Today I visited the Grand Ole Opry Museum archives, where I spent some time with my friends Tim Davis and Cameron Knowler. Tim invited me to see the archives after I posted about Little Jimmy Dickens’s Farber guitar. By strange coincidence, I posted about the guitar on Facebook, wondering where its current whereabouts were, on the same day that Tim and Cameron were examining this very guitar in their archive room. Tim invited me to see the guitar next time I was in Nashville, so today I went down there to see it—and so much more—in person!
Only a few things are pictured here, but there was also Little Jimmy Dickens’s Super 400, Little Jimmy Sizemore’s Euphonon guitar, Jimmie Rodgers’s Gibson flattop guitar with F holes, and Johnny Cash’s original Martin D28 guitar, the one he played during his Sun Records years. The stuff was amazing to see!
The Opry archives are also a bit heartbreaking, as they lost nearly everything to heavy flood damage when the Cumberland River flooded the area back in 2010. I found out that they actually own “Little” Jimmy Dickens Gibson J 200 with the Mosrite neck, but unfortunately, it’s in another storage facility filled with heavily water-damaged instruments. They have restored a lot of the instruments that were damaged, but it’s always a matter of budget decision as to which ones to restore first.
I really appreciate Tim and Cameron showing me around today! What an amazing experience!
Find additional photos at Deke’s original post.
