ON A LOCAL NOTE: Country Music Hall of Famer Dolly Parton is helping a fellow musician, this one a classic country singer from Arkansas. Parton recently joined Debbie Cochran on her music video of the title track of Cochran's new album. Another Arkansan -- Ashdown native Kent Wells, a Grammy-nominated music producer who serves as Parton's band leader -- produced Cochran's record at Nashville-based Kent Wells Productions.
"I love Debbie's rich, honest voice and songwriting," Wells explains in a news release. "Her music comes from her heart and is not contrived or filtered. That to me marks a true artist. She and Dolly fit together perfectly on 'Born Again Wildflower.'" The album releases June 16.
HISTORIC MISTAKE: A National Park Service brochure recounting the nine black students and others involved in the 1957 integration crisis at Little Rock's Central High School refers to a photographer on the scene, Will Counts. Counts, working for the then-Arkansas Democrat, captured on film angry mobs taunting one of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, and beating a black newspaper reporter. But the pamphlet identifies Counts as working for the then-Arkansas Gazette. Robin White, park superintendent for the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, was recently alerted to the error. White told a Democrat-Gazette staff member that she would make sure the reference is corrected in the next printing.
WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN: A public radio station in Kentucky is set to premiere a recently discovered string quartet by Florence Price, an early female symphonic composer originally from Arkansas. She is generally considered to be the first black woman recognized as a symphonic composer. Louisville Public Media's WUOL-FM, 90.5, partnering with the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, is backing a performance of Price's work in the latest of the radio station's The Unheard series. The series showcases lesser-known works by women and minority-group classical music composers. The free event will feature Louisville Orchestra musicians, singers from Black Classical Artists of Louisville, and a pair of speakers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Northern Alabama. The performance is July 13 at the Muhammad Ali Center and will be broadcast live on WUOL.
HIS LEGACY: The late librarian Jeff Baskin, who oversaw and expanded North Little Rock's William F. Laman Public Library System for more than three decades, died of cancer in 2014. But his memory lives on through Oxford American magazine's Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship. The fellowship offers a $10,000 living stipend, housing and an editorial apprenticeship with the magazine, and is designed to support the writing of a debut book of creative nonfiction. The inaugural recipient of the fellowship? Molly McCully Brown, a 2017 graduate of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.
Contact Linda S. Haymes at (501) 607-0675 or lindashaymes@gmail.com.
SundayMonday on 05/21/2017