British-born Dave Barnes began acquiring records as early as the 1930s and ‘40s and spent decades assembling the vast collection that became the British Archive of Country Music (BACM). This conversation about Barnes and the archive and its accompanying listening session were recorded on April 16, 2024.

Moderated by the Museum’s Paul Kingsbury, panelists Alan Barnes—the son of Dave Barnes and a fine art dealer now living in Dallas, Texas—and Martin Hawkins—a music historian and record collector, and the author of A Shot in the Dark: Making Records in Nashville, 1945–1955—discuss the history of Dave Barnes’s important collection and explore its significance. They also share fond memories of Barnes, about his method of collecting, his personality and passion for country music, and more. Kevin Fleming, the Museum’s director of library and archival collections, discusses the Museum’s acquisition of the BACM and shares photos from and stories about the collection’s journey from England to Nashville. Following the panel, Alan Stoker, the Museum’s longtime curator of recorded-sound collections, and Brenda Thomas, the Museum’s recorded sound processing specialist, lead a listening session featuring records from Barnes’s collection.

In 2023, the Museum acquired an enormous and valuable labor of love: the British Archive of Country Music. Barnes established the nonprofit archive in 1987 to catalog and preserve thousands of country music recordings, videos, magazines, and books. Upon Barnes’s death in 2020, his family arranged for the Museum to acquire the BACM, underwritten by a generous gift from the Tyson Family Foundation. Around 50,000 recordings were shipped from England to the United States to join the Museum’s existing collection of more than 250,000 sound recordings.

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