Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame honors new inductees

January 13, 2012

Photos Courtesy RI Music Hall of Fame

Part of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame’s mission is to build permanent displays of inductees and other Rhode Island music history memorabilia. The museum space has been donated by the Hope Artiste Village complex in Pawtucket. For the Feb. 26 Induction event and concert, organizers will have mockups like those shown above as the organization continues to seek donations and corporate support to produce the actual permanent displays.

Retracing the steps of Oliver Shaw, Rick Bellaire remembered walking past the building in which the famous American composer taught intensive music lessons to students, 15 rooms in all for his musical pedagogy. Bellaire, the Vice-Chair of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, was not strolling nostalgically in the streets of New York or Chicago, but Providence, for Shaw, who was composing in the early 1800’s, was a Rhode Islander.

The musical history of Rhode Island is a rich one, dating back centuries and including many successful and unknown artists who have contributed to their musical genre in some way. But ask where they are from, and you will be surprised that a great deal called the Ocean State home, and the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame aims to preserve that history.

“If you put in famous Rhode Island musicians on the internet, you don’t get very much,” said Bellaire. “There is a big void in preserving our homegrown music and Rhode Island-based legacy for music. There are a lot of nationally and internationally famous artists out there who are not perceived as Rhode Islanders.”

“Music, specifically made by Rhode Islanders, is something I’ve been interested in my entire life,” he added. “This entity will probably be able to fill what quite a few people here in Rhode Island have recognized over the last few years.”

Artists such as jazz pianist Dave McKenna, 1960’s musicians Anders and Poncia, and the John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band will all be honored by the Hall of Fame’s first ever induction class on February 27. Although many of these musicians reached high levels of critical success throughout the world, Rhode Island was the proving ground where they initially sharpened their skills, and the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame hopes to capture that process of music creation, telling the story of Rhode Island musicians who called the state home.

“Van Morrison could be drinking in Manhattan, but he would still be fully Irish, and that has always been ingrained in his music,” said Bellaire. “You can’t take Narragansett Beach out of the music of John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. When you hear ‘Tender Years’ and ‘Boardwalk Angel’, you can’t take Rhode Island out of that. It is fully Rhode Island, and Cafferty could never remove himself from that tradition and those roots.”

Cafferty himself recalls the moments in Rhode Island, such as playing with his friends as a kid in a band off of Chalkstone Avenue in Providence, which ultimately shaped the course of his highly successful career.

“We’re honored to be recognized, and I am sure it is going to be a very long line of well deserving musicians that will be also recognized in years to come because there is so much talent around here,” said Cafferty. “It was inspiring to all of us that you could come from Providence and have a future in music. [My friends and I] looked at what musicians such as Anders and Poncia were doing, and they were from Rhode Island. We honed our craft starting in Providence, played all over New England and then in New York where we got discovered, but we learned our craft here.”

“The Hall of Fame is important for Rhode Island because it sort of recognizes that being a musician is a real profession, something to aspire to if you have that calling,” he added. “It documents many different careers in music and sets up an opportunity for younger guys and girls to look at the path of musicians and styles that went before them, and to sort of follow our path.”

Bellaire hopes that the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame will reach out to musicians and enthusiasts of all ages throughout the state, educating them about their musical past and the places where renowned talents started out. This ‘sense of place’ for music in Rhode Island will be augmented by a museum in the Hope Artiste Village, a former mill complex which has been converted into space for locally involved businesses. Fundraising began for the museum, which will hold up to 70 wall displays, in 2011.

“As far as younger people go, we are hoping that they can be inspired by the stories and the music that they’ll hear, visiting the museum,” said Bellaire. “We are just getting started, hoping to interest young people in our project because we will need to pick up people who want to keep this going. We want young people to develop careers from Rhode Island.”

The Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame is also busy creating a digitized, online musical database which will hold audio and video recordings, along with associated historical and biographical information, of many Rhode Island musicians.

“This should be a lot of fun for people, and the idea is to celebrate the music,” said Bellaire. “There are already a lot of articles out there about people who didn’t necessarily make the big time, but made a significant contribution to music in Rhode Island.”

“We want to save everything from all genres and levels of success,” he added. “The Hall of Fame component is to attract attention to our mission, but the museum and online archive serves to honor the musicians of Rhode Island and preserve the actual music and the artifacts of the musicians.”

Rhode Island is an unassuming title bearer to some of the most famous musicians in the world, those who were critical to the progress and movement of the musical genres within which they were playing. The Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame will bring their stories to the forefront of Rhode Islanders’ minds, a gift which Bellaire hopes will carry through generations as it has centuries prior to today.

“Louis Armstrong used to have bad problems with his lip, and at one point he couldn’t play,” said Bellaire. “He didn’t go back to New Orleans or Chicago for a replacement with more famous guys, but chose [Providence-born trumpeter] Bobby Hackett as the only person who could sub for him. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

If you go

The Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will begin on February 27 at 7 p.m. at The Met Café, located in the Hope Artiste Village at 1005 Main St., Pawtucket. Tickets are $20 per person in advance, and $25 at the door. For tickets and further information about the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, visit www.rhodeislandmusichalloffame.com, or call Dr. Robert Billington at 724-2200.