Rock Music Museums Worth Visiting

How many rock stars have their own museums? Weird to think that what was once counter-cultural has become so institutionalized! Jimi, Janis, Jerry Lee, and Elvis all have museums. Who else? As an architect who designs museums and other cultural facilities for a living, I got curious about which rockers have museums devoted to their work. That would be a good bus tour, wouldn't it? But I have only come across a few. The latest that I have learned about is apparently going to open this fall. The Big House will be a museum devoted to everything Allman, and it is housed in Gregg and Berry's Macon, Georgia house.
The website (http://www.thebighousemuseum.org/home.htm)explains:
In the early 1970s, the Grand Tudor-style mansion at 2321 Vineville Avenue in Macon, Georgia served as the communal hub around which the family and musical world of the Allman Brothers Band revolved. With three stories, 6,000-square-feet, 18 rooms, a spacious kitchen,glorious bay windows and an inviting front porch, it became known asthe “Big House.”
The members of the band and its extended family turned it into a home filled with love, friendship and brotherhood. They lived there, rehearsed there, wrote some of their most classic songs there, raised their children there. It was their castle, their sanctuary.
Now the house where it all began will preserve the history and legacy of the Allman Brothers Band through the efforts of the Big House Foundation, formed several years ago by a group of friends and fans who wanted to insure that generations to come would know about the band’s pivotal place in music and social history.
The Foundation’s vision is to transform the Big House into a world-class, interactive museum where visitors can explore the world’s largest collection of Allman Brothers Band memorabilia....sit on the front porch where Duane Allman and Berry Oakley spent countless hours together....walk up the same steps that Butch Trucks, Jaimoe and Chuck Leavell once did...and tour the house that inspired Gregg Allman to write “Please Call Home.”
Besides Macon, GA, you could visit Seattle, WA (The Jimi Hendrix Museum / Experience Music Project), Port Arthur, TX (The Museum of the Gulf Coast / The Janis Joplin Museum), and Ferriday, LA (The Jerry Lee Lewis Museum and Liquor Store - no kidding!). Elvis seems to have many museums including his birthplace in Tupelo, MS.
I'd love to know if there are any more obscure museums of rock history, off the beaten path, devoted to semi-popular rock musicians.
And don't forget The Big House!


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