April 20, 2012

Because Phoenix is a city of over 10 million people and takes about a half hour to get to the center of the city, we decided to pick one thing to see and do it right. Our choice...and a good one was the Musical Instrument Museum ( themim.org ). The museum has over 15000 instruments and artifacts from all over the world. It included 3 special sections...Fender Guitars, LF Martin guitars, and Steinway something or other. The exhibits were organized by continent, country and included video clips of the instruments and samples of the music being played through special headsets. Many instruments have been purchased by the museum, many donated by the countries or artists and many on loan from other collections (ie Graceland, John Denver estate).

A pancake cactus in bloom.

The really neat steel pan made from the tops of 55 gallon steel drums.

This was a timely picture of a guitar played by Duane Eddy on American Bandstand in the early 60's. It has both electrical and acoustical sets of strings.

This guitar belonged to John Denver and was the first one he ever played. It was stolen and recovered several years later. It was at this time that he wrote the song "This Old Guitar".

This guitar made by L.F. Martin was the last one used by Elvis in a performance.

This was a mechanical organ from a section of the museum that featured instruments that played themselves. Actually, this one was more of the whole band as there were many instruments hidden behind the front display.

And now to the Experience gallery where Alice attempted to show up her daughters on the xylophone. I think the tune was "Chopsticks".

This player was from the collection of Gene Autrey. It was also in the experience gallery, however instead of playing it, you could purchase a token to get it to play. All in all, a great day. If you are ever in Phoenix, have 4 hours and have not visited 14 other museums, by all means see the Musical Instrument Museum.