2024 Inductee

I was very surprised and honored to learn that I had been selected to The Kentucky Music Hall of Fame. I am glad to accept it in honor of the great musicians that migrate to Nashville from all over America. They are the ones that put the music in Music City. We have only provided them with platforms to showcase their amazing talents.

During the mid-1950’s, I, along with friends, drove from Paducah to Nashville to see the Grand Old Opry and stood in line in front of some of the same buildings we now have music clubs in.

That area continued to thrive until the Opryland Park and Hotel opened in 1974 and the Ryman Auditorium was closed. After that, things began to deteriorate with the restaurants and gift shops closing and derelicts taking over the streets. Landlords started renting the empty buildings to anyone willing to pay a few hundred dollars a month. This resulted in numerous adult joints opening in the area; and it became a very seedy area that most people would not want to visit. These joints included Swingers World, Adult World, now our Stage on Broadway and Sugar Shack that is now our Second Fiddle club.

What is now, in my opinion, the best musical entertainment area in the world, has not always been that way. When we took over Tootsies in February of 1993, most of the Lower Broadway buildings were either vacant or occupied by some of those adult joints. The Tootsies building had been condemned by codes. We had to close it and rebuild the roof and much of the building. We later sold our interest in Tootsies.

In 1997, we built the music venue, Legends Corner. In 2001, we opened The Stage on Broadway. The Stage was a game changer on Broadway. With a first-class sound and lighting system and large stage, The Stage became a venue that allowed musicians to showcase their skills in grand fashion and was often used for showcases for not only country music biggest artist, but also many from all genres of music, from Toby Keith & Wynonna Judd to Bret Michaels. Also in 2001, we opened Second Fiddle paying homage to the roots of country music and the Grand Ole Opry. In 2004 a fourth venue, Nashville Crossroads opened.

The few musicians we had in the mid 1990’s was with one musician on a small stage singing along with recorded instrumentation on cassette tapes. When we started to build venues with high quality sound systems, with sound engineers operating it, good stage lighting with a clean and pleasant environment, the musicians began to come in from all over the USA and even some foreign countries. There are now over 1500 musicians playing every day in these downtown clubs.

Other venues soon followed, and Nashville was no longer just another river town; as Tim McGraw stated so well in his song Nashville Without You. Tim’s song is a tribute to these musicians.

I am an avid collector of musical instruments, music memorabilia and items related to the preservation of recorded sound. We have a private museum with 1000’s of collectables from turn of the century Edison phonographs, early Jukeboxes, music boxes, radios and 100’s of guitars and other instruments.

Some of the musicians that played at our clubs have now become “the next big thing”. Some have married each other and started a family. Some went back home to the farm; and some of them now have their own Honky Tonks. When Dierks Bently came to Nashville from Phoenix, I gave him one of his first gigs at Legends Corner. He became the next ‘big thing’ and now has his own Honky Tonk.