A new exhibit at The MAX explores the guitar’s cultural impact through 40 historic instruments.
BY JIM BEAUGEZ
GUITAR PLAYERS AND enthusiasts will find a coterie of familiar faces adorning the Hall of Fame rotunda at the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (a.k.a. The MAX), an interactive museum in Meridian that honors the state’s famed writers, actors, musicians and other cultural figures. As the structure ascends from the ground floor through the center’s galleries and toward the open sky, the visages of Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Jimmie Rodgers, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and Marty Stuart cast a message to visitors that’s echoed in the state’s tourism slogan: “The Birthplace of American Music.” No state has a more solid claim to it than Mississippi.
“We’re the birthplace of blues, country and rock and roll music,” says Penny Kemp, president and CEO of The MAX. “And the guitar is at the core of all of it.” Meridian itself has a hefty guitar legacy as the home of Rodgers, nicknamed the father of country music, as well as Peavey Electronics, which pioneered CNC technology in guitar making in the 1970s.
Beyond the museum’s own collection of notable guitars — including Diddley’s rectangular red Gretsch G6138, Hooker’s Wine Red Gibson SJ-200, Waters’ Gretsch Synchromatic and one of B.B. King’s “Lucille” Gibson ES-355s — there are more reasons for guitar fans to visit this spring.
Through May 11, The MAX is hosting America at the Crossroads: The Guitar and a Changing Nation, presented by the National Guitar Museum. There, visitors can see 40 of the most important guitars ever made, from the National Guitar Museum’s collection of 200 historic instruments, and learn how the instrument has impacted American history.
“The guitar kept showing up anytime you were looking at a huge cultural movement,” says H.P. Newquist, founder of the National Guitar Museum. “Look at the Vietnam War. You had people like Hendrix and John Fogerty writing songs that featured searing guitars, emulating the sounds of bombs with them, and becoming emblems of the opposition to the war. And you had plenty of guys going off to war who were taking their guitars with them.”
The story of the guitar in America dates to colonial times, beginning with explorers and settlers who brought their instruments with them across the Atlantic Ocean. By
