NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Aug. 22, 2024 — Earlier this week, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum celebrated the addition of the Marty Stuart Collection to the museum's permanent holdings. Stuart's collection of more than 22,000 items is the largest private assemblage of country music artifacts in the world, joining the world's largest public collection held by the museum.

The acquisition was made possible through the generosity of Stuart, along with a lead preservation gift from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation and major additional support from Loretta and Jeff Clarke. The nonprofit museum now owns the collection, holding it in the public trust and providing the highest level of artifact care and collection management.

The Marty Stuart Collection spans over a century of country music history and includes more than 1,000 stage wear and clothing items, 100 instruments, 50 original song manuscripts and more. Items in the collection include significant artifacts from Country Music Hall of Fame members Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and many others. Additionally, Stuart's collection includes items from his own Country Music Hall of Fame career, including his expansive collection of photographs taken by Stuart himself, which have been exhibited at museums and published in books.

The momentous occasion was celebrated during a special ceremony in the museum's Ford Theater illuminating Stuart's passion for country music and its preservation. The event featured several performances with historic instruments from Stuart's collection:

• Country music trio Chapel Hart performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” with recording artist and songwriter Charlie Worsham playing a 1970 Fender Telecaster once owned by Pops Staples, the patriarch and a member of gospel and R&B group the Staple Singers, who recorded the song.
• Country Music Hall of Fame member Vince Gill performed “Marty & Me,” a newly written song by Gill and Stuart. Gill played George Jones' 1958 Martin D-28 guitar, customized with unique, mother-of-pearl inlays and Jones' name on the fingerboard.
• Grammy-winning artist Chris Stapleton performed “Why Me Lord,” which was recorded by Johnny Cash and written and previously recorded by Kris Kristofferson. Stapleton played Cash's Martin D-45 acoustic guitar, which also belonged to Hank Williams.
• Marty Stuart closed the ceremony with a performance of Flatt & Scruggs' “Don't Let Your Deal Go Down,” with Shawn Camp playing Lester Flatt's Martin D-28 guitar from the museum's permanent collection.

The backing band for the event included members of the Earls of Leicester and consisted of Mike Bub (bass), Shawn Camp (acoustic guitar), Charlie Cushman (banjo), Jimmy Stewart (dobro), Johnny Warren (fiddle) and Jeff White (mandolin).

Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, provided remarks throughout the event. He opened the ceremony by reading from an essay 11-year-old Stuart wrote for a school assignment about his future goals: “A musician is what I have been wanting to be. That is my true goal for life, and I hope to accomplish this goal and do it well because music will be my love forever,” Stuart wrote.

“Marty Stuart has fulfilled those childhood dreams many times over. Today, he is making our dreams come true, with the crucial help of two key donors,” said Young. “We're incredibly grateful for Marty's philanthropy — and a lead gift from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation with major support from Loretta and Jeff Clarke — for enabling the museum to safeguard and share this historic collection in perpetuity. We're here to celebrate this remarkable addition to our collection, revel in Marty's extraordinary foresight and collecting skill, and rejoice in a new chapter for this museum.”

Many items from the Marty Stuart Collection will be on display as part of the museum's permanent exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present, which takes visitors chronologically through the history of country music. Artifacts on display rotate often and Stuart's collection will play a key role in the exhibit's narrative and the museum's educational mission.

As part of the acquisition agreement, the museum has entered a longstanding collaboration with Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where it will exhibit items from the Marty Stuart Collection at its forthcoming museum. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will loan additional artifacts from its own permanent collection for display, as well as provide preservation, education and administrative consultation and support to the Congress.  

"This is a top of the world moment for me,” said Marty Stuart. “To have my collection live alongside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's is monumental, to be a part of a ceremony and witness the Congress of Country Music and its people formally welcomed into the family of country music is a spiritual high. And, to share such a gathering with family and friends from both Nashville, as well as Mississippi, is just the best. Such a day only comes along once in a lifetime." 

During the ceremony, Stuart formally presented his childhood essay to the museum.

Mandy Macke, executive director of the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, also spoke at the event about the importance of the collection and its preservation.

“The Walker Foundation is deeply honored to play a role in making this dream a reality,” said Macke. “The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is the ideal steward of this precious collection. Not only will it extend the highest level of care to each individual artifact, but it will also share and showcase the collection's spirit with the world.” 

The donation ceremony is available to watch on the museum's YouTube channel.

About Marty Stuart and his collection
Born in 1958 and raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Country Music Hall of Fame member Stuart began his career at age 12 as a mandolin and guitar prodigy. He apprenticed in the bands of Johnny Cash, Lester Flatt and Doc Watson, forging a career carrying forward country's traditions and finding success as a recording artist, songwriter and multimedia emissary for country music. Read more about Stuart's life and career in his Country Music Hall of Fame bio.

For more than 50 years, Stuart curated a treasure trove of historic country music memorabilia. The Marty Stuart Collection arrived at the museum via two separate climate-controlled tractor-trailer truck loads, driven from Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. Examples of items from Stuart's collection include:

• Jimmie Rodgers' leather satchel – Two days after his final RCA Victor recording session, Rodgers died in New York on May 26, 1933. This satchel, which contained his manuscripts from the sessions, was placed in the casket with Rodgers's body and shipped by train back to his home in Meridian, Mississippi.

• Hank Williams' song manuscript – Original two-page, handwritten (with his corrections) song manuscript for Williams' “I Saw the Light” from 1947.

• Dolly Parton's dress – Parton wore this rhinestone-embellished dress on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” c. 1970. The dress was made by Nashville seamstress Lucy Adams, who began designing exclusively for Parton in the late 1960s.

• Johnny Cash's suit – Cash's first black stage suit, c. 1955.

• Patsy Cline's outfit – Patsy Cline's mother, Hilda Hensley, designed and sewed this two-piece cowgirl outfit for her in the 1950s, when fancy western-style stage wear was very popular with country music performers.

• Luther Perkins' guitar – A founding member of Johnny Cash's backing band the Tennessee Two (later the Tennessee Three) guitarist Perkins helped define Cash's sound with his muted picking style. Perkins played this 1963 sunburst Fender Jaguar electric guitar on Cash's classic recording of “Ring of Fire.”

• Marty Stuart's jacket – This rhinestone-covered jacket — further enhanced with embroidered western scenes and playing cards — was made for Marty Stuart by his good friend, western-wear designer Manuel Cuevas. Stuart wore the jacket in the 1991 music video for his Top Five country hit “Tempted.”

• Charley Pride's guitar – Pride used this 1967 Fender Coronado II hollow-body electric guitar, with distinctive “Antigua” sunburst finish, extensively in the 1960s and '70s.

• Glen Campbell's guitar – Campbell used this 1966 Mosrite Dobro D-100 Californian acoustic-electric resonator guitar at recording sessions with the Los Angeles studio musicians known as the “Wrecking Crew,” as well as at concerts and TV appearances, c. 1967. The instrument was hand built for Campbell by guitar maker Semie Mosley, who acquired the rights to the Dobro name in the mid-1960s.

• Bob Dylan's hat – Dylan performed in this wide-brimmed fedora during his Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour in 1975. Western-wear designer and tailor Manuel Cuevas embellished the hat with a studded leather belt buckle hatband, faux flowers and a feather.

• George Jones' boots – Nudie's Rodeo Tailors made these boots for Jones, c. 1969. When Jones gave them to Marty Stuart in 1987, the boots “were in perfect condition,” recalls Stuart. “They were the nicest boots I'd ever owned.” By the end of '87, which Stuart called the roughest year of his life, the boots “were a perfect reflection of me, worn out.”
  
  

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About the museum's collection
For more than five decades, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has amassed a collection of country music artifacts and archival items that is the finest and most comprehensive of its kind in the world. The museum celebrates and showcases a rich American art form, preserving and interpreting items that document the history of an American musical experience rooted in Southern culture. The museum's diverse artifact and archival collections comprise more than 40,000 moving images on film, video and digital formats; 500,000 photographs; more than 300,000 sound recordings, including commercial music releases, interviews and demonstration recordings; nearly 800 oral history interviews; 2,500 items of clothing and accessories; 600 musical instruments; 75,000 posters; 5,000 linear feet of print materials; and thousands of additional objects illustrating the lives and careers of performers, industry figures and the culture of country music. Read more about the museum's collections.  

About the Congress of Country Music

Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music is the spiritual home of country music, committed to touching lives by sharing experiences, through exhibits, education and performances that inspire dreams for generations. For more information, visit the Congress of Country Music's website.