Honoring Texas Country Musicians
“S mall dreams don’t stir men’s souls,” says Tommie Ritter Smith of Carthage. “That’s kind of been my theme.”
She had a big dream and it came true. Tommie is the guiding light behind the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage, a four million dollar museum and reference center for country music. It opened twenty-five years ago and is a huge monument to Texas country musicians. The state has a lot of them including Gene Autry, Bob Wills, Tex Ritter, Jim Reeves, Dale Evans, Earnest Tubb, Waylon Jennings, Lefty Frizzell, Buck Owens, Barbara Mandrell, George Strait, Kitty Wells, Hank Wiilliams, Kenny Rogers, Ray Price and Willie Nelson. These are among fifty inductees into the hall of fame n Carthage. New ones are added in August each year with a big concert and ceremony. “When I started this project I sat down and made a list of four hundred singers, songwriters and others who had made significant contributions to country music. If I could live long enough I could do this a hundred years and still have plenty to put in there. Now we have another generations of musicians.”
Tex Ritter and Jim Reeves came from Panola County where Carthage is the county seat. Tommie is kin to Tex. While she was chamber of commerce manager in Carthage she built the Tex Ritter Museum upstairs in the antebellum house where the chamber offices are located. “It was a modest display of Tex’s costumes and instruments,” says Tommie. “Then I added Jim Reeves and some others.”
The germ of the idea to build the hall of fame grew when Tex Ritter was inducted into the Grand Old Opry Museum in Nashville. Tommie convinced civic leaders in Cartage to go with her for the event. “All of the Grand Ole Opry stars were there along with all the people who were anybody in Nashville. The delegation from Carthage saw how well respected Tex Ritter was and what an important part of the country music scene he was. He was president of the Country Music Association for a while and one of the first inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and it was a great weekend of celebration honoring Tex Ritter. They came back realizing we had something to build on. So we started raising money soon after that. The community really got behind the project to build something to honor Texas Country Musicians.”
To mark the 25th anniversary of the hall of fame, Tommie started writing down some of its history and activities. She realized she needed help organizing all the material so she called on her neighbor Bill O’neal, former state historian and author of nearly 50 books, to help her. The result is a 150-page book titled appropriately THE TEXAS COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME. It is full of photographs and stories about country musicians who call Texas home. Bill, a thorough researcher, says Panola County is the only county in the United States that has produced two famous country musicians.
Tommie is now planning to add an exhibit of Texas gospel musicians.