Qualla: West Virginia Music Hall of Fame

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Michael Lipton walked through the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and started running a private inventory in his head. Bill Withers had been born in Slab Fork. Hazel Dickens had grown up in Mercer County. Little Jimmy Dickens was a Bolt Mountain native. Johnnie Johnson, the piano player who shaped Chuck Berry's sound, came from Fairmont. The Charleston musician went home and decided that a state with that kind of musical bloodline deserved its own hall of fame. In 2005 he founded one, with records from his personal collection as the opening exhibit.

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: Built by Volunteers

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame is a strikingly grassroots operation, staffed and governed by volunteers, with a Music Career Counseling Program for the next generation. Nominations come from the public, though that first 2007 class was selected by the board. The criteria ar...

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: The Sound of a State

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What the inductee roster makes clear is that West Virginia has been a musical exporter for over a century, and not in just one direction. Jazz tenor sax player Chu Berry was born in Wheeling in 1908. George Crumb composed avant-garde modern classical music from his hometown of Ch...

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: The Hidden Influences

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Some of the most consequential West Virginia musicians are the ones who shaped sounds that other people became famous for. Johnnie Johnson played piano for Chuck Berry for two decades, and Keith Richards brought him out of retirement in 1986 because he believed Berry's rock and r...

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame: A Traveling Museum

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Because the hall does not yet have a permanent building, it travels. The Hall of Fame works with the West Virginia Department of Education on a music history curriculum for elementary schools, and the traveling museum makes the rounds of schools, libraries, and community centers ...