Blues and Rock museum for sale Clarksdale MS

[Strays Dave]

I was just thinking about regional road trips and Clarksdale MS came to mind. I love the Rock & Blues museum there, but it's been permanently closed for quite a while. I just googled it and the building and collection "for sale" price has been reduced to $399K. I think this is maybe a $100K reduction - but not sure. I hope this collection will be public in the future.

 

Maybe something for that bluesy baby boomer looking for a retirement project.

 

 

http://www.blues2rock.com/

[Anderton]

I was just thinking about regional road trips and Clarksdale MS came to mind. I love the Rock & Blues museum there, but it's been permanently closed for quite a while. I just googled it and the building and collection "for sale" price has been reduced to $399K. I think this is maybe a $100K reduction - but not sure. I hope this collection will be public in the future.

 

Maybe something for that bluesy baby boomer looking for a retirement project.

 

One can hope. People haven't been congregating indoors, for the obvious reasons. That's dented a lot of bottom lines.

[dboomer]

Where"s Hartley?

[KuruPrionz]

Where"s Hartley?

 

 

Would be chump change for him. Maybe a PITA too.

 

I don't want to move from Bellingham or I'd win the lottery and buy it for fun.

[Anderton]

Where"s Hartley?

 

On the beach, in Florida. He's done enough! Never really got the credit he deserved, IMHO.

[Notes_Norton]

Where"s Hartley?

 

On the beach, in Florida. He's done enough! Never really got the credit he deserved, IMHO.

Perhaps he'll show up at my new beach gig, and I'll thank him for all he's done for the industry.

 

I've owned a few Peavey pieces of gear in my day.

 

Notes â«

[KuruPrionz]

Where"s Hartley?

 

On the beach, in Florida. He's done enough! Never really got the credit he deserved, IMHO.

 

Agreed, Peavey suffered eternal damage from the rough start they got but Hartley persisted and Peavey has had their name on some great stuff.

 

My favorite bass is a Peavey Fury, I have 2 of the "Handcrafted in the USA" models. A P with a Jazz neck, just like everybody wants, nice and light too.

 

I love my VIP1 amp, after I put a Peavey Scorpion 10 in it (one of the great guitar speakers), it's a small monster. I'll be using it to record guitar parts.

 

I have a Peavey 520i microphone, you'd be hard pressed to find a large diaphragm dynamic mic. It's not an RE20 or SM7 but it holds it's own against either and has it's own sound.

 

I'm certain I've played more guitar and bass gigs with Peavey amps than everything else put together. And I used to play USA made Reactor and Predator guitars, they were as good as most Fenders and better than many.

[Anderton]

IT's really unfortunate the DPM-3 didn't take off, that was a remarkable synthesizer. People didn't take it seriously just because it was Peavey.

[Doerfler]

IT's really unfortunate the DPM-3 didn't take off, that was a remarkable synthesizer. People didn't take it seriously just because it was Peavey.

 

There was also a lot of competition at that time. In no particular order : Korg, Yamaha, Roland, Ensoniq, Kawai, Kurzweil, Alesis ... probably a few more I forgot.

 

Tough market to break into.

[Joe Muscara]

He looked really bad in that episode of Undercover Boss.

[Anderton]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Courtland Gray, the COO?

[dboomer]

IT's really unfortunate the DPM-3 didn't take off, that was a remarkable synthesizer. People didn't take it seriously just because it was Peavey.

 

That and one of the most amazing sounding drum kits ever. But again, that logo.

[Joe Muscara]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Courtland Gray, the COO?

He was really bad, but Hartley didn't seem to much care, either.

[Greg Mein]

I just googled it and the building and collection "for sale" price has been reduced to $399K.

 

looking for a retirement project.

 

That's significantly less than the home we just bought but that would likely be less of a "retirement project" and more of a full time job!

[Anderton]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Courtland Gray, the COO?

He was really bad, but Hartley didn't seem to much care, either.

 

I'm a big, big fan of Hartley, and what he's accomplished. I also appreciate his sense of ethics (for example, he insisted on compensating me for using a circuit I had dedicated to the public - he had no moral or legal obligation to even credit me. I told him that, but he would not relent. Finally I just asked for an amp and a guitar so he could cross "must compensate Craig in some manner" off his list. But he felt that wasn't enough, so he also sent me a TriFlex because he thought I'd like it).

 

He's almost 80. He's done enough, he's made his mark, he made the world a better and more musical place, and IMHO he's more than entitled to care about himself more than his company. In a way, it's about time.

[KuruPrionz]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Courtland Gray, the COO?

He was really bad, but Hartley didn't seem to much care, either.

 

I'm a big, big fan of Hartley, and what he's accomplished. I also appreciate his sense of ethics (for example, he insisted on compensating me for using a circuit I had dedicated to the public - he had no moral or legal obligation to even credit me. I told him that, but he would not relent. Finally I just asked for an amp and a guitar so he could cross "must compensate Craig in some manner" off his list. But he felt that wasn't enough, so he also sent me a TriFlex because he thought I'd like it).

 

He's almost 80. He's done enough, he's made his mark, he made the world a better and more musical place, and IMHO he's more than entitled to care about himself more than his company. In a way, it's about time.

 

I have different reasons for being a fan of Hartley Peavey, yours are excellent.

I admire his white papers, especially the one on TransTube: https://peavey.com/c/Whitepapers

 

I was playing a gig and the drunk drummer knocked my Peavey Reknown 112 off the top of my Peavey LA400 and off the stage. It dropped about 4 feet, landed on the amp end, was on when it fell and was still on when Drunk Drummer Boy helped me put it back on top of my other amp. It sounded fine and continued to work for many gigs after, right up until I sold it. Whoever has it is probably still using it. Reliability is not an accident.

 

Speaking of TransTube, it is an under-rated game changer of a circuit. It took decades to get where it is now but I can't think of a better sounding analog solid state guitar amp and that goes back to the Red Stripe series. I gigged a Studio Pro 112 and an Envoy 110 for many shows, both sounded great and gave me no problems. I will admit it took me some time to learn how to set them up properly but it's really simple once you understand that "Post Gain" actually means "Simulated Output Gain".

 

I owned a Transformer for a while, the first amp with WYSIWYG knobs, the grand-daddy to the Vypyr series. It was also one of the early programmable amps. I sold it because TransTube got so much better over the years.

But I still love the WYSIWIG feature and wonder why other amps don't have anything like it.

 

My favorite bass is a Peavey Fury. I did put EMG Pa pickups in it, otherwise it's bone stock, Schaller tuners and all. I paid squat for that bass, with the EMG it was still well under $200. It plays and sounds great and it's light. Everybody who plays it wants me to sell it to them. Not happening.

 

I could go on, affordable and reliable products with tragically low resale value.

 

Peavey has had their stumbles and their bumbles, no doubt. I'd bet money that if Fender had come out with an amp exactly like the Vypyr but with a better name and double the price, everybody would use one.

[Joe Muscara]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Courtland Gray, the COO?

He was really bad, but Hartley didn't seem to much care, either.

 

I'm a big, big fan of Hartley, and what he's accomplished. I also appreciate his sense of ethics (for example, he insisted on compensating me for using a circuit I had dedicated to the public - he had no moral or legal obligation to even credit me. I told him that, but he would not relent. Finally I just asked for an amp and a guitar so he could cross "must compensate Craig in some manner" off his list. But he felt that wasn't enough, so he also sent me a TriFlex because he thought I'd like it).

 

He's almost 80. He's done enough, he's made his mark, he made the world a better and more musical place, and IMHO he's more than entitled to care about himself more than his company. In a way, it's about time.

Thanks for your perspective about him, Craig. I don't know him from Adam, and based on what you said, it's a shame that Undercover Boss put him in a poor light.

[Anderton]

I have several favorite Hartley stories. One was the first time I visited Peavey, down in Meridian, Mississippi, and they had just put in an educational center. It was my first time talking to Hartley, and I wanted to make small talk to get the ball rolling.

 

"So Hartley, were you born here in Meridian?"

 

"Well Craig, you don't think I'd move here, do you?"

 

Another was when I was interviewing him. It so happens he has a really thick Southern drawl. I asked for some of the reasons he attributed to Peavey's success.

 

"Well Craig, I do have one big advantage over my friendly competitors."

 

"Oh, what's that?" I expected him to say something like lower taxes, or a good labor pool, or low cost of living, or something like that.

 

"Because I talk like this, people think I'm stupid."

[Joe Muscara]

I just rewatched this episode (Peacock FTW [i bet that's never been said before!]).

 

Hartley was pretty dismissive of the worker's complaints. It made him sound like, "all factory workers complain like that." He didn't seem to have a reaction to the 75 second limit that the one worker had to test each board. Courtland did, and said he was going to change that. She also said that Hartley never talked to them, just the floor managers and supervisors. Communication in the company seemed to be poor, and it appeared to me that came before Courtland was running things. But the biggest thing was probably the fact that after all that talk of improving communication, when they shut down that plant, it was an HR person who did the dirty work. I know that's normal, but after doing the episode, you might think that they would have at least stayed in touch with the two workers they showed. I guess the offer to the one guy to work the skeleton crew was them trying to make up for it since he lost the opportunity at the other company he was going to quit for.

 

OTOH, from what I gather and I haven't watched more than a handful of episodes, most of the companies they show are more in the service industry. So when the reveal happens at the end they aren't usually at risk of shutting down plants. In this case, Peavey had already been moving manufacturing overseas and having to do that to remain competitive. It could be easily argued this was out of their control.

[Anderton]

Hartley used to be very proud of the fact that he had never laid people off during recessions. He said there was always stuff that needed to be painted, or machines maintained, or whatever. It was the usual Hartley mix of good heart and pragmatism - why get rid of someone for a few months and screw them up, then screw up the company in a few months when you have to find someone else and train them?

 

Frankly, I think the wind went out of Hartley's sails when he saw the handwriting on the wall. He couldn't do "Made in the USA" and survive when everyone else went offshore, and undersold him...and places like GC shuttered the mom and pop stores with which he had a true affinity. I also think losing Melia was a huge blow as well.

 

Hartley is from a different era. The rules have changed, and that era no longer exists.

[Joe Muscara]

I think we're in agreement, Craig (though I didn't know about Melia nor who she was). Being a manufacturer in the U. S. is a tough business to be in nowadays, and it's probably worse for companies that aren't huge to begin with. We all know the music business isn't big bucks.

 

It's too bad he couldn't remake the brand into a boutique type of manufacturer or something else like that.

[Anderton]

I think we're in agreement, Craig (though I didn't know about Melia nor who she was).

 

She was his wife, and President of the company from 1980 onward. She died young, age 44, from cardiac arrest. I dealt with her a lot. Despite being a woman in a male-oriented business, she never played that card and just did her thing. I liked her and was shocked when she died, it's one of those things where I can remember where I was when I found out.

 

Being a manufacturer in the U. S. is a tough business to be in nowadays, and it's probably worse for companies that aren't huge to begin with. We all know the music business isn't big bucks.

 

It's too bad he couldn't remake the brand into a boutique type of manufacturer or something else like that.

 

I connected Hartley to someone who I felt would make a great CEO for the audio products, but it never happened. Frankly, Peavey is Hartley. Whether those are big shoes to fill isn't the point, it would have to be someone who fits those shoes - mad scientist meets savvy businessman who loves music. They don't exactly grow on trees.

 

He made his mark and IMHO the world has been a better place because of it. I hope he's digging his time on the beach