Join us for our annual show supporting the Duff Dorrough Scholarship Fund at Delta State University’s Delta Music Institute! The show will be held in Studio A in the Whitfield Building on campus in Cleveland, MS. Showtime: 3 pm. FREE Admission.
Guests: Veteran music producer Norbert Putnam (“Music Lessons”) songwriter Tom Kimmel, vocalist Tricia Walker and Delta State student band, DeltaRoX. Host: Jim Dees with house band, the Yalobushwhackers, featuring former Dire Straits guitarist Jack Sonni.
No live broadcast. This show will air later this spring on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
To donate to The Duff Dorrough Scholarship Fund at Delta State visit: www.deltastategiving.org (search Delta Music Institute).
Veteran music producer Norbert Putnam has written a memoir of his incredible career, Music Lessons (Thimbleton House). The book takes readers from his teen bands in Florence, Alabama to working with the biggest names of the 20th Century including The Beatles, Elvis, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt and many more. In addition to his multi-faceted playing and producing career, Putnam was tapped to design the state-of-the-art recording studio at the Delta Music Institute. He modeled it after famed Abbey Road Studios in London.
“The old Whitfield Gym at Delta State has amazing reverb generated by the hard-reflective surfaces,” Putnam says. “It reminded me of Abbey Road.”
Among the artists and albums produced by Putnam, Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” and Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down,” have combined to sell more than 40 million albums. Putnam’s bass playing can be heard on recordings by artists ranging from Ray Stephens to Henry Mancini to The Porter Sisters to his favorite – Elvis Presley.
Tom Kimmel is a singer, songwriter, entertainer, poet and teacher. He has released seven solo albums including Never Saw Blue, Point Clear and Honor Among Thieves well as book of poems, The Sweetest and the Meanest. His most recent collaborations have been with the trios The New Agrarians and The Waymores. Kimmel’s compositions have been recorded by a host of major artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Art Garfunkel and Randy Travis. His songs have been featured in films from “Twins” to “Serendipity” and “Runaway Bride,” and in television shows from “Captain Kangaroo” and “Touched By An Angel” to “Dawson’s Creek.”
Guitarist Jack Sonni will be guest-fronting the Thacker house band, the Yalobushwhackers. Sonni’s career includes a stint with Dire Straits in the mid-1980s during the Brothers in Arms album and tour when he played over 250 shows with the band. In additional to music, Sonni is a writer/literature professor, food enthusiast and market executive. Sonni lives in Water Valley, MS and fronts the blues rock band, the Leisure Class.
Tricia Walker took her Music Education degree from Delta State into the music business. She won American Song Festival and Mississippi Song Festival awards and moved to Nashville where well-respected producer Jerry Kennedy signed her to his Polygram Group.
Tricia’s instrumental skills earned her a spot backing Grand Ole Opry star Connie Smith, with whom she played for six years. She also toured extensively with Shania Twain and Paul Overstreet as a keyboard player and vocalist. She has performed at the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival in Nashville, was a New Folk Winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas and featured at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Festival.
Walker currently serves as Director of the Delta Music Institute at Delta State University.
DeltaRoX is a classic rock band from the Delta Music Institute at Delta State University. DeltaRoX’s set list includes hits from the 70s and 80s in the classic rock genre of American music. Barry Bays, instructor and director of DMI ensembles noted that, “this DMI ensemble is working hard to present a wide range of songs that have grown out of various styles of roots music to become American classics.”
