singer from Mississippi made his first recordings, for Victor Records. Accompanying himself on a plain-looking but elegantly designed mahogany and spruce Martin 0-18 guitar, Jimmie Rodgers recorded two songs that day, "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" and "The Soldier's Sweetheart." Released two months later, they launched a recording career that would turn him into country music's first superstar.

The inscription "8-4-27. VA-TENN," written in India ink inside the guitar's sound hole, documents Rodgers' recording debut at the Bristol Sessions, which marked a turning point in the history of country music. The instrument is displayed courtesy of the Carrie Anita Rodgers Court Trust. In 1967, along with Fred Rose and Hank Williams, Rodgers became one of the first three Country Music Hall of Fame honorees.

Merle Travis' Gibson Super 400

When this custom-built Gibson Super 400 Special electric arch-top guitar was made to order for Merle Travis in 1952, it was the most expensive guitar Gibson had yet produced. It was an instrument befitting Travis, one of the most influential country guitar players of the 20th century. His thumb-and-finger picking style (known as "Travis picking") was adopted by countless country, rockabilly and folk guitarists. 

Travis, who designed one of the first solid-body electric guitars in the later 1940s, also played a major role in the design of his Super 400. His specifications included the elaborately decorated headstock and the fretboard with his name inlaid in pearl script. His customized Super 400 remained Travis' trademark instrument for the last 30 years of his career. He became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977.

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum's mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum's Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.

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