Currently there is no Folk Music Hall of Fame, but the Irish couple behind the funding for it seem to think that the Queen City would be an ideal place to build.
Charles McCutcheon told Creative Loafing that “In many respects there were a number of cities that we talked about, there was Boston, New Port [Rhode Island] and in North Carolina [in addition to Charlotte] we looked at Raleigh/Durham and Asheville.”
He continues, “We knew it had to be on the East Coast and in Appalachia, because when the European immigrants came across they fanned out from Ellis Island and basically reformed their homelands in the Appalachian Mountains initially, and a lot of the music that became American Folk Music came from this area.”
They also consider Charlotte a good fit because of it accesibilty to the rest of the East Coast.
The best part about this to me is that the Hall of Fame will host an annual Folk Music Hall of Fame awards show with a live music component.
Currently the McCutcheons, along with their executive committee members Preston Sullivan, a longtime producer and Ramona Simmons, a key player in the launch of Arista Records in Nashville, are planning a formal announcement of their plans in Charlotte in early December.Â
H/T CL
