[068] Happy Birthday! MTSU Center for Popular Music Celebrates 25 Years

MTSU Center for Popular Music Celebrates 25 Years
$140,000 Grant Provides a ‘Gift’ of Archival Storage Expansion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 2, 2010

EDITORIAL CONTACTS: Gina E. Fann, gfann@mtsu.edu or 615-898-5385; Dr. Dale or Lucinda Cockrell, lcockrel@mtsu.edu or 615-898-5884


(MURFREESBORO)—MTSU’s Center for Popular Music is celebrating its 25th birthday with a big banner: “Caution—Work in Progress!”

Created in July 1985 to serve and preserve the study of American popular music as one of 16 Centers of Excellence across the Tennessee Board of Regents system, the center is in the midst of reconfiguring a collection that spans shape-note songbooks to hip-hop mash-ups.

A $140,000 one-time grant from the MTSU Provost’s Office has doubled the center’s storage capacity with the
purchase of a compact-shelving storage system that stretches more than 10.5 feet high.

“We wanted to close the center for a little while (in mid-August) to move things out and around, but we just couldn’t, because there were so many people coming in to do their research,” explained Lucinda Cockrell, coordinator of research collections. “They’ve gotten grants to do their research, so when do they have to come?
Summer, when they don’t teach! And they’ve come from all over.

“We even put our plans to close on our website (http://popmusic.mtsu.edu) and rescheduled two fellows who had made appointments to do their research, and we let people come on in anyway. We just couldn’t tell them no.”

The Center for Popular Music has become the largest and oldest research facility of its kind in the world, says Interim Director Dr. Dale Cockrell, who is leading the center during the yearlong national search to replace founding Director Paul F. Wells.

Wells, who guided the Center for Popular Music from a single borrowed desk 25 years ago to its current 6,700-square-foot facility in the Bragg Mass Communication Building, retired in April. Cockrell, a renowned music historian and the husband of Lucinda Cockrell, is on leave from his post as professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University.

“This center has an international reputation. We’ve had scholars visit from every continent except Antarctica,” the interim director said. “More than 40,000 scholars have used these archives since the inception of the center.”

The collection includes sheet music and broadsides, rare music books, sound recordings, music trade catalogs, periodicals, performance documents, manuscripts and photographs ranging as far back as the early 1700s. The center specializes in rock and roll and its roots, the various forms of vernacular religious music and the music of Tennessee and the Southeast.

One of the latest jewels in the center’s crown is a new collection from pioneering country-music journalist Everett J. Corbin. The Murfreesboro resident and former editor of the Music City News brought his 40-plus-year career archives to MTSU to “be mindful of the many journalists who come after me needing reference material for books, essays and information in brief.”

His notes, recordings and publications “reflect traditional country music from before 1965” and include interviews with Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Mac Wiseman, Jim & Jesse and the Osborne Brothers, as well as a chat Corbin touts as Dolly Parton’s first major interview with a country-music publication.

“I never attempted to be a ‘collector,’ per se, but as editor at Music City News, I received lots of records for review and held onto more than a thousand for many years,” said Corbin, who’s also a songwriter, producer and publicist.

The Center for Popular Music also has recently added the Peter S. LaPaglia Collection of Tennessee Sheet Music, a collection of sound recordings from Associate Professor Charlie Dahan of MTSU’s Department of Recording Industry, and the archives of the Southern Girls Rock & Roll Camp.

“Paul and his staff have done such wonderful work obtaining and expanding the collection that we were at the point of having to stop taking in items because there was nowhere to put them,” said Dr. Cockrell, noting that the new storage system has eased the center’s space constrictions.

“We’re looking at making a transition for the next 25 years, and we’re establishing an advisory group from the university and community to see where the center should go,” he continued. “The first 25 years focused on collecting and cataloguing, and we’re thinking that the next 25 should target outreach and program-building. We can broadcast our name a little bit more broadly.”

First on that outreach list is a small but appropriate exhibit planned for October at MTSU’s James E. Walker Library: the history of everyone’s favorite song, “Happy Birthday,” along with other highlights from the center’s collections. A 25th-anniversary celebration, complete with cake and all the trimmings, is planned on Saturday, Oct. 23, from 12:30 to 2 p.m. during Homecoming weekend at MTSU.

“We’re a work in progress, and we enjoy it,” said Lucinda Cockrell. “We’re glad to be such a wonderful resource for everyone.”

For more information about the Center for Popular Music and its collections and exhibits, visit its website at http://popmusic.mtsu.edu. You also can follow “@center4popmusic” on Twitter.

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IN BRIEF: MTSU’s Center for Popular Music is celebrating 25 years of preserving the study of American popular music by expanding its archival storage to better serve music researchers from across campus and around the world. A 25th-anniversary celebration, complete with cake, is planned on Saturday, Oct. 23, from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at the center, which is located on the first floor of the Bragg Mass Communication Building on the MTSU campus. For more information about the Center for Popular Music and its collections and exhibits, visit its website at http://popmusic.mtsu.edu. You also can follow “@center4popmusic” on Twitter.

For MTSU news and information, visit www.mtsunews.com.

NOTE: Media needing a color JPEG of CPM staff with the new archival system or a color CPM logo should contact the Office of News and Public Affairs before 3 p.m. via e-mail at gfann@mtsu.edu or by calling 615-898-5385. Thanks!