Music Notes
by Mark Jordan
Commission meets.
Reporter sleeps.
For anyone who still believes in the glamor myth of rock-and-roll
– you know: sex, drugs, etc. – the first meeting of the Memphis
and Shelby County Music Commission last week would have been a
severe disappointment. A dozen or so suits gathered around a conference
table at the Cook Convention Center and soberly discussed agendas,
sub-committees, and 501(c)(3) status; this is the kind of boring
stuff school-board meetings are made of. But after more than a
year-and-a-half and a half-dozen planning sessions, it was, at
long last, a start.
The May 13th meeting was actually an organizing session to get
things started by establishing priorities and procedures. Of the
20 persons appointed earlier this year by mayors Jim Rout and
W.W. Herenton and approved by the city council and county commission,
however, only 11 were able to attend the first meeting. Some of
the absent commissioners were together in Orlando for a National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences workshop.
But despite the thin numbers, the commission was able to get the
ball rolling, if slowly, by appointing a subcommittee to begin
drafting bylaws. There was also discussion on the appointment
of a finance committee and a human resources committee, which
will be charged with finding an executive director. It was also
decided that the commission should explore the possibility of
setting up a nonprofit subsidiary corporation that would allow
it to raise funds. Currently, the music commission has a budget
of $160,000 a year, with the city and county splitting the bill
and the money being funneled through the Memphis Area Chamber
of Commerce’s Memphis 2005 economic-development initiative. The
first $120,000 will be allocated by the end of the fiscal year
on June 30th, and, when combined with next year’s budget, will
give the commission $320,000 in its first 14 months.
Following the organizational part of their meeting, the commissioners
got a feel for what tasks may lie ahead of them when they heard
presentations on some of the bigger music-related projects in
the works for the city.
Blues Foundation executive director Howard Stovall was the first
to speak and presented the still-learning-to-crawl commission
with its first challenges. In the long-term, Stovall asked the
commission for help in realizing the Blues Foundation’s dreams
of building a blues museum in Memphis and of establishing a music-industry
professional association for the blues, much along the lines of
the Country Music Association. Such an organization would differ
from the Blues Foundation, which is essentially fan-driven through
local blues societies, by being for those who make a living writing,
performing, recording, and selling the blues. It would also, if
based in Memphis, go a long way toward the commission’s stated
mission of developing music-industry involvement in Memphis.
More pressing for the Blues Foundation, however, was the fate
of its annual W.C. Handy Awards ceremony. Just prior to the meeting,
Stovall told the commission, he learned that The Orpheum, which
has hosted the awards show for years, would be unavailable to
the Blues Foundation next year because the show’s traditional
date, the Thursday before the Beale Street Music Festival, conflicts
with a scheduled run of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon.
After Stovall, executive director Wes Brustad reported on the
status of Memphis in May, pointing out that the organization annually
presents more than 100 musical artists during its monthlong festival,
of which approximately half are local. In addition, Brustad told
the commission of ways MIM was looking to expand the Beale Street
Music Festival, including adding a fourth day, getting national
sponsorships, and selling the event as a pay-per-view program.
And though his organization deals almost exclusively with live
music, Brustad ended his presentation by encouraging the commission
to develop Memphis’ recording industry.
Crossroads producer Eli Ball was next, and he outlined that organization’s
ongoing efforts to “promote Memphis and the Memphis music industry
to the world through conventions and music festivals.” To this
end, Ball said, Crossroads is continuing the move toward more
genre-specific events like last year’s Bluestock, with a gospel
convention and festival already on the slate for 2000.
Ed Armentrout of the Center City Commission then presented a brief
update on the Grammy exposition planned for The Pyramid. According
to Armentrout, the $60 million project could begin construction
this year, with an eye toward opening in 2000.
And finally, commissioner Charlie Ryan updated the board on the Smithsonian’s
Social Crossroads music history exhibit scheduled to open in 2000
in the Gibson guitar plant currently under construction at the
corner of Second and Linden. The planned exhibit has doubled in
projected size from when it was first announced – from 4,000-5,000
square feet to 8,500 square feet – and will be the first permanent
Smithsonian exhibition to be located off the institution’s Washington,
D.C., campus.
Music Notes
by Mark Jordan
Commission meets.
Reporter sleeps.
For anyone who still believes in the glamor myth of rock-and-roll – you know: sex, drugs, etc. – the first meeting of the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission last week would have been a severe disappointment. A dozen or so suits gathered around a conference table at the Cook Convention Center and soberly discussed agendas, sub-committees, and 501(c)(3) status; this is the kind of boring stuff school-board meetings are made of. But after more than a year-and-a-half and a half-dozen planning sessions, it was, at long last, a start.
The May 13th meeting was actually an organizing session to get things started by establishing priorities and procedures. Of the 20 persons appointed earlier this year by mayors Jim Rout and W.W. Herenton and approved by the city council and county commission, however, only 11 were able to attend the first meeting. Some of the absent commissioners were together in Orlando for a National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences workshop.
But despite the thin numbers, the commission was able to get the ball rolling, if slowly, by appointing a subcommittee to begin drafting bylaws. There was also discussion on the appointment of a finance committee and a human resources committee, which will be charged with finding an executive director. It was also decided that the commission should explore the possibility of setting up a nonprofit subsidiary corporation that would allow it to raise funds. Currently, the music commission has a budget of $160,000 a year, with the city and county splitting the bill and the money being funneled through the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce’s Memphis 2005 economic-development initiative. The first $120,000 will be allocated by the end of the fiscal year on June 30th, and, when combined with next year’s budget, will give the commission $320,000 in its first 14 months.
Following the organizational part of their meeting, the commissioners got a feel for what tasks may lie ahead of them when they heard presentations on some of the bigger music-related projects in the works for the city.
Blues Foundation executive director Howard Stovall was the first to speak and presented the still-learning-to-crawl commission with its first challenges. In the long-term, Stovall asked the commission for help in realizing the Blues Foundation’s dreams of building a blues museum in Memphis and of establishing a music-industry professional association for the blues, much along the lines of the Country Music Association. Such an organization would differ from the Blues Foundation, which is essentially fan-driven through local blues societies, by being for those who make a living writing, performing, recording, and selling the blues. It would also, if based in Memphis, go a long way toward the commission’s stated mission of developing music-industry involvement in Memphis.
More pressing for the Blues Foundation, however, was the fate of its annual W.C. Handy Awards ceremony. Just prior to the meeting, Stovall told the commission, he learned that The Orpheum, which has hosted the awards show for years, would be unavailable to the Blues Foundation next year because the show’s traditional date, the Thursday before the Beale Street Music Festival, conflicts with a scheduled run of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon.
After Stovall, executive director Wes Brustad reported on the status of Memphis in May, pointing out that the organization annually presents more than 100 musical artists during its monthlong festival, of which approximately half are local. In addition, Brustad told the commission of ways MIM was looking to expand the Beale Street Music Festival, including adding a fourth day, getting national sponsorships, and selling the event as a pay-per-view program. And though his organization deals almost exclusively with live music, Brustad ended his presentation by encouraging the commission to develop Memphis’ recording industry.
Crossroads producer Eli Ball was next, and he outlined that organization’s ongoing efforts to “promote Memphis and the Memphis music industry to the world through conventions and music festivals.” To this end, Ball said, Crossroads is continuing the move toward more genre-specific events like last year’s Bluestock, with a gospel convention and festival already on the slate for 2000.
Ed Armentrout of the Center City Commission then presented a brief update on the Grammy exposition planned for The Pyramid. According to Armentrout, the $60 million project could begin construction this year, with an eye toward opening in 2000.
And finally, commissioner Charlie Ryan updated the board on the Smithsonian’s Social Crossroads music history exhibit scheduled to open in 2000 in the Gibson guitar plant currently under construction at the corner of Second and Linden. The planned exhibit has doubled in projected size from when it was first announced – from 4,000-5,000 square feet to 8,500 square feet – and will be the first permanent Smithsonian exhibition to be located off the institution’s Washington, D.C., campus.
The Memphis Beat
Former Commercial Appeal music editor Larry Nager returns to Memphis in print.
by Mark Jordan
arry Nager, the former music editor of The Commercial Appeal and
the current one for the Cincinnati Enquirer, says he began working
on his first book, the recently released Memphis Beat, when he
was 15 years old.
“The first time I became aware of Memphis music I was playing jug-band music back in New York when I was a kid,” says Nager. “We were recording on a two track [recorder], and I played washboard and tub bass on a version of Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ And then we did ‘Cocaine Habit’ by the Memphis Jug Band. And this happened to be in Yonkers, New York, where W.C. Handy died. … So musically, the work on this book goes way back.”
That jug band was the beginning of a long love affair between
Nager and American folk music. It was an affair with assignations
at concerts in Central Park, in the booth of his high school pirate
radio station, in his college anthropology classes, and at any
number of gigs the accomplished musician has played across the
county. And it was an affair that led, ultimately and inevitably,
to Memphis, a city that many consider the cradle of American music.
Larry Nager
“Being in Memphis on a daily basis, working at the paper, gave me a totally different perspective,” says Nager, who was the CA music editor from 1991 to 1995 and who had studied the city and its music intensely for years before accepting what he describes as his dream job. “I was amazed at how much more was here. How much more the city had contributed to American music culture.”
Nager originally pitched the idea for what would become Memphis Beat, which he envisioned as a primer on Memphis music, to his bosses at Memphis Publishing Company.
“The idea was to give a broad overview of all the different kinds of music that have come out of Memphis, to touch on things that haven’t really been touched on elsewhere,” he says.
Initially, the project got the green light from CA editor Lionel Linder, but after Linder’s death on New Year’s Eve 1992 and the subsequent failure of the MPC’s last book effort, the sanitation strike history I Am A Man, the book was killed, even though Nager had already completed the rough draft before he left the paper in 1995.
A search for a new publisher and several rewrites have delayed the release of Memphis Beat until now.
“I tried to do several things with the book,” Nager says. “I wanted to make it accessible to all readers, those who knew a lot about Memphis music and those who didn’t know so much, without being patronizing to either group. … I also wanted to present the full breadth of the Memphis music experience. … Basically, blues, soul, and rockabilly are what people mostly know about Memphis. So I tried to go into the jazz legacy as well, which has not been discussed. And there’s a big section on country music.”
It is that chapter on Memphis’ country roots that may be the most revelatory for even some avid students of the city’s music history. Nager not only explores country’s implicit roots in the minstrel tunes and the blues of the Mid-South but also the less well-known connections between Memphis and country, like George Hay, the one-time Memphis newspaperman who went on to invent the Grand Ol’ Opry.
“That’s what a lot of people don’t realize,” Nager says. “There was a tremendous confluence of people and forces and ideas here that went on to have a ripple throughout America’s culture. That’s one of the things I wanted to do with this book, not just look at the musicians and the music, but look at the events and social conditions that created them.”
Today, Nager is living in Cincinnati, where he worked before moving to Memphis, and is enjoying the time he gets to spend with his two young children from a previous marriage.
“These are the last years I’m going to have with them before they’re all grown up,” he says.
As he was in Memphis, Nager is tremendously active in the Cincinnati music scene, having recently founded a local music awards show that benefits musicians in need. And he has several other books in the works, including one on the funk legacy of the Ohio Valley, which includes James Brown’s work with the King label and Bootsy Collins.
But Nager still misses Memphis, and while frequent visits back are enough for now to sate his appetite for the place, he looks forward to returning for good some day.
“Being in Memphis changed me more than anything,” says Nager.
“I was only there a little under five years, but it was probably
the most important five years of my whole life, as far as music,
as far as writing, as far as people. It’s a very intense place,
and it will change you.” 
Larry Nager booksigning
Friday, 5-7 p.m.
Burke’s Book Store