Marty Stuart's amazing collection of country-music memorabilia

This Wall Street Journal piece by their pop critic, Jim Fusilli, starts out with a long, lingering look at the amazing collection of music memorabilia, allegedly the world's largest country-music collection, pulled together over the past four decades by old-school country musician Marty Stuart and kept at a Nashville warehouse.

There's some great stuff here for the hard-core collector, which Stuart clearly is, even as he continues to build his own musical legacy with a 16th well-regarded album and endless touring and relationships across the music business far beyond the pop-oriented Nashville mainstream. It sure would be fun to get a tour of Marty's "back stage" with all these goodies there.

If you like country music's roots even a little bit, and roots are kinda what country music is all about, there's so much here: "several of Johnny Cash's guitars, a coat worn by Hank Williams, Porter Wagoner's rhinestone boots and a briefcase of songs that rode in Jimmie Rodgers's casket on his funeral train." Fun stuff. Unfortunately, this being the Journal, we don't get any photos of the goodies, not even any of those pointillist drawings they specialize in.


Too bad Stuart hasn't been able to turn his massive collection into something more like a museum available to more country fans. He certainly should have the opportunity, if he ever had the time. I know some folks who might volunteer to help.