Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces Special Guests for September 25, 2025 Induction Ceremony

Memphis, TN … John Mellencamp, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, among many other accolades, Martina McBride, four-time CMA Female Vocalist of the Year and three-time Academy of Country Music’s “Top Female Vocalist”, are among the special guests scheduled to appear at the 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Thursday evening, September 25 at 7:00 pm at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts.

They will be joined by blues great and Grammy-nominee, Eric Gales, who has had two of his 19 albums debut at number one on the Billboard Blues Album Chart and was twice named Blues Music Award’s “Blues Rock Artist of the Year.”

Just days after headlining Farm Aid 40 in Minneapolis on Sept. 20, Mellencamp will return to Memphis to pay tribute and induct blues legend and 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Inductee, Robert Johnson. Mellencamp has regularly performed Robert Johnson blues hits, including live at 2018’s Farm Aid, and on his album of vintage American songs, “Trouble No More.”  He has listed Johnson, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones as musical influences he grew up listening to. In 2009 he took his band to San Antonio to record inside the Sheraton Gunter Hotel where blues pioneer Robert Johnson recorded "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Crossroad Blues."

Mellencamp will also be presented the Memphis Music Hall of Fame “Legacy Award,” and award presented to a global performer who, while not from Memphis, has continued to perpetuate Memphis music and the city’s legendary sound through their own music, recordings and reverence of Memphis, Memphis music and/or Memphis’ many world-changing performers. When recording 2010’s “No Better Than This” album, he brought his band to Memphis’ legendary Sun Studio, where they recorded using only a 1955 Ampex portable recording machine and just one microphone, requiring all the musicians to gather together around the mic. Mellencamp was quoted as saying “Did we go down there to create the Memphis sound? No. We just went there to record in a historic place. The fact that the minute you hit an upright bass where Sam Phillips says put the upright bass and it sounds the same shouldn't have been any surprise. But we were surprised."  The album became Mellencamp’s tenth Top 10 album of his career.

Martina McBride will be in attendance to honor and pay tribute to 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Inductee, Wendy Moten. Moten toured with McBride from 2014 to 2016, singing backup, prior to her first-runner-up appearance on NBC’s hit shoe, “The Voice” in 2021, which escalated the Memphis artist’s career.

On the heels of his performance for B.B. King’s 100th birthday celebration on historic Beale Street, Eric Gales will be returning just 10 days later to perform in honor of the Rober Johnson induction. Mellencamp has also been rumored as being interested in performing for the Johnson induction, as well.

This year’s 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Inductees include (alphabetically), Art Gilliam, President & CEO of Memphis’ WLOK Radio for over 45 years who became the first black radio owner in Tennessee and the entire Southeast, Cordell Jackson, the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Granny” who became the country’s first female recording engineer and the first woman to start her own record company, Moon Records, in 1956, Robert Johnson, who became one of if not “the” greatest blues musician of all time despite only recorded 29 songs,  Denise LaSalle, late blues singer, songwriter and producer known as “The Queen of the Blues,” Wendy Moten, whose first single hit the Top 10, has recorded and toured with other hit makers and finished first runner-up on The Voice, and Johnnie Taylor, “The Philosopher of Soul” who began his career in gospel with Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrer before creating million-seller hits at Stax Records.

The Inductees announced on June 10 will be honored at the 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Memphis music’s biggest night of the year, on Thursday, September 25, 2025 at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, beginning at 7:00 pm. Tickets are still available at the Cannon Center box office or at www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets begin at only $30.

“After 106 planet-shaking inductees, some might expect the prominence and significance to wain,” said John Doyle, Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul and Memphis Music Hall of Fame Executive Director said. “The six musical icons being inducted on September 25 are evidence that Memphis’ musical roster is stronger than any other city. The scheduled attendance and participation of Mr. Mellencamp, Ms. McBride and Mr. Gales is evidence that Memphis music and its legendary musicians are revered by the biggest names in the industry.”

The Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum launched the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012 to pay proper tribute to the hundreds of legendary musicians who helped place Memphis, Tennessee on the world map and, in doing so, created the music that changed the planet. In 2015, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum also opened the Memphis Music Hall of Fame Museum. Additional information about the Memphis Music Hall of Fame and its current Inductees can be found at  www.memphismusichalloffame.com.

#   #   #