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A New Class Of Musicians Hall Of Famers Honors Its Late Founder Joe Chambers

Musicians Hall of Fame
Royce DeGrie
Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives (L to R: Kenny Vaughan, Harry Stinson and Chris Scruggs) perform Nov. 22 as new inductees to the Musicians Hall of Fame.

One of the keepsakes that new inductees to the Musicians Hall of Fame receive is a black jacket of the type crew might be given after a rock and roll tour, with their name embroidered on the front. When they called 2022 inductee Vince Gill to find out exactly how he’d like his name written, he said he wanted it to say “Joe Chambers.” It was a sweet gesture to the founder of the Hall, who passed away on September 28.

“He had a kindness about him that drew you in,” Gill told WMOT on the evening of his induction last week. “He didn’t have to have all the attention. Some people do. He was a great hang, and he cared about all the things that most people don’t. Most people don’t go into the nuance of who played on that? Who wrote that? Who did that?”

That attention to the studio and stage pickers behind the stars led Chambers to launch the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in the summer of 2006. Now in its second home beneath the historic Municipal Auditorium, the MHOF is Nashville’s pilgrimage-worthy destination for deep fans of popular music. It expresses its mission is “to honor all great musicians regardless of genre or instruments” with a dazzling set of displays, environments and artifacts covering all the great recording centers, including Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Los Angeles, Detroit and Nashville.

The Hall hadn’t inducted any new members since the Fall of 2019. Besides Vince Gill, last week’s seventh class of new members featured Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives (Harry Stinson, Kenny Vaughan, Chris Scruggs and sound man Mick Conley), Ray Stevens, Don McLean, audio engineer George Massenburg, producer James William Guercio and ZZ Top leader Billy F. Gibbons, who received the Hall’s Iconic Riff Award. Guest performers at the concert that followed the medallion ceremony included Rodney Crowell, Mike Farris, Wendy Moten and Steve Wariner.

Musicians Hall of Fame
Joe Chambers

Hovering over it all was the memory of Chambers, an easy-going Columbus, Georgia native who excelled as a songwriter, musician, and guitar dealer before founding his shrine to musicianship. “He had a heart for musicians at any level,” said Marty Stuart. “He was one of the most selfless people I’ve ever known. His heart was for the meek and lowly musician. This place is meant to inspire young people and to reinspire us veterans. This is Joe’s legacy and it’s a beautiful legacy.”

Chambers moved to Nashville in 1978 and found mentorship and guidance under the wing of legendary producer Billy Sherrill. During the 80s and 90s, Joe had songs recorded by Conway Twitty, George Jones, Joe Diffie, Johnny Paycheck, Randy Travis and others. Chambers founded his titular guitar dealership in 1985. The small chain had its flagship store on West End with a parking space by the door permanently reserved for Chet Atkins.

It seemed the store would be Joe Chambers legacy, but he had a long-simmering notion to salute working musicians that took shape in 2006. As hard as it is to launch a non-profit and a museum, Chambers then experienced a sequence of trials that were hard to imagine. The city evicted the museum under eminent domain to build the Music City Center with inadequate compensation for Chambers to move. While his artifact collection was in storage, it was significantly damaged by the Nashville flood of 2010. It took extensive lobbying of Metro Nashville to do the deal that led to a reopening in a much larger space in Municipal in 2013.

Chambers managed the Hall over the years side by side with his wife of 42 years, Linda. Last Tuesday, she called her late husband “the most positive person I’ve ever met. You know what he said about the flood, making something positive out of everything? He said it just gives these instruments more of a story. They went through something. So he was just positive about everything that happened.”

Her message about the museum is that it is in strong shape for the future. “He gave me enough instructions to keep me busy for about the next five years as far as inductees and the direction he wanted the museum to go,” she said. “And I’m going to try and honor that.”

Also on staff at the Hall since 2007 is former BR549 bass player Jay McDowell, the multimedia archivist. He’s seen not just the growth of the museum’s collection but its credibility and stature among musicians worldwide. “When we started, (the challenge) was trying to convince the artists we were a legitimate thing,” he told me. “Now they come and see our exhibits and they get it. They see what we’re about and who we honor and why we exist. And they want to have their things on display here. Before we had to convince them, and now they try to convince us.”

Recent additions to the museum’s exhibit space include extravagant coats from rocker and producer Alan Parsons, exhibits on the Marshall Tucker Band and Trini Lopez, and the drum set that Stan Lynch played on an epic run of albums by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Here's a 2018 interview with Joe.

JOE CHAMBERS - Songwriter/Producer; Founder of The Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum (Nashville)

Craig Havighurst is WMOT's editorial director and host of The String, a weekly interview show airing Mondays at 8 pm, repeating Sundays at 7 am. He also co-hosts The Old Fashioned on Saturdays at 9 am and Tuesdays at 8 pm. Threads and Instagram: @chavighurst. Email: craig@wmot.org