Behind Closed Doors

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Nashville, Tennessee

The buffed up warehouse sits in the literal shadow of the grand Country Music Hall of Fame. Some of the local sessions musicians call the hall "Joe's place," a dead-on nickname, since Joe Chambers hawked his life to build one of Nashville's new jewels, the Musicians Hall of Fame. The museum, which opened officially last June, is about to induct its inaugural class, the final ballots now trickling in from a wide array of accomplished musicians worldwide.

"We're the tribute, the story of the musicians who made all the great music behind closed doors, the men behind the front men," says Chambers. "These are the guys who played on tens of thousands of records, whose sounds we all instantly know, but whose names we don't."

Until now, that is.

Chambers has an affinity with the unheralded musician. A songwriter and Georgia transplant, his "Somebody Lied" was Ricky Van Shelton's first #1 hit. Van Shelton hit #2 with Chambers' "I Meant Every Word He Said," and "Old 8 x 10," the title cut of the smash Randy Travis CD came from that same pen and piano. "But I'm one of those has-beens who never quite was," Chambers says with a hoarse laugh. When he's not at the museum, Chambers is busy shuttling to his music stores in Nashville.

After opening officially last June, the Musicians Hall of Fame is about to induct its inaugural class.

Chambers created the exhibits as a kind of geographical tour of the nation's recording capitals, beginning with the 1950s and 1960s in Nashville at famed RCA Studio B and other spots on Music Row, where performers like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and other country legends cut their classic hits. He blends the actual studio artifacts with the sounds of the instrumentation and vocals, not just of the stars, but also of the musicians behind them. "It's like being a fly on the wall during those sessions," says Craig Sargent, an employee of the nearby Hilton who parks his car in ever-neighborly Chambers' back lot. "Every time I come in I go away talking to myself."

And it's not just the country session musicians of Nashville in the hall. Chambers has musicians representing all the genres of the American sound. Among others, Chambers puts into context, through music and artifacts, the Funk Brothers who perfected the Motown sound and the Wrecking Crew, the Los Angeles studio musicians whose fingerprints are all over the Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, and a dozen popular recording artists.