Delta Music Institute, a music industry studies program at Delta State University, is set to launch its DMI All Access series, beginning with guest Tommy Couch, co-founder of Malaco Records, on Monday, October 3 at 6:00 pm in Studio A at the DMI. DMI All Access is planned to be a series of open forums and lectures throughout the academic year featuring industry professionals from various areas of the music business.

Tommy Couch started Malaco Records, “The Last Soul Company,” as a pocket-change enterprise in the early 1960s with fellow college student Wolf Stephenson to book bands for fraternity dances at the University of Mississippi. After graduation, Couch opened shop in Jackson, Mississippi as Malaco Attractions with brother-in-law Mitchell Malouf (Malouf + Couch = Malaco). Wolf Stephenson joined them in promoting concerts by Herman’s Hermits, the Who, the Animals, and others.

In 1967 the company opened a recording studio in a building that remains the home of Malaco Records. The company began producing master recordings, and licensed their early recordings with established labels for national distribution. Between 1968 and 1970, Capitol Records released six singles and a Grammy-nominated album by legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell. Deals for other artists were concluded with ABC, Mercury, and Bang.

The Malaco recording of Dorothy Moore’s “Misty Blue” earned gold records around the world, peaking at #2 R&B and #3 pop in the USA, and #5 in England. This was followed by thirteen chart records and five Grammy nominations for Moore by 1980.

Clearly the dominant contemporary southern blues label, Malaco purchased the gospel division of Savoy Records in 1986 and became the preeminent black gospel company in North America. The Savoy acquisition brought a vast catalog of classic recordings dating back decades, including albums by Shirley Caesar, Rev. James Cleveland, Albertina Walker, The Caravans, Inez Andrews, The Georgia Mass Choir, and The Florida Mass Choir.

Under the leadership of Tommy Couch, Malaco Records continues to define the state of contemporary southern rhythm and blues, soul, and gospel.

Tommy Couch will discuss a great chapter in Mississippi’s musical history on Monday, October 3 at 6:00 pm in Studio A of the DMI. The DMI All Access series, hosted by Steve Azar, is open to the public at no charge.

The Delta Music Institute is an independent center of study under the College of Arts & Sciences at Delta State University, offering a B.S. degree in Music Industry Studies. The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, creative, and business areas of the music and entertainment industry. For information, contact (662) 846-4579 or visit http://dmi.deltastate.edu.

For over ten years Thacker Mountain Radio has produced a live, unrehearsed broadcast that features author readings and a wide array of musical performances. The free show is normally recorded and broadcast weekly from Off Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, but will relocate for this special show in DMI Studio A as part of the institute’s spring fundraiser for student scholarships.

This year’s featured literary guest is Leland native Culpepper Webb, author of the acclaimed work “Lifted From The Waters.” Musical guests are brothers Bryan “Beaches of Cheyenne” Kennedy and Gordon “Change The World” Kennedy. Both Kennedy brothers, sons of music legend Jerry Kennedy, have won multiple Grammy awards for their songwriting and producing.

Thacker Mountain’s house band, the Yalobushwhackers, features the Delta’s own Duff Dorrough. Joining the band for this special Thacker edition will be former Tangents keyboard player and Delta native Jim “Fish” Michie. They will be backing the show’s musical guests as well as playing featured performances of their own.

Thacker Mountain is hosted by Jim Dees and is broadcast live on Rebel Radio 92.1 FM and rebroadcast statewide on Mississippi Public Broadcasting at 7:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

The Delta Music Institute began with a generous donation by Fred Carl of the Viking Range Corporation. The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, business, and creative areas of the music industry.

The public is encouraged to come be a part of this entertaining broadcast on March 5 at 3:00 p.m. to support the Delta Music Institute. For more information on the Thacker in the Delta event, please call (662) 846-4579 or visit dmi.deltastate.edu.

Delta State University students Katie Gibson of Summerdale, Ala., and Joanna Sabine of Columbia, were invited to participate as production assistants for the 4th Annual Mississippi Grammy™ Legacy Celebration recently held at the Hard Rock Live! venue in Biloxi.

Gibson and Sabine are members of the Delta State Grammy U chapter and are enrolled in courses at the Delta Music Institute (DMI), a recording arts and music industry studies program at Delta State University.

The annual gala event celebrates the state’s Grammy™ winners and their musical legacies. Mississippi boasts more Grammy™ winner per capita than any other state in the union.

The GRAMMY University Network (GRAMMY U) is a unique and fast-growing community of college students who are pursuing a career in the music industry. The Recording AcademyY created GRAMMY U to help prepare students for careers in the recording industry through networking, educational programs and performance opportunities. GRAMMY U is designed to enhance students’ current academic curriculum with access to recording industry professionals to give an “out of classroom” perspective on the recording industry. Delta Music Institute’s Grammy U chapter was formed in the fall of 2008 and now has over 50 members.

The Delta Music Institute is an independent center of study under the College of Arts & Sciences at Delta State University. The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, creative, and business areas of the music and entertainment industry.

Award winning singer-songwriters George Jackson, Troy Jones and Patti Ryan will be the featured songwriters during the live broadcast of Thacker Mountain Radio as part of the Delta Music Institute (DMI) Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, March 6 at 3 p.m. in Studio A of the DMI in the historic Whitfield Building on the Delta State University campus.

In addition to the radio show, Jones and Ryan will perform a Songwriter’s Show the evening of March 6, at 7:30 p.m. in Studio A. Jones and Ryan will be joined by DMI Director Tricia Walker, who spent over 25 years in Nashville as a performer and songwriter before returning to Delta State University in 2006 to lead the DMI program.

Born in Port St. Joe, Florida, Jones worked in the cotton mills of Alabama for over 20 years before trying his hand as a songwriter in Nashville. He commutes weekly to Music City to write as a staff songwriter for Carnival Music Publishing, while maintaining his home in Alabama with his wife, three children, and a dog named Buster. Jones’ songs have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Joe Nichols, Billy Currington, and many more.

Jones’ most recent hits include “Shiftwork” by Kenny Chesney and the smash hit, “People Are Crazy,” by Billy Currington, which was #1 on the Billboard charts for two weeks. He also performs in the comedy stage play, “Toe Roasters,” with fellow songwriters Bryan Kennedy and Wynn Varble.

Mississippi native Patti Ryan grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, graduated from the Mississippi University for Women, then began a career in teaching while performing on the weekends in a musical group with her brothers. Ryan’s, colleague Wanda Mallette, and musician Bob Morrison co-wrote one of the most successful country hits of all time, “Lookin’ For Love,” which held the #1 chart position for three weeks and launched country singer Johnny Lee’s career in the movie Urban Cowboy. “Lookin’ For Love” was also featured in the Broadway show “Menopause, The Musical.” In addition to that standard, she wrote additional hits “Americana” for Moe Bandy, “Just Another Woman In Love” for Anne Murray, and “Out Of Your Shoes” for Lorrie Morgan. Ryan has two ASCAP Pop Awards, 15 ASCAP Country Awards, a Tony nomination, and two Grammy nominations. She moved to Nashville in 1984, where she continues to work as a songwriter. She is looking forward to the release of her upcoming book,” An Intimate Look At Songwriting.”

Born in Greenville, George Jackson started recording for Ike Turner’s record label in 1963. He journeyed to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to work at Fame Recording Studio, where he became a staff songwriter and wrote such hits as “One Bad Apple,” which was #1 for five weeks on the pop charts for the Osmond Brothers in early 1971. During the mid-’80s, Jackson joined Malaco Records as a staff songwriter where he penned the classic blues song, “Down Home Blues” for Z.Z. Hill. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2000. Jackson’s most recognizable hit is “Old Time Rock And Roll,” which has been recorded countless times, most notably by rocker Bob Seger.

The Songwriter’s Show is free and open to the public.

For more information on the DMI Anniversary Celebration, please call (662) 846-4579 or visit dmi.deltastate.edu.

The Mississippi Writers Roundtable will convene writers to discuss challenges and opportunities related to the discipline. Highlights include a keynote address by mystery writer Carolyn Haines, a session dedicated to planning an annual writer’s summit, and a taping of the Thacker Mountain Radio Show, Oxford, Mississippi’s original music and literature radio show.

“The Mississippi Arts Commission and our partners are pleased to have this opportunity to bring writers together to discuss new trends in the field,” said MAC Arts Industry Director, Diane Williams. “This event will be different from other writer’s workshops and conferences, because input and ideas will come from the attendees – the writers themselves. Our goal is to develop this event into an annual summit of creativity and new ideas.”

The Roundtable registration is $10 (payable at the door) and includes lunch. It is open to all artists, especially writers and songwriters. Reservations are required and the deadline is March 2, 2010. For more information or to make reservations, contact Diane Williams, Arts Industry Director at (601) 359-6529 or (601) 359-6030, dwilliams@arts.state.ms.us.

The SonEdna Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization established in 2006 by Myrna Colley-Lee to bring together writers to interact with each other, the public, and students in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. The Foundation builds on Mississippi’s strong literary traditions to celebrate and promote the literary arts by engaging the greater Mississippi Delta community with writers of all genres and backgrounds.

The Mississippi Humanities Council is a private nonprofit corporation funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi. MHC sponsors, supports, and conducts a wide range of programs designed to promote understanding of our cultural heritage, interpret our own experience, foster critical thinking, encourage reasonable public discourse, strengthen our sense of community, and thus empower Mississippi’s people with a vision for the future.

The Delta Music Institute offers a concentration of music and entertainment industry courses leading to a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies degree or a Bachelor of Arts in Music degree with an emphasis in Music Production. Whether producing their own art or the art of others, our alumni will be well prepared for the technical, business, and legal issues that confront the practicing artist today and in the future.

The Mississippi Arts Commission is a state agency, funded by the Mississippi Legislature, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Phil Hardin Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation, the Mississippi Endowment for the Arts at the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson and other private sources. MAC is the official grants-making and service agency for the arts in Mississippi. The agency serves as an active supporter and promoter of arts in community life and in arts education.

The Delta State University’s Delta Music Institute will present Dr. Mark Snyder in a faculty recital on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 8 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Bologna Performing Arts Center.

Snyder will perform his own works on tuba, clarinet and accordion. All of the compositions have video, electronics and live processing and are part of his second solo album, “Messy,”which was released on January 19, 2010 by Royal Livermush Music.

Using sound and light, Snyder spins stories about his world and the people that populate it. “Malmö” is a caricature of a Swedish dock worker turned astronaut, “Copenhagen” chronicles a weekend chaperoning Baby Elvis and his fellow students for the production of the Michael Frayn play and “Harvey” details the struggle to trust and return to a normal life after the tragic loss of a young family.

Snyder joined the faculty of the Delta State’s Delta Music Institute in 2007, where he teaches courses in music software and technology, multimedia, electronic music history, film scoring and music production.

He also founded and directs the Electroacoustic Juke Joint, an annual festival of electronic art and music that attracts composers and artists from around the world to Delta State University and thegreater Cleveland community for three days each November since 2007. For more information about Snyder and his music, visithttp://www.marksnyder.org.

The Delta Music Institute is an independent center of study under the College of Arts and Sciences at Delta State University. It began with a generous donation by Fred Carl of the Viking Range Corporation in 2003. The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, creative, and business areas of the music and entertainment industry.

The recital is free and open to the public. For information, call (662) 846-4579 or visit http://dmi.deltastate.edu.

WE’RE ROLLING
Moving forward in the Year of the Arts

“We’re rolling….”

Traditionally, these are the words a recording engineer utters when he’s about to begin to capture a musical performance in a recording session. Think of your favorite music, in whatever format it may be…LP, 45, eight-track, cassette, CD, mp3…have you ever wondered about the effort it took, both creatively and technically, to have that music reach you as a music lover?

As a singer/songwriter/producer and longtime veteran of the music business, I understand that many people consider the recording process a technical, rather than creative one. As we move forward into the Year of the Arts: Crossroads of Creativity, I would propose, however, that the recording process happens at a true crossroads, in a collaborative effort uniquely blending art and science in order to achieve the desired vision and goal of an artist.

In the glory days of recording, from the 1940s through the 1970s, large sound stage studios in New York and Los Angeles captured magical moments with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Kate Smith, and Nat King Cole. Studios in Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis produced the music of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and Elvis Presley. In addition to these artists whose names we know, countless musicians and audio engineers from these sessions whose identity is known only to audiophiles and record jacket junkies, were essential in giving us the music we love…the soundtrack of our lives. Studios make it possible for music to get to us.

Who could have known that when little Dolly Parton recorded some of her first music in a small studio in Lake Charles, Louisiana, that she would go on to become the megastar she is? Who could have known that Macon, Georgia would be put on the map because of the Allman Brothers (after they were first mesmerized, they say, by B.B. King performing in Nashville)? Or Lubbock, Texas, due to the recordings of Buddy Holly? Or Muscle Shoals Sound and Fame Studios in Alabama?

Mississippi has been identified as the Birthplace of America’s Music, and it would be almost impossible to dispute that fact. We proudly lay claim to the Father of Country Music, the King of the Blues, the King of Rock and Roll, and more Grammy™ winners per capita than any other state in the Union.

As the next generation of young musicians, singers, songwriters, and entertainers are working to hone their craft and “find their voice,” let me pose again the thematic question of this series of essays for the Year of the Arts:

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE HERE?

The Delta Music Institute on the campus of Delta State University is a recording arts and music industry program now in its fifth full year of operation. Approximately 50 students take courses in music business, audio engineering, songwriting, and other aspects of the music industry. The DMI, housed in what was previously Whitfield Gym, contains three exceptional recording studios. Studio A is a large format tracking room, large enough to hold a 150 piece choir or orchestra, and is one of the few studios of this scope in the eastern United States. Studio B is a digital room, versatile enough to record various types of ensembles and mix in 5.1 surround sound, and Studio C is a practical demo project studio. The DMI promotes two student ensembles…one R&B/Soul/Funk/Blues band called Ol’ Skool Revue, and one Classic Rock band called DeltaRoX.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE HERE? To further the educational mission of the DMI and Delta State, the DMI studios are made available to the public in order for our students to learn and practice the art and science of recording clients in a real world situation. Grammy™ award winning artists Keb’ Mo’, Ashley Cleveland, and Kathy Mattea have visited our facilities and worked with our students, and they stand amazed at what we have here. Combine the art of music and the technology of recording at the DMI with the history, mystique, and vibrant culture of the Mississippi Delta, and we’ve definitely got a ‘win-win’ situation in which to honor the past and embrace the future of music technology and the recording arts.

SO, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE HERE? WE DO: The opportunity to capture for all time the music and the sound of what could be the next wave of great moments in American music. There is much to look forward to. Right here: Cleveland, Mississippi.

Everything’s in place…the red light is on….we’re rolling.

Tricia Walker
Director, Delta Music Institute
1/10/10

Ol’ Skool Revue, the Delta Music Institute’s (DMI) Blues/R&B/Soul/Funk band, has been selected to perform at the 2010 International Blues Challenge (IBC) in Memphis, January 20-23, 2010.

Ol’ Skool Revue will represent DMI and Delta State University in the Youth Challenge (IBC) during this 26th year of the International Blues Challenge. The band, made up of Delta State college students, will compete during the afternoon lineup on Friday, Jan. 22, showcasing their talents for record labels, media, festivals, managers, talent buyers and the fans.
The IBC has evolved into the nation’s biggest and most respected showcase for Blues musicians ready to take their act to the national stage. The IBC is a judged “Battle of the Bands” in which competitors take the stage and play a short set for a panel of judges. The acts are judged based on an established set of criteria.

Each Affiliate of The Blues Foundation has the right to send a band and solo/duo act to represent the organization at the IBC Semi-Finals. Ol’ Skool Revue competed and was selected by the Crossroads Blues Society, an IBC affiliate from Rosedale, Mississippi.

In 2009, 100 bands and 60 solo/duo acts entered, filling the clubs up and down Beale Street for the semi-finals on Thursday and Friday and the finals at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday.
The Delta Music Institute is an independent center of study under the College of Arts & Sciences at Delta State University. It began with a generous donation by Fred Carl of the Viking Range Corporation in 2003.

The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, creative, and business areas of the music and entertainment industry.

For information, contact the DMI office at (662) 846-4579 or e-mail dmi.deltastate.edu.