The best place to see and hear music legends could be the Arkansas Tech University Museum, at least through mid-May.
Photographs of iconic musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Muddy Waters and Johnny Cash are on display through May 11 in the exhibit Showtime: Photographs of Music Legends by Watt Casey Jr.
“This is a fun one that everybody likes,” said James Peck, museum director. “It’s kind of a lively place to be now.”
Vinyl records from most of the artists represented will be played.
“We have a collection of about 50 vinyl records. Some are on loan from a local collector, and we bought others from secondhand shops,” Peck said.
Peck brought the exhibit to Arkansas Tech because he was on the front end of creating the show in Texas.
When Peck was director of the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, he met photographer Watt Casey Jr. and helped sort through thousands of photos for the exhibit.
“It was a real gem of a little art museum,” Peck said. He also described Casey as “a diamond among us.” One of Albany’s native sons, Casey was a rancher and also earned a photojournalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
Starting in about 1970, when Casey was a student, he was hired by a touring company to take pictures of both up-and-coming and famous musicians. He was first hired to tour with the Steve Miller Band.
Casey toured with bands in the ’70s, ’80s and the ’90s, when he started slowing down, Peck said. By then, Casey had thousands of one-of-a-kind images of iconic musicians.
“He’s modest. It took his family three decades to convince him the photos were not just good, but artistically good,” Peck said.
He said Casey, who has gone back to being a rancher in west Texas, originally shot with film and converted to digital photography by the 2000s.
Peck said one of Casey’s relatives was on the board of directors for the Old Jail Museum Art Center and suggested an exhibit of Casey’s work.
“At the time, we’re looking at these thousands of images, and slowly, this idea of a show starts to form,” Peck said.
He left the museum in Albany for another job before coming to Arkansas Tech. The Casey exhibit was completed after Peck left and was displayed at the Old Jail Art Center.
When Peck came to Arkansas Tech, he said, he was tasked with refreshing the museum, “get us out of what we had done the past 10 to 12 years. I decided to do something out of left field,” he said.
He thought of the Casey exhibit and contacted the Texas museum.
Katie Jackson, the Arkansas Tech museum’s administrative assistant, said her father, Peter Jackson, and his friends helped with the exhibit.
“My father, who has been a hobby musician since he was 15, became very interested in it. He’s a very good drummer” and a guitarist, she said. “He loaned us a bunch of his old band equipment and memorabilia — guitars, a champagne drum kit, a microphone. He even loaned us a record player and a set of records we could have playing in the exhibit in the absence of live music. He helped us set it up.”
Peter Jackson, who lives near Russellville, said he was immediately interested when his daughter told him about the exhibit.
Jackson said his daughter asked, “Do you know anyone who has a bunch of musical equipment from the ’70s?” He asked her, “How much do you want?” Jackson said.
“I played in lots of different bands,” Peter Jackson said. “I started out with rock bands, played in a wedding band for a while in Minnesota, played some other stuff.”
He loaned her items from his “man garage,” he said, including equipment, posters, a 1970s record player and records.
Jackson also loaned the museum his oversized, heavy-rocker champagne-colored Ludwig drum set, an amplifier and more.
A consultant in the nuclear-energy field, Jackson said, he and his friends donated money for the exhibit, too.
“First of all, I thought [the exhibit] was a really good thing for Tech because I know a lot of people who graduated from Tech], and not one of them knew there was a museum on campus,” he said. Jackson said he hopes this exhibit will jump-start an interest in the museum.
His favorite photograph in the exhibit is of “Stevie Ray Vaughan and a couple of his band members at a barbecue joint in Texas that’s still there,” Jackson said.
Peck said the exhibit is a cross section of artists and genres.
“If you don’t like country, we’ve got blues. If you don’t like blues, we’ve got rock ’n’ roll. If you don’t like any of the three, we can’t help you,” he said, laughing.
“My favorite piece in the whole thing has to be the [photo of] Willie Nelson from 1974,” Peck said. “He looks very upset. He has this very penetrating gaze, looking out like he doesn’t like the photographer. He has a cigarette in his hand.”
The photographs on display include descriptions with additional details of the photo shoot.
“It’s ‘This is when I met Muddy Waters in 1975, and we were in a diner,’” Peck said.
Casey also wrote about his experiences in a book, My Guitar Is a Camera, published by Texas A&M University Press. The book is for sale in the Tech museum for $35.
Peck said Casey also contributed pictures for various publications through the years.
“Most notably, there’s a four-disc set of Bruce Springsteen Live … and there are many of [Casey’s] photos,” Peck said.
Peck said Casey came to the exhibit’s opening reception in February, which was attended by about 50 people.
“He spent four hours in the gallery answering everyone’s questions and was really quite pleased seeing people enjoy his work,” Peck said.
The museum gallery, in the Techionary Building at O and El Paso streets, is open from
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. It will also will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 14.
The reaction from the public to the exhibit has been good, although it’s been “a little slower than I hoped,” Peck said.
“People are very impressed with it, especially people who have lived with all Tech, all the time,” he said, referring to the museum’s past primary focus on the university. “They’ve been blown away.
“We’re trying to get people back in muscle memory, knowing there are cool things in the museum.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.