Arkansas Music

On Saturday, Vince Gill will headline the 3rd annual Johnny Cash Music Festival in Jonesboro, Arkansas.  Cash's siblings Tommy and Joanne Cash, the Gatlin Brothers and others will also be performing.

Proceeds will go toward the restoration of Cash’s boyhood home in the east Arkansas town of Dyess. The town's administration building and an old movie theater will also be restored to tell the history of the Dyess Colony, which was created during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's new deal.

A new business venture in North Little Rock and Memphis seeks to change current norms in the recording industry.

Music mogul Al Bell grew up in Arkansas and later became chairman of Stax Records and president of Motown Records.

Bell says he is once again working with authentic artists who no longer fit into conventional categories

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, in partnership with the Thea Foundation, is launched the Stringed Instrument Drive.

It is aimed at collecting gently used violins and monetary donations to bring classical music back into the schools in Little Rock and North Little Rock

Paul Leopoulos, Executive Director of the Thea Foundation, says music can help children achieve academically and boost their confidence.

On what would have been Johnny Cash's 80th birthday, dozens of family members joined hundreds of fans and residents in the east Arkansas town of Dyess Sunday to formally mark the beginning of work to restore his boyhood home.

"This project has been in the making for several years and I never thought that it would actually come to fruition," said daughter Rosanne Cash, who led the ceremony at the Dyess Community Center. "We never foresaw that it would take on this kind of life."

A sold out show at Arkansas State University raised more than $310,000 for the restoration of the boyhood home of music legend Johnny Cash in the east Arkansas town of Dyess.

Four generations of the Cash family, including daughter Rosanne Cash, son-in-law Rodney Crowell and son John Carter Cash were on hand to pay homage to Cash, as were many of his longtime friends like Kris Kristofferson.

More than seven years after the death of Arkansas-native Johnny Cash, a new collection has just been released of rare, vintage recordings.

As FM 89's Michael Hibblen reports, “Bootleg II: From Memphis to Hollywood” spans the first 15 years of Cash's music career, and includes his first radio broadcast, when Cash and the Tennessee Two got a weekly show on West Memphis station KWEM.

The radio program Beaker Street, which debuted 45 years ago playing progressive rock on Little Rock powerhouse KAAY and had regular listeners around the country, could be coming to an end.  It's being canceled by its current broadcast home, KKPT, The Point 94.1.

Things haven't changed much over the decades.  Listeners of Beaker Street still hear records fade out, strange background sounds come up and then the mellow voice of Clyde Clifford.