Country Hall of Fame revives 'Night Train to Nashville' R&B exhibition

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum continues its decades-old commitment to preserving Nashville's rhythm and blues heritage via its latest exhibition, Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues Revisited.

The exhibition — which runs from Apr. 26, 2024, through Sept. 2025 — will include recently discovered artifacts and photographs central to Music City's influential R&B past. The cost of the exhibition is included with museum admission.

"This exhibit and its related resources offer opportunities to revisit Nashville's often overlooked R&B legacy and its important role in our community becoming 'Music City,'" said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

"As Nashville developed into a major recording center, it did so against a background of urban change and at a time when racial barriers were tested and sometimes broken on bandstands, inside recording studios and on the airwaves."

"Night Train to Nashville" explores Nashville's R&B activity from 1945 to 1970, when acts including Country Music Hall of Fame member Ray Charles, Hank Crawford, Bobby Hebb, Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, and Little Richard, among many others, were featured in clubs in North Nashville's Jefferson Street corridor, on radio and nationally syndicated television.

In segregated Nashville, jazz and blues flourished in Black nightclubs and theaters, gospel influence took hold in churches, and musicians learned their craft in the educational programs at the city's Black high schools and colleges.

2004's original "Night Train to Nashville" exhibit earned the museum a Bridging the Gap Award from the Nashville chapter of the NAACP in 2006. The exhibit's companion album of the same name received a Grammy award for Best Historical Album (2004).

This announcement follows Jan. 2023's announcement that a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities returned elements of the previously mentioned exhibition to the internet for free.

To mark exhibit's opening, the museum will host a panel discussion on Saturday, Apr. 27, about Nashville's groundbreaking television series "Night Train." Participants will include performers Jimmy Church and Frank Howard, who appeared regularly on the show, along with Katie Blackwell (wife of late "Night Train" creator and host Noble Blackwell) and Tracye Blackwell (daughter of Katie and Noble Blackwell). The discussion will be illustrated with video clips from "Night Train." The program will happen at 2:30 p.m. CT in the museum's Ford Theater.

What will be seen and explored via the "Night Train" exhibition?

The exhibit will explore:

• Iconic musicians honing their skills on Nashville bandstands.
• Nashville broadcasting groundbreaking and influential R&B on the 50,000-watt powerhouse WLAC radio station and through syndicated TV shows such as "Night Train" and "The!!!!Beat."
• The musical collaborations of R&B and country musicians.
• Etta James' recording the 1963 live album "Etta James Rocks the House" at Nashville's New Era Club.
• The routing of Interstate 40 through Jefferson Street eventually negatively impacting the city's R&B nightlife.

Some artifacts to be displayed include:

• Johnny jones' Gibson ES-345 electric guitar and Lab Series L7 amplifier in the later part of his career. The blues guitarist performed in the house band on "Night Train" and "The!!!!Beat" and influenced Jimi Hendrix in the early 1960s.
• Letter sent by blues singer Bessie Smith to Hatch Show Print in 1927, accompanied by a photograph to use for designing her posters.
• Etta James-signed cover of "Etta James Rocks the House"
• Three-piece suit worn onstage by vocalist and bandleader Jimmy Church. A Nashville native who recorded with an R&B group while still in high school, Church was regularly featured on television shows "Night Train" and "The!!!!Beat."
• Bobby Hebb's spoons used as percussion instruments and his Gibson JS-200 guitar. The Nashville native wrote and recorded the million-selling crossover hit "Sunny" and performed on the Grand Ole Opry in the early 1950s as a member of Country Music Hall of Fame member Roy Acuff's band.
• Hand-painted bandstand used by star saxophonist and bandleader Hank Crawford in the 1960s.
• Several original Hatch Show Print posters from the 1950s and 1960s advertising appearances by Gene Allison, Earl Gaines, Little Willie John, Jackie Shane, Joe Tex and others.
• A scrapbook of vintage photographs belonging to Nashville entertainer Frank Howard.

Where can the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's exhibition book be purchased?

The exhibition is supplemented by a newly published companion book and an opening weekend program examining the influential television show "Night Train." The book includes a foreword by Frank Howard and explores the themes and stories in the exhibit. It also features over 100 photographs and descriptions of classic R&B records cut in Nashville.

The book is now available to preorder on the museum's website and will be available to purchase in the museum's store or on its website on Apr. 26. Through a distribution partnership with the University of Illinois Press; it will also be available in bookstores nationwide.