Country Music Hall of Fame

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has devoted its largest rotating exhibit space to three experiences in a row centered on different American places covering roughly the same period - the 1960s and 70s. Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats (2015-2018) looked at Music Row here in the capital of country music. Outlaws And Armadillos (2018-2022) touched on Nashville but was chiefly about the burgeoning scene in Austin, Texas. Now, the Hall’s curators have turned their attention to Los Angeles and the astonishing confluence of talent and cultural upheaval that gave us country-rock. It wasn’t designed as a trilogy, but now it feels like one.

It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely group of inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame than the class of 2022, honored Sunday night in the Hall’s annual Medallion Ceremony. Yet Jerry Lee Lewis, Keith Whitley and Joe Galante all made the kind of impact that leads to country music’s greatest honor.

The country music community convened Sunday to recognize the Hall's class of 2020 after the pandemic canceled last year's ceremony.

Even in a city and an era that rewarded unique and ambitious characters, Tom T. Hall stood out in 20th century Nashville. Rural by upbringing yet as literary minded as a poet or a magazine staff writer, the Kentucky native was a masterful songwriter and artist who infused country music with unusual plotlines, complex humanity, social insight and refined wit.

A second-generation country music legend, a revered Music Row songwriter and the ultimate roots music polymath make up the 2020 class of inductees into…

The symbiotic relationship of music cities Austin, TX and Nashville TN goes back more than four decades. It’s a curious story that mingles art, commerce,…