Hugs and smiles abounded when Johnny Money’s heirs met July 16 with a group of Belmont College representatives for a “Mark the Second” celebration on the establishment’s Mike Curb School of Leisure and Music Enterprise.
The occasion celebrated an settlement that makes Belmont the everlasting residence for Money’s private archives. The gathering of paperwork and a few bodily objects is being organized and catalogued for entry by researchers and students, to be housed in a Johnny Money Studying Middle at a college constructing below development on Music Row.
As vital because the settlement was, the celebration’s timing had deep karmic repercussions. The occasion unwittingly coincided with the fortieth anniversary of a darkish chapter in Money’s historical past: Some 40 years prior, he opened The Tennessean to see his photograph plastered on the entrance web page of the Dwelling part with a headline he didn’t know was coming: “’Man in Black’ And not using a Label.” After a 28-year run with Columbia Data, the corporate had dropped him with out even a courtesy name.
Simply 11 months earlier, his bedrock tone had offered the ultimate voice in “Highwayman,” taking him to No. 1 on Billboard’s Sizzling Nation Songs together with super-group band mates Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.
4 many years after he was unceremoniously dismissed, Belmont’s acquisition will place part of his legacy within the coronary heart of Music Row, actually throughout the property line from the place that call was made. The brand new Belmont constructing is adjoining to a Curb School constructing that beforehand housed Columbia. Two recording studios nonetheless exist on the property, together with the area wherein Money minimize a few of his most iconic hits: “Ring of Hearth,” “What’s Fact,” “Man in Black” and the June Carter duet “Jackson.”
“It’s actually nearly a phoenix rising from the ashes,” says Dr. Mary Ellen Pethel, director of the Studying Middle. “They’re blasting proper now, and that new constructing goes to enhance these historic studios. It’s like a reunion of types, and it’s like all is correct with the world once more.”
The $8.6 million acquisition occurred partially by means of help from Scott and Sandi Borchetta, Mike and Linda Curb and the Harper Home Music Basis, a nonprofit concerned within the preservation and/or funding of music venues, teaching programs and different heritage initiatives.
The Money kids — Rosanne Money, John Carter Money, Kathy Money, Cindy Money and Tara Money Schwoebel — had wished their father’s historical past to be preserved in a spot the place it might be mined for scholarly analysis and music-related research. Belmont grew to become a companion, Pethel says, by means of a relationship Curb School dean Brittany Schaffer had with the Money group. Following the July 22 announcement of the deal, Belmont has already fielded requests to discover the gathering, although the varsity is hardly prepared for that step.
“Folks need to come analysis now,” Pethel says, “and I’m like, ‘They’re nonetheless in banker’s packing containers.’”
The gathering consists of greater than 100 of these packing containers, the majority of it consisting of paperwork and paperwork, corresponding to correspondence, contracts, images, datebooks, scrapbooks and authorized papers.
The packing containers additionally maintain VHS tapes and CDs, plus clothes worn by attendees at a Money fan membership assembly and hermetically-sealed cotton from the Money farm in Arkansas. The Belmont group remains to be to start with phases of taking inventory.
“It’s received a couple of of what you’ll name ephemeral issues, or memorabilia,” Pethel says. “No guitars.”
Along with offering a supply for analysis, the deal creates a studying expertise for some music nerds in coaching as Pethel has assembled a dozen college students to help in cataloguing and submitting the supplies. The scholars have been picked due to their pursuits in authorized research, historical past or songwriting, for instance. They’ll be a part of a course of anticipated to take 12-24 months as they develop and implement a metadata program. That sounds primary, however marking names or titles persistently (June Carter vs. June Carter Money, “Folsom Jail” vs. “Folsom Jail Blues”) will have an effect on students’ skill to know what’s within the assortment and the right way to entry it.
“Sensible is cool for this class,” Pethel says. “That’s for positive.”
Pethel is especially appreciative of the geographic significance of the Johnny Money Studying Middle. She based Nashville Websites, an enterprise that gives strolling, driving and digital excursions of Music Metropolis, together with themed journeys that target music properties, town’s Civil Battle areas and its Civil Rights historical past. She believes it might result in Money-related excursions.
The acquisition comes at a key time as Belmont extends its affect on the Nashville music group. The brand new constructing, introduced in April 2024, is on a block of Music Row that features Black River, Soundstage and BMG Music, placing college students inside straightforward strolling distance from the American Federation of Musicians, Warner Data Nashville, BMI, ASCAP and the Nation Music Affiliation, the place Schaffer will turn out to be CEO on Jan. 1.
The brand new construction will function songwriter rooms and a 150-capacity efficiency area, amongst different lodging, making the varsity extra interactive with a music group that already counts scores of Belmont grads amongst its work pressure.
And it comes after the 2025 introduction of Dolly U, a course of research that explores quite a few entertainment-related disciplines by means of initiatives based mostly across the profession of Dolly Parton. Money and Parton present a template, although unintended, for different Nashville music icons to contemplate as they map out their legacies.
“They’re fully separate [projects], and there’s no bigger plan, no grasp plan with this,” Pethel says. “On the identical time, having the Dolly U programming after which buying the Johnny Money Archives actually crops a flag for Belmont when it comes to its skill to have a good time and honor these musical icons, and achieve this in a method that passes scholarship from one technology to the subsequent.”
It’s a exceptional reversal of fortune within the heart of Music Row.
