Johnny Cash Museum planned for downtown Nashville

Downtown Nashville is getting another stop on its already long list of pilgrimage sites for music fans.

Already home to the Ryman Auditorium, the Bluebird Cafe and a host of country western dreams on Music Row, Nashville will be home to the Johnny Cash Museum, which has plans to be home to the world’s largest collection of memorabilia dedicated to the Man in Black.

Sanctioned by the Cash family, the museum is the brainchild of Cash biographer and archivist Bill Miller, who will fill the museum with his own collection of artifacts from the singer’s life. These include Cash’s 12th grade report card, furnishings from his home with June Carter and the hand-written lyrics for the song “My Lord Has Gone,” which Cash wrote just before his death in 2003.

Plans call for more than 1,000 items to be on permanent display in the museum, which upon completion will occupy two stories on 3rd Avenue South in Nashville, not far from other country music tourist stops such as the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

According to a statement released by the Country Music Assn., Miller will invest as much as $7 million toward the museum’s completion. No opening date has been set yet, but the museum gift shop is said to open this week. Updates are posted on the museum’s Facebook page.

“Johnny just deserves this more than anything else,” Cash’s younger brother Tommy said in the release from the CMA. “People from all over the world are going to come and see this museum and discover things that they never knew about Johnny.”

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Twitter: @chrisbarton

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