Country Music Hall Of Fame & Museum Revisits ‘Night Train To Nashville’ In New Exhibit

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The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its “Night Train to Nashville” exhibit with “Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues Revisited,” opening April 26 and running through September 2025.

The museum’s award-winning original exhibition, which was featured March 2004 through December 2005, explored the significance of Nashville’s pioneering R&B scene. The newly-revamped exhibit will include many of the same items and themes, as well as recently discovered artifacts and photos, and is included with museum admission.

“Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues Revisited” explores Nashville’s R&B activity in the decades following World War II, from 1945-1970. As Nashville’s country music industry was just getting started, the city was also a hotbed for R&B, with celebrated performers contributing to the community’s rich musical heritage, including Country Music Hall of Fame member Ray Charles as well as Hank Crawford, Bobby Hebb, Jimi Hendrix, Etta James and Little Richard, among many others. During this time, R&B reigned alongside country in the city’s clubs and studios, on radio and on nationally syndicated TV.

The exhibit is supported by a free “Night Train to Nashville” online exhibit, which launched last year and was made possible by a major grant awarded from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibit is also supplemented by a newly-published companion book and an opening weekend program examining the influential television show Night Train.

The companion book, Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues Revisited, includes a foreword by Nashville entertainer Frank Howard and explores the themes and stories in the exhibit, featuring more than 100 photographs and descriptions of classic R&B records cut in Nashville. The book is now available to preorder on the museum’s website and will be available April 26 to purchase in the museum’s store or on its website. The book will also be available in bookstores nationwide through a distribution partnership with the University of Illinois Press.

“This exhibit and its related resources offer opportunities to revisit Nashville’s often overlooked R&B legacy and its important role in our community becoming ‘Music City,’” says Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “As Nashville developed into a major recording center, it did so against a background of urban change and at a time when racial barriers were tested and sometimes broken on bandstands, inside recording studios and on the airwaves.”

To mark the exhibit’s opening, the museum will host a panel discussion on April 27 about Nashville’s groundbreaking television series Night Train. Participants will include performers Howard and Jimmy Church, who appeared regularly on the show, along with Katie Blackwell (wife of late Night Train creator and host Noble Blackwell) and Tracye Blackwell (daughter of Katie and Noble Blackwell). The discussion will be illustrated with video clips from Night Train and will be held at 2:30 p.m. in the museum’s Ford Theater.

Lorie Hollabaugh
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