Day 17

"I've laid around and played around
This old town too long
Summer's almost gone
Yes, winter's comin' on
I've laid around and played around
This old town too long
And I feel like I gotta travel on

Poppa writes to Johnny
But Johnny can't come home
Johnny can't come home
No, Johnny can't come home
Poppa writes to Johnny
But Johnny can't come home
Cause he's been on the chain gang too long"

---Billy Grammer, "Gotta Travel On"

Music history...the bane of my existence for 3 semesters at Indiana State.  I spent hours upon hours of time reading and listening to music that covers hundreds of years of history.  After all that studying and listening and hoping that I passed exams, what I remember today is a few titles of pieces, some melodic ideas, and several composers.  And yet today, I revisited music history...but in a different way.

I spent the entire day doing work for NAMMs research center.  They keep records of all NAMM paperwork and history along with a large amount of archived items for a majority of companies in the music industry.  Most of the items have been donated and several have been purchased on sites like E-bay.  The coolest part of the archives is the oral histories NAMM has gathered over the past several years.  When they began collecting oral histories, they were hoping to get 100 entries over 10 years.  Not even through the 10 year period, they have over 1600 entries.  About 10 percent of these entries come from people who have since been deceased.  It is amazing to think that NAMM has video clips of important players in the music industry who are no longer around to tell their stories.

The last thing I did today was to watch a video of an interview done with Billy Grammer and mark spots to make chapters and find keywords for each chapter for NAMM to put up on a server for people to access.  It was so intriguing to watch an interview with someone who was huge in the music industry years ago.  He told lots of stories about his life as a musician and also played several snippets of songs.  This is the type of music history I enjoy.  Learning, from industry leaders themselves, about how they achieved their goals and became the person they are today.  Music history, once the bane of my existence, has become something that I am interested in learning more about as it applies directly to the music industry and the various careers that I might be able to hold during my lifetime.

A side story about the song I chose for today's lyrics.  Billy mentioned in his video that he released an album named "Travel On" in which this song was suppose to be the title track.  The record company, Liberty Records, somehow managed to leave this song off of the album.  So "Travel On" did not have a title track "Gotta Travel On" because the record executives forgot to add it to the album before sending it to print.  They realized, too late, that the track was not going to be included on the album.

Day 17 pictures are two displays that I worked on in the Museum of Making Music...

Not too shabby for someone who has never worked in retail or on store displays if I do say so myself!  The top one was a completely bare wall when i started with it...I added absolutely everything to that wall including all the hanging devices and where they are hanging.  All of the items on the wall have to do with cooking or food.  My personal favorite items are the red guitar spatulas and the guitar shaped cheese shredder!  The table area is some of the more artsy musical items we have in the museum.