On Friday, September 29, 2005, non-musician Jim Porter will be inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. Why, you may ask, is a non-musician being inducted?

And who is Jim Porter, anyway?

Thousands of people in Arkansas and beyond can already answer these questions. For the rest of you, here’s the story of how a music fan became one of the most influential and important business people involved in the booking and promotion of live music in the history of Arkansas.

Jim Porter is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a prominent family. He became interested in music at an early age, growing up listening to the music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Harry James, among others. He also enjoyed the vocalists who were hugely popular in the 1950’s, such as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and Rosemary Clooney, for example. As he got older he delved deeper into the jazz idiom, snatching up the records of artists playing in a myriad of different styles: East Coast Jazz, West Coast Jazz, Cool Jazz, Bebop, Ragtime, Dixieland, and more. By the late 50’s, Jim Porter was a serious jazz fan, and as a take-charge, get-things-done sort of person, he embraced the challenge of bringing the music he loved to a broader audience in Arkansas.

The reputation that Little Rock suffered as a result of the events at Central High School in 1957 needs little explanation. The segregation crisis in 1957 had many unforeseen repercussions, and among them was an informal boycott of the state by many touring musicians. Porter’s earliest attempts to promote concerts in Arkansas were vexed by the fallout from 1957, as artists and agents from both coasts refused to consider performances in Arkansas. Black artists refused outright, white bandleaders with black members in their bands also refused, and on some occasions all-white groups refused to play in Little Rock as a gesture of solidarity with their fellow musicians.

By 1960, Porter renewed his efforts, forming “Modern Music of Little Rock” with Beresford “Bere” (pronounced “Berry”) Church, a jazz-loving lawyer and friend. The two partners in this new corporation sold $25 shares to 200 friends and music lovers, raising $5000 to get underway. Their first concert was “Les Brown & His Band of Renown,” the band that accompanied superstar Bob Hope on both TV and his famous USO concerts at military installations worldwide. Then as now, competing with the Arkansas Razorbacks proved to be a losing proposition, and the concert flopped as it was held on the same day the Hogs played in a bowl game. With half of the startup money gone, Modern Music of Little Rock needed a winner to stay afloat.

In June of 1961, Modern Music of Little Rock booked the Dave Brubeck Quartet into Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock. The concert was a success, and covered the cost of the Les Brown show as well as that of Brubeck himself. After the show, however, the promoters experienced a harbinger of things to come. Porter took the band to the Country Club of Little Rock, and neither the waiter nor bartender would serve the group because the famous bassist, Ray Brown, was black. Porter had to mix the party’s drinks himself, but this would not be that last time bigotry would effect one of his promotions.

Robinson Auditorium, like many places in the South in the early 1960’s, insisted on a racially segregated audience. At the time, the facility had the legal right to enforce segregation as a matter of policy, though promoters didn’t agree to segregation contractually. Illustrating just how vehement the segregationist sentiment was at the time, Porter was arrested in August of 1961 at his own concert, a Ray Charles promotion. While looking for empty seats at the general admission show, Porter entered the “colored” section of the audience. Charged with “inciting a riot” he was taken into custody and to the police station. A phone call to Jack Holt, Sr., the Attorney General of Arkansas, expedited his speedy release.

The next concert, featuring the legendary Duke Ellington and his 15-piece orchestra, was scheduled for the following month on September 5, 1961. Ellington was contracted for a fee of only $1150, an unbelievably low sum even for 1961. Modern Music of Little Rock was poised to have a very successful promotion from both artistic and financial standpoints. But five days before the concert, a telegram arrived with a short message stating “Duke Ellington refuses to play Little Rock on the basis of segregation law.”

Understandably, Ellington had canceled at the urging of the NAACP. An attempt was made to insure an integrated audience at Robinson Auditorium by adding a clause to the contract with the facility, but the board of the auditorium would not hear of it, insisting that segregation was “policy.” Porter pleaded with them, saying that non-segregated public facilities would soon be the law of the land. One board member replied, “It may soon be the law of the land, but it will never be the law of the Robinson Auditorium.” The concert was cancelled.

The situation was exacerbated by many booking agencies’ increasingly common use of a contractual stipulation that came to be known as the “Little Rock clause.” In short, the clause stated that the artist had the prerogative to cancel (and be paid in full) if they were to be performing for an audience segregated because of race. This necessitated that future promotions be moved from Robinson Auditorium to local hotel ballrooms like the Marion and the Lafayette. Unfortunately, these venues were less conducive to listening to jazz, and attendance fell off. By the time Modern Music of Little Rock closed shop, however, they had featured some of the biggest names in jazz music: Lionel Hampton, Errol Garner, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Count Basie, The Four Freshmen, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and more.

Though Porter had planned on no further concerts, he had the opportunity to book the legendary Louis Armstrong in September of 1966. Armstrong agreed to play on the condition that the audience would not be segregated, and by that time the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was law. The governor gave Armstrong an “Arkansas Traveler” certificate, to which he responded, “Thank you very much. I’m going to do just what it says. As soon as I finish this show I’m traveling out of Arkansas.” The Louis Armstrong concert was, to the best of Porter’s recollection, the first time a major artist played to a racially integrated sellout crowd in the state of Arkansas.

Jim Porter had arranged and coordinated live performances for various social functions since his college days, and this activity led him to start Southwest Booking Agency along with a partner, Jim Scott. They concentrated on local bands, with their primary customers being private clubs. There were still many racial barriers for black musicians and for racially mixed bands in the mid-60’s, and of course the nature of private clubs allowed management to engage in racial discrimination. Audiences at the private clubs were exclusively white, and black band members were usually not allowed to eat, drink, or use a dressing room, let alone socialize with members at these clubs. The frustration with this situation compelled Porter look for an opportunity to open an integrated private club.

In the late 1960’s, the members of Riverdale Country Club, located off Rebsamen Road in Little Rock, vacated the premises and moved to form the Pleasant Valley Country Club on the western edge of the city. The owner of the property, former Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, believed strongly in racial equality and agreed to let Porter operate the Riverdale Country Club on a month-to-month basis, rent-free. The month-to-month arrangement was necessitated by Rockefeller’s plans to build offices on the property, but for the duration of the club’s two-year existence, membership and participation in all functions was open to everyone, regardless of race.

While his career as a promoter is notable for booking world-renowned talent and for crossing racial barriers, Porter’s career as a booking agent is perhaps his best-known contribution to the music world as we know it today. From the late 1960’s until his retirement in 2001, Porter was the foremost booking agent in Arkansas. He ran Consolidated Booking along with Rick Calhoun and Nightflying publisher Peter Read, and later owned and operated his namesake agency, Porter Entertainment. From nightclubs to hotel lounges, from private affairs and society galas to festivals and fairs, Jim Porter was the man to call for live entertainment. He represented scores of bands in every style of music. Among his favorites were Arkansas’ late, great jazz pianists, Art Porter and Sir Charles Thomas, whose careers he managed for many years.

Porter not only brought a high level of effectiveness and professionalism to the music scene, but worked in other aspects of entertainment as well. He owned the Musad Recording Studio, which specialized in commercial jingles. He ran the Hot Air Balloon Theater, located in the Center Theater in downtown Little Rock, which featured movies as well as live entertainment, most notably Miss Heaven Lee, better known as Gennifer Flowers. He wrote the “Scene Around” column for the Arkansas Democrat and hosted a TV show of the same name. He also wrote the Democrat’s “After Five” column.

Porter’s retirement from the entertainment business was brought on largely because of the onset of acute tinnitus, a condition that causes constant ringing in the ears that is usually caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises. (A cautionary lesson for musicians and fans, alike!) Upon his retirement, Porter Entertainment then became Porter-Jones Entertainment, owned and operated by the author of this article, Tim Jones, his son-in-law and business associate since 1991.

Other notable achievements and honors in recent years include being elected to two terms as Justice of the Peace on the Pulaski County Quorum Court; chosen as a board member of the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame from 1996 until 2004; and most recently Governor Mike Huckabee appointed Porter to the Martin Luther King Commission in 2005. Jim Porter’s induction into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame is a fitting tribute to a man who has contributed so much to the music business and to the pleasure that music brings us all.