A premier artist manager, agent and impresario, Jim Halsey discovered and/or guided the careers of a staggering list of country and popular music figures from 1949 and into 2018.
MOUNDS, OK, November 14, 2018 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Jim Halsey with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Mr. Halsey celebrates many years' experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
With a career spanning more than sixty-five years as a premier artist manager, agent and impresario, Jim Halsey discovered and/or guided the careers of a staggering list of country and popular music figures from 1949 and into 2018. Born 1930 in Independence, Kansas where his family owned the Halsey Brothers Department Store, the young Halsey learned important business lessons, namely how to put on an enthusiastic and positive face for customers, but be serious-minded about the economics involved with business, skills tailor-made for a show business promoter. Independence is barely 90 miles north of Tulsa, giving Jim easy access to performance venues such as the Cain's Ballroom, but also close enough for bands from Oklahoma to perform in Independence, both of which initiated a lifelong association for Halsey with music in Oklahoma.
In high school, Halsey became inspired after learning about Russian entertainment impresario, Sol Hurok, who managed major Russian and American performance artists. Reading about the grandeur of Hurok's career, Halsey dreamed of being a show business promoter, sales and talent agent, marketer, and producer. Studying business and marketing at Independence Community College, Halsey promoted his first concert at age 18, the successful Western swing band Leon McAuliffe, which led to promoting other shows in southeast Kansas.
After promoting Hank Thompson shows in the area in 1950, Thompson approached Halsey about being his manager/agent, which led Halsey to forming the Jim Halsey Co. Talent Agency with Thompson as his first client in 1951. As a result, Halsey opened his Oklahoma City office in 1952, convincing Thompson to relocate his base of operations from Dallas, Texas, to Oklahoma. Through Thompson, Halsey met Wanda Jackson in 1956, whom Halsey guided though her late 1950s and 1960s major label career. Through Jackson, Halsey met superpicker and grinner, Roy Clark in 1959, a result of Jackson hiring Roy Clark to play for a string of high-profile Las Vegas gigs Halsey was promoting for Jackson in 1960. Through this meeting and their ensuing friendship, Halsey became Clark's manager in 1961 and guided him to popular music/television stardom, a professional relationship that continues to this day. The two still have projects in the works.
The greater rewarding aspects of the business had only started for Jim Halsey, who proceeded to manage or book more than 150 name artists throughout his extensive career. Opening an office in Los Angeles in 1962, and then a Tulsa office in 1971, the Jim Halsey Company ultimately had fixed bases in those cities, as well as Nashville, New York, and London, from 1971 to 1990. After growing to between forty and fifty major stars, dependent on their various career tracks, the Jim Halsey Company was the largest country music agency in the world. Along with his fifty plus years working with Roy Clark, Halsey managed or booked the following artists: Hank Thompson, Waylon Jennings, Reba McEntire, Minnie Pearl, Wanda Jackson, Clint Black, Tammy Wynette, Mel Tillis, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakum, Ronnie Milsap, Lee Greenwood, Michael Martin Murphey, Conway Twitty, Jody Miller, Leon Russell, The Judds, Jerry Reed, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Glen Campbell, Ronnie Dunn, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, the Osmond Brothers, Mr. James Brown, Bob Hope, George Jones, and many, many others. Alongside his half a century of work with Roy Clark, Halsey remains the personal manager of the Oak Ridge Boys after more than forty-five years, continuing to supervise their career, and their many sold-out performances for around 150 dates a year.
Like his hero Sol Hurok, who brought Russian performers to the United States with cultural and diplomatic intent, Jim Halsey has organized and presented country music performances all over the world, in many places, for the first time. The result of this work expanded the horizons of country music into Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. "Even in the late 1950s, we were pioneering Southeast Asia and the European markets with Wanda Jackson and Hank Thompson. Our specialty was taking country music to locations and venues where it had never been presented before." Halsey's historic 1976 tour, presenting Roy Clark and The Oak Ridge Boys in the Soviet Union won praise both culturally and in diplomatic circles.
In 1990, the booking agency division of The Jim Halsey Company, Inc. was sold to the William Morris Agency where Jim remained a consultant for several years. Since the mid-1990s, Jim Halsey's interest has been directed toward education. From 1995-1999 Halsey created and served as director of the award-winning Music and Entertainment Business Program at Oklahoma City University in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 2000, he offered a specialized music and entertainment business course at Tulsa Community College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Additionally, Halsey is a Visiting Professor at HED Music College in Yehud, Israel. Halsey is currently focused on sharing and preserving the knowledge of his vast career through The Halsey Institute of Music & Entertainment Business, an online internet school, and making resources available through the company's vast archives of files, plans, proposals, contracts and visual memorabilia.
He also lectures and teaches extensively at colleges and universities around the world. Through his internet coursework, students may take online classes in the music and entertainment business, talent development, and creative artist management, with future courses planned in songwriting, music publishing, artist promotion, video production, and every aspect of being a music industry professional.
Halsey is also the co-creator of the Billboard/Starmaker Song Contest, which completed its 19th year in 2011, with contest awards in cash, merchandise and recognition for songs in several categories of popular music.
Halsey's expertise encompasses more than just successful talent management and booking. His business experience includes broadcasting (he has owned several radio stations), owning and running a record label (Churchill Records, distributed through MCA), and banking (he has served on the Board of Directors of three banks).
With his massive experience and expertise in sales and marketing, he created a popular seminar series, "How To Make It In The Music Business". Halsey's presentations and lectures explain the important functions of managers, agents, record companies, press and PR, producers, specialized music/entertainment attorneys, music publishers, promoters, performing rights organizations, copyright protection, and other components that make up the "star team", his reference to the total organization needed for music business success. Organizing the materials for the lectures encouraged Halsey to produce an accompanying text for his talks and courses, Starmaker: How To Make It in the Music Business (Tate, 2010), a must-read for any future music industry professional.
Halsey's avid interest in the arts is shared by his artist wife, Minisa Crumbo Halsey, the daughter of world renowned Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo and Muscogee (Creek) educator Lillian Hogue. Halsey has featured a Woody Crumbo painting of 'Eagle Dancer' as company logo. Jim and Minisa have amassed an extensive American Indian art collection.
Minisa, who is enrolled with the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and shares Muscogee (Creek) lineage, is considered an important Native American artist in her own right. She has exhibited her works worldwide in galleries and museums. The first American Indian artist to exhibit in the USSR by invitation of its Minister of Culture; Minisa Crumbo was the feature of an extensive article in Soviet Life, including the cover. The Halseys have lived in multiple locations around the U.S. due to the demands of their business, occasionally maintaining several residences at the same time in locations such as Independence, Kansas; Malibu, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills, CA; Taos and Santa Fe, NM; Oklahoma City; Nashville; Tulsa, and New York City. Since 1998, the Halsey's have lived in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. Their four children are the late Sherman Halsey, a MTV award winning television and video producer, director, artist manager and promoter; Gina Halsey, a licensed acupuncturist/herbalist; Crissy Rumford, a ski instructor and realtor; and Woody Carter, a pilot for United Airlines.
Considered an expert in many fields of the music business, and business "period", Halsey has served on the following Boards of Directors: The Will Rogers Memorial Foundation, The Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Cherokee Nation Historical Society, The Country Music Association (CMA); The Academy of Country Music (ACM); National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS, Austin Chapter); National Music Council (NMC); Mercantile Bank and Trust, Tulsa; Citizens National Bank, Independence, KS; Farmers & Merchants Bank, Mound City, KS; Southwestern School of Law, Los Angeles; Tulsa Philharmonic; Nashville Symphony Orchestra; Tulsa Symphony Orchestra; Philbrook Art Museum, Tulsa; Thomas Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa; U.S. Committee for UNICEF; MEIEA (Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Assoc.); and the William Inge Theatre Festival and Foundation. He is listed in the "Who's Who in the World", "Who's Who in America", "Who's Who in the Entertainment Business", "Who's Who in the Southwest", "Who's Who in Business and Finance", and the "International Directory of Distinguished Leadership".
In 1980, Halsey was elected president of FIDOF (International Federation of Festival Organizations - UNESCO). Upon completion of eight years of the presidency, he was elected President of Honour. This internationally recognized organization has a membership of 360 major music festivals in 187 countries, fulfilling a vision Halsey has to bring global peace and harmony through international music festivals where people of multiple backgrounds can enjoy and learn from their common ground in music.
Halsey has received multiple awards and recognition from many prestigious music industry organizations, such as the Country Music Association, Academy of Country Music and the performing rights organization SESAC, as well as music industry publications Billboard, Record World and Cashbox.
Halsey has also received many awards for his international service to the world by promoting American country and popular music abroad, and helping develop the concept of international music festivals. He has been honored in Bulgaria, Poland, Austria, Germany, Spain, Israel and Japan for his work in those countries and around the world, as well as in the United States for his global efforts. In 1986, he received the Commendation for Outstanding Leadership in Promoting World Peace and Harmony through the Medium of Visual and Performing Arts from the Mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Entertainment Buyers Association in Nashville, the Oklahoma Governor's Award in Arts & Education in 1998, and the Cherokee Honor Society Medal of Honor from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1999. He says, "My Cherokee award is one of which I am the most proud." Halsey was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2000 with his old friends and colleagues, Roy Clark and Wanda Jackson. In 2005, he received the Kansas Impresario Award from the Kansas Federation of Clubs and in 2009 was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame. In 2014, he was inducted into the International Entertainment Buyers Association's Hall of Fame. In 2015, Jim received the National Music Council's American Eagle Award, their highest honor, and the American Legion's "Patriot Award", and was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the state's highest honor in November of that year. In 2016, he received the Tulsa Global Alliance 'Global Vision Award', and in 2017 the Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission's Dr. Ralph Dru Career and Professional Award.
Memorial Hall in Independence, KS erected a marble obelisk as a permanent monument to his lifetime achievements in Kansas and the world.
As part of the Oklahoma Historical Society's plans to fully document the history of popular music from Oklahoma, The Oklahoma History Center produced a 2010 exhibit about Halsey's career and those it shaped in "Starmaker: Jim Halsey and the Legends of Country Music". At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Governor Brad Henry proclaimed April 7, 2010 Jim Halsey/Starmaker Day. In 2011, Oklahoma History Center produced another Halsey-influenced exhibit, "Pickin' and Grinnin': Roy Clark, Hee Haw, and Country Humor". In August 2011, the "Starmaker" exhibit opened at The Tulsa Historical Society Museum after which it spent a year on display at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. It is currently hosted at The Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in Muskogee, OK. www.jimhalsey.com
Jim and his wife are world travelers by virtue of their respective activities… concerts, lectures, seminars, exhibitions, and music festivals. Unity is the enduring theme of Jim Halsey's contribution to the world through his life and work.
Jim's focus now is also on cataloguing and pr
eserving the vast Jim Halsey Company Archives consisting of memorabilia, gold and platinum album collection, domestic and international poster collection, awards and citations, extensive files on promotions and proposals, performance and management/agency contracts and film/video/digital recording of numerous artists and events Jim shepherded to successful fruition. He is looking for the proper home to acquire these historic treasures.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to his profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Mr. Halsey has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
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