How local communities work to ensure they’re remembered
At first, Lorenzo Washington didn’t mean to become a curator. He just didn’t want his friends and colleagues playing music in and around Jefferson Street to be forgotten.
His friends were folks like Nashville’s Queen of the Blues Marion James, soul singer Herbert Hunter and R&B singer and King of Beach Music Clifford Curry. They, and others featured in the museum, didn’t want to be forgotten either. Most have since passed away, but because of Washington, they’ll be remembered.
It started with a few small items: a photo here, a record there, a chat with a player about what they remembered. And then Washington started buying small glass boxes to preserve and display photos and items in. When he started collecting items, he was allowing older musicians to jam in the rehearsal space and toting them across Middle Tennessee for gigs here and there.
“The next thing they know, and next thing I know, they were telling me that I was a curator, that I had become the new curator for Jefferson Street,” Washington said. “I said, ‘A curator? What’s the duties of a curator?’”
He remembers a woman at the time who told him that “a curator preserves a legacy.”
“And that’s what I started off doing, was preserving the legacy and keeping their names alive and their history in front of people as much as I possibly could,” he said.
The Jefferson Street Sound Museum, which is on historic Jefferson Street, is also part production studio and rehearsal hall, though the hall is largely also used for museum space right now. Washington founded the museum in 2011 and it is an equal part tribute to musicians and entertainers as it is to the clubbing scene around Jefferson Street, which Washington called “the destination” back when he was coming up and living in East Nashville. As he got older, he owned a barbecue joint, a record store and more, and often found that if you looked, you’d find something to be drawn to.
“This was the place to go,” Washington said. “If you had any entrepreneurial spirit, this was the place to come and be a part of. All that was going on over here. You could find something to be a part of.”
From 1935-1965, the area was thriving; Black-owned businesses flourished and folks like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald all took their turns performing either on Jefferson Street or near it.
But Washington wanted to note more than just the names folks already know. The mission of the nonprofit museum is to, “preserve the history, honor and educate people about the music and entertainment legacy of Jefferson Street in Nashville while bridging that legacy with education, grassroots programming and cultural interest through exhibits.”
Washington says he’s been surprised to learn his efforts to preserve the community mean so much to so many, particularly Black communities that often get missed in the greater scope of history. One of his prized displays is one that showcases the late Jackie Shane, a pioneering Black transgendered musician from Nashville who worked with folks like Little Richard and Muddy Waters.
“We just hold her in such high regard, along with Marion James,” Washington said. “It’s honestly an honor to be able to do this and show people who these people are and what they were about.”
The National Museum of African American Museum is currently honoring Washington with a Living Legends exhibit that opened on Jan. 20 — cementing his legacy as the curator of this treasured area. The museum is celebrating his passion and commitment to history and the pivotal role he’s played in ensuring musical pioneers that were popular locally and — and beyond — are given their due.
The Tennessee State Museum invited Washington to be part of its Black History Month programming, which is called Rhythm Revolution. The panel will be led by curator at the Tennessee State Museum Tranae Chatman, who has also planned a month of programming focused on Black musicians that are included in the state museum’s Tennessee Playlist exhibition. The events planned by Chatman focus on the local people and places that made music what it was: from this event to another that focused on women and their usage of music as advocacy.
“Nashville and Memphis in particular have developed reputations as producing great music across many genres including blues, country and soul. Memphis’ location on the Mississippi River makes it a direct link between the Mississippi Delta and the North and Midwest,” Chatman said. “This has historically made it the perfect melting pot of deep south sounds and technological innovation.”
Washington will chat with the curator of the National Museum of African-American Museum Dr. Bryan Pierce and Pat Mitchell Worley, CEO of the Soulsville Foundation on Feb. 17 at the state museum. The three will dive into Black music genres and the historical implications they have for Black culture in Nashville and beyond.
“I didn’t think that I was qualified or capable of standing beside the National Museum of African-American Museum or the Tennessee State Museum,” Washington said. “But they have evidently seen that I do have something that represents a part of the history that needs to be preserved, and stories that’s being told here in Nashville. So all that they’re doing to represent the artist and musicians doing their storytelling, I think it’s wonderful. I think that whenever anybody tells a story about one of these artists or musicians, it’s an enhancement to the legacy of that particular artist and to the whole community.”
Chatman says, of course, Nashville’s reputation as the stage of country music makes it an attractive destination for national stars from all genres.
“With all of these factors at play, the mix of local traditions and national interest keeps Tennessee relevant in the bigger conversation of American popular music,” Chatman said.
Though he says folks do largely come to town to be tourists in the country music world, he finds that once they get to the museum, they want to learn and they’re eager to hear every detail. Part of the history lesson, of course, is the excitement that took place in all the nightclubs with Little Richard being down the street, and with Jimi Hendrix walking up and down Jefferson Street and living about five blocks down the street here from where the building stands. But that’s a door he opens so he can invite them in to learn other things and to get a deeper education.
“When I said they’re curious, they want to know what else happened,” Washington said. “They know Black folk live in this city. And we want to show what they did. We’ve heard people come in and say they were around town and heard that Black music in Nashville was popular and how great the clubs were and they want to know where to get that information. So I bring them in and give ’em a little bit of a little history lesson.”
Throughout February to celebrate Black History Month, the Jefferson Street Sound Museum is inviting the public in for “Black History in Music: Work, Worship, and Celebration.” The art exhibit aims to show the thriving Jefferson Street, both the businesses and entrepreneurs, in addition to the music scene.
In the future, the museum wants to work more on music production and containing the legacy by engaging modern, young musicians in an effort to “bring the blues back to Jefferson Street.”
“We know there are exceptional artists that can come here and do that,” Washington said “We haven’t lost it over here on Jefferson Street and in North Nashville, but there’s some folks with a legacy we’ve now shown and been able to honor. We want to continue to do that, and years from now, want to see this place continue to show that.”
Chatman agrees that the best way to continue to evolve museums and storytelling in history is to actually tell stories while folks are still here and to continue to highlight the artifacts the museums and communities work so hard to preserve.
“It is important for us to teach the younger generations about the traditions that already exist in Tennessee so that they value them and continue their legacies into the future,” she says.
Chatman points to the Stax Museum as a great example of an institution in Memphis that is preserving history and continuing its legacy to the present.
“Although Tennessee Playlist addresses the importance of soul music, Stax Museum and the Soulsville Foundation maintain the connection to the community that the history is tied to,” Chatman said. “It is necessary for communities across the state to know that stories in their own communities have had a statewide and national impact.”
For the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, Washington designed a piece of art for the museum that he said shows the scope and legacy of Jefferson Street in the best way possible. He calls it the music tree, and it outlines the landscape of the area: the leaves are individuals, bands and entertainers. The branches connect to the leaves, showing affiliations to nightclubs like Ann’s Place and Club Baron and to educational institutions like Fisk and Tennessee State University as well as limbs showing the street names in the area. The trunk is Jefferson Street itself — creating a strong base to support the rest of it. The roots, Washington said, represent the community supporting all of it.
“It could’ve all been lost,” Washington said. “Nobody is going to reach back and grab the legacy, especially of the ones that didn’t make it to major stardom like Aretha Franklin or Jimi Hendrix or Little Richard. We have to be the ones to keep that legacy strong for everyone who was involved.”