exhibit :: Blog
Spotlight Exhibit: The Band
Recently, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum unveiled a new Spotlight Exhibit devoted to the Band. Located in the Museum’s main gallery, the exhibit features an extremely rare electric guitar/mandolin that was manufactured by Gibson back in 1961. Band guitarist Robbie Robertson played the instrument when the group performed “The Weight” at the Last Waltz. The exhibit also includes a mandolin that was played by Levon Helm, the original handwritten lyric manuscript to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” the original artwork for the cover of the group’s Cahoots album, Martin Scorsese’s shooting script for The Last Waltz and a jacket that Robertson wore onstage during a 1971 New Year’s Eve concert in New York City. That concert was recorded and released on the album Rock of Ages. Robbie Robertson got to check the exhibit out when he made a visit to the Museum on January 17.
Watch Robertson playing the 1961 ...
The Lost Photographs of Cleveland Deejay Tommy Edwards
Many know that rock and roll was christened in Cleveland, Ohio, when DJ Alan Freed coined the phrase to describe the up-tempo R&B music he was beaming out on his popular radio show. Freed opened the doors for countless artists, and for years was the de facto king of rock and roll. But fewer know about the cadre of revolutionary Cleveland disc jockeys who shared the airwaves with Freed. Among them was Tommy Edwards.
Edwards, who owned a prominent record store, pressed records and was a disc jockey at WERE 1300 AM, was instrumental in bringing Elvis Presley to Cleveland in 1955 for his first performance north of the Mason-Dixon line. Pat Boone headlined the concert, and the supporting bill included Bill Haley and the Comets, the Four Lads, Priscilla Wright and a largely unknown Presley. It was there that Edwards snapped the famous photograph of Presley with Haley, one of the few times the two met. The show was ...
Rock Hall Redesign
About 14 months ago the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame began working on a redesign of the museum’s galleries. It was a project that we had talked about for quite a few years, and in September 2010 it finally got underway. The project had a couple of main goals: upgrading all of the audio, video and interactive elements, improving wayfinding and – most importantly – reorganizing the exhibits so they tell the story of rock and roll in a more chronological way. The Museum’s exhibits have always covered the entire history of rock and roll, from the roots of rock up to the present, but they were never in any particular order. The roots exhibits were in one section of the main gallery, while the Fifties exhibit was way on the other side of the gallery. We wanted to correct that.
Making these changes meant we had to have a lot of new cases built, and we also added a few new exhibits. For example, we used to have an exhibit on Ohio music; now we have an exhibit on Cleveland’s music and one on the music of the Midwest. We also added a heavy metal exhibit, and ...
Pioneers of Rock
"Pioneers of Rock" is the second installment in a special series that highlights the evolution of women in music by placing their accomplishments, inspirations and influence in the context of the eras that shaped their sounds and messages. "America's Foremothers" introduced the series.
As World War II ended in 1945 and G.I.s returned home, the proportion of women on assembly lines fell from 25 percent to 7.5 percent. Women who had – out of necessity – taken an unprecedented place in the work force were urged back into the home by books like 1947’s Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. The book argued that only a return to traditional values and gender roles could restore “women’s inner balance.”
Female rock and roll pioneers were less interested in restoring “women’s inner balance” than they were seeking an even playing field. Taking cues from Jackie Robinson’s and Larry Doby’s breaking the color line in baseball in 1947, and from President Truman’s desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces with the signing of Executive Order 9981 in 1948, American culture and the music business was at the birth of a new age. As with the birth of ...
Rock Hall will honor Otis Redding's 70th birthday with a spotlight exhibit and film screening
Though his career was relatively brief, Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying up until his death in 1967. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will honor the life and music of Redding, a 1989 Hall of Fame inductee, with an exhibit and film screening. Redding would have been 70 on September 9. That day, the Hall of Fame will unveil a spotlight exhibit with more than 20 artifacts in the Ahmet M. Ertegun Main Exhibit Hall. On Wednesday, September 7, the Museum will screen the film Dreams to Remember: The Legacy of Otis Redding.
In honor of Otis Redding’s legacy and to support the Rock Hall’s mission, his widow Zelma Redding will donate a portion of her husband’s papers to the Rock Hall’s new Library and Archives. These will include contracts, correspondence, photographs, receipts and sheet music. The Library and Archives will ...
Today in Rock: The Beatles' record-breaking 1965 Shea Stadium show
The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York City on August 15, 1965. They were the first rock group to play an outdoor sports stadium, and the show attracted 55,600 fans - the most attended show of the time. The promoter of the show, Sid Bernstein, said that the concert grossed $304,000, the largest gross from any event in show business up to that point. “It was the biggest crowd we ever played to anywhere in the world,” John Lennon said of the Shea show. “I heard a jet taking off, and I thought one of our amplifiers had blown up. We couldn’t hear ourselves sing.” The noise was so deafening that at the end of the show, during “I’m Down,” Lennon began playing a keyboard with his elbows while the whole group laughed hysterically. A documentary about the show, The Beatles at Shea Stadium, was produced by Ed Sullivan and was broadcast on ABC-TV the following year. The Beatles played a second show at Shea on August 23, 1966. It was one of their final live performances.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s newly revamped Beatles exhibit includes the jacket that Paul ...
Women Who Rock spotlight: Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday
I saw the film Lady Sings the Blues, starring Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Diana Ross, when I was about 11 years old. One of the images in the movie that still resonates with me is one in which the around 11-year-old Billie Holiday, circa 1926, is working as a cleaning and errand girl for a Baltimore “house of ill-repute.” When she is supposed to be scrubbing the front stoop, she sneaks away and spends most of her time leaning over the Victrola in the brothel parlor, cranking up Bessie Smith’s latest hit, “’Taint Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do.” She plays the record over and over, singing along, studying every note and syllable. So, that film was not only my introduction to Billie Holiday, it was also my introduction to Bessie Smith, and an important lesson in how artists pass the cultural torch. Watching Diana Ross’ portrayal of Billie Holiday learning from Bessie Smith, I recognized the same way that I studied every Supremes’ 45 on my old Sears Silvertone. I can imagine Lady GaGa at 11 years old, listening to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” on her Walkman in exactly the same way. Seeing Lady Sings ...
Lady Gaga's Meat Dress is now on display at the Rock Hall as part of the Women Who Rock exhibit
The meat dress is here! Yes, Lady Gaga’s meat dress is now at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and has been installed in our Women Who Rock exhibit. After Gaga wore the dress at the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards show, we contacted her managers and asked if we might be able to get the dress for our exhibit. They said yes, but obviously it had to be treated in some way so we could exhibit it. They sent the dress to American Taxidermy in California, where it was placed in a meat locker. It was then placed in a vat of chemicals and, while still pliable, was put on a body form and allowed to dry. This process actually took a while because the dress was made up of separate layers of Argentinian beef. After drying, the meat was painted to look fresh, rather than the dark, beef-jerky look it had taken on when it began dehydrating. The dress actually arrived at the Museum last Friday. We opened the crates on Monday and started getting it ready to be put on exhibit. And now it is up! You have to come and check it ...
