Oklahoma Music Guide II: Biographies, Big Hits & Annual Events

Started as a personal project of interest in the late 1980s the author discovered that several important jazz musicians came from Musko­gee, Oklahoma, the town where he graduated high school, the Oklahoma Music Guide is an attempt at creating a reference source for the primary musicians, musical groups, and musical traditions in what is now known as the state of Oklahoma, but also includes many pre-statehood musical traditions of American Indian, African-American, and Anglo-Amer­ican origins. The first edition of the Oklahoma Music Guide, published in 2003, took a first shot at bringing together two hundred primary entities of interest to the history of music in Oklahoma. After getting a tumult of positive and constructive feedback, the author realized the Oklahoma Music Guide belongs to the people in it and those Oklahoma music fans that enjoy finding out more about the incredibly rich history of music in the state, as well as the cultural environment that produced important music in multiple genres. “The investment people feel in the guide is inspiring and makes me feel like a temporary caretaker of the information,” states the author. “My charge has been to get out to the public what I know at this point.”