Welcome to one of the nation's leading research and programming centers devoted to the full study of popular and folk music in the United States and beyond.

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Archive Renovation Project Update

Our renovation project is well underway at the Center for Popular Music. The staff has been working hard to move all materials from on top of and out from under the mezzanine and put them into temporary locations throughout the Center. The next step in the process will be removing all shelving and the demolition of the mezzanine.

As a result of our renovation project, some items will be difficult to access and may require more time to locate. Please let us know in advance if you need to view an item from our archival collections and we will do our best to have them ready for you. Please contact the Center's staff if you need any help. Stay tuned for more updates as they happen!

A rare sight - bare shelves at the Center for Popular Music.

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Center for Popular Music Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

We are excited to announce that the Center for Popular Music has received a $205,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities! The award is part of the NEH's Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program, and will allow us to make major renovations to the CPM's archival storage room in order to preserve our materials with increased sustainability, security, efficiency, and accessibility. It's going to be a busy year ahead as we ready our space for the continued vibrant growth of one of the nation's largest and most important American vernacular music research collections!

Read the official press release here.

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Holiday Hours

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Fundraiser to Preserve Work of Late Music Photographer Alan Mayor

The Center for Popular Music acquired the Alan Mayor Photography Collection in late 2017. Mayor, a beloved photographer who passed away in 2015, documented more than four decades of Nashville’s musical life: the Opry, Fan Fair (now CMA Fest), music industry events, local shows, tours, and a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes photos of country’s biggest stars.

While the University employs two certified archivists who will manage this project, the Center needs to raise $50,000 to purchase materials to preserve the tens of thousands of photographs, negatives and slides. Once the project is completed, Mayor’s photos will be available to the public for reference and, pending his family’s permission, inclusion in publications and other media.

 Anyone interested in making a tax-deductible donation may text ALAN to 41444 or donate online.

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Marvin Hedrick Audio Collection

The MTSU Center for Popular Music announces the completion of the Marvin Hedrick Audio Collection website, a digitization and cataloging project funded by the GRAMMY Foundation (now part of the GRAMMY Museum). The collection includes historically significant recordings of bluegrass and country music made by influential documentarian Marvin Hedrick in Brown County, Indiana between 1954 and 1973. The Hedrick Collection was donated to the Center for Popular Music by Marvin’s sons, Gary Hedrick and David Hedrick in 2015.

Each item in the collection was evaluated, preserved, and digitized in the Center’s state-of-the-art audio preservation lab, then catalogued with essential data such as song titles, performers, and dates, using CONTENTdm archival management software. A Finding Aid was also created, giving an overview of the collection and its contents. The Marvin Hedrick Audio Collection is searchable through its dedicated website. One audio sample from each tape is provided as streaming audio for educational purposes. The entirety of the collection’s digitized contents is available to researchers on-site at the Center for Popular Music.

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This newsletter will keep you up-to-date with everything happening at the Center, including new events, exhibits, collections, books, projects, Spring Fed Records releases, and more. To sign up, please follow this link or click the subscribe button on the sidebar.

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