Alabama Music Hall Of Fame

I hadn't expected to be impressed with The Alabama Music Hall of Fame (www.alamhof.org/mustour.htm; 800-239-AMHF) in Tuscumbia. But as soon as I started my tour, I knew this was serious business.

The Hall's organizer obviously pulled out of the bells and whistles to honor some of the area's musical greats. And after scanning all the Native Alabamians, I realized how many grew up there or called it home. And the Alabama Hall of Fame aims to celebrate them all.

It started out as a dream of the famed Muscle Shoals Music Association, a local professional organization of recording studio owners, producers, musicians, songwriters and other music professionals. In 1980, they created a state agency, the Alabama Music Hall of Fame Board, with a mandate to honor all of this state's great music achievers, and to build a facility in which to showcase them. Seven years later, the citizens of Alabama passed a state-wide referendum for the construction of Phase One of the project, a 12,500- square-foot-exhibit hall to be called The Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Ten years after the idea's conception, the Hall was opened on July 26, 1990. More than 35,000 people came out. And then the tourists came, and keep coming.

And it's not limited to any single style of music; inducted into the hall are the likes of Nat King Cole, WC Handy and Sonny James to Hank Williams and Tammy Wynette to Lionel Richie and The Commodores. When you enter the lobby, a music controlled color chandelier provides a light show that bounces off of the bronze stars of music achievers scattered about the floor. Similar to like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the lobby serves as the Walk of Fame for the Museum. Permanently embedded bronze stars cover the floor, each engraved with the name of one of Alabama's more outstanding musicians.

Leaving the lobby, visitors enter the Hall of Fame Gallery, which features portraits of the Inductees painted by Tuskegee artist Ronald McDowell. As visitors leave the Gallery, they encounter lifelike plaster casts of Alabama, Lionel Richie and Hank Williams, Jr. The Popular Music section is the beginning of the main exhibit hall. It is marked by a 12-foot jukebox playing pop, classical and opera tunes by Alabamians. A wax figure of Nat King Cole is seated at a piano. On display also is recording equipment used in Sam Phillip's Memphis Music Service and the contract between Sam Phillips and RCA when the Alabamian sold his rights to the soon-to-be-superstar Elvis Presley. There's Jim Nabors' Gomer Pyle outfit and stage outfits from Lionel Richie, The Commodores and others.

As visitors exit the bus, can enter a brick-sided nightclub where is Erskine Hawkins's trumpet, Martha Reeves' and Eddie Kendricks' stage outfits, gold records by Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge, the 1935 official portrait of W.C. W.C. Handy along with many other historical artifacts.

Next is the Muscle Shoals section, which highlights the studios that made Northwest Alabama world famous. Across from the studio is the Gospel Showcase, where the tour ends.

After a visit to the The Alabama Music Hall of Fame, you'll find there is soul in the Heart of Dixie.

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