June 3 – September 30, 2022
This exhibit, featuring highlights from the Willamette Heritage Center’s collections, will look at the history of making live music in our community.
What do an 1875 upright piano, a child’s band uniform and a concert flyer for Little Richard all have in common? They are rarely displayed artifacts that will be on display in an upcoming exhibit at the Willamette Heritage Center. The Song Goes On: Making Music in Salem highlights artifacts from the Willamette Heritage Center’s extensive collections that document the rich and long tradition of making music in our city.
The exhibit was inspired by and will coincide with the city-wide national Make Music Day event – Make
Music Salem –slated for June 21, 2022 (https://www.makemusicsalem.org/about).
Visitors will get to see Luella Patton Charlton’s piano. Built in 1875, it came to Oregon via ship around the tip of South America to be placed in the parlor of the Cooke-Patton House on Court Street, just north of the State Capitol building. The house was razed in the 1930s to make way for the State Library building, but the piano survived, and Charlton continued to teach piano lessons on it in her home until she was 100 years old.
It sounds like a plot out of Meredith Wilson’s classic musical The Music Man, but Salem did have its very own boy’s band, led by sign painter-by-day Charles Hebel. Though nominally a boy’s band, Hebel’s daughters participated, too. His daughter Evelyn even catching the eye of famed band leader John Phillip Sousa who gave her bass horn playing a compliment after catching a 1917 performance. Evelyn’s uniform and other band memorabilia will be on display.
The Crystal Gardens probably doesn’t mean much to today’s youth, but a generation ago it was a happening concert venue on the southeast corner of Liberty and Ferry streets SE, even hosting Little Richard on Friday June 7, 1957, featuring “dancing from 9 pm to 1 am.” Explore a few stories of incredible concerts held right here in Salem, from Little Richard to Denmark’s Greatest Violinist. Some of the artists and their stories may surprise you.
Exhibit entrance is included in museum admission.
