The Current-Aug. 2008 Feature Story

Dusk Til Dawn Blues Fest Flourishes in Memory of Minner

By Regan Henson

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning wrote those famous words in his poem, Andrea del Sarto, in 1855. You might think a quotation from a Victorian era poet to be an odd way to begin a story about that oh-so American musical genre known as the blues, but when you consider just how far-reaching the legacy of Rentiesville native D.C. Minner stretches, you might find Browning’s well-known quote to be quite appropriate. D.C. Minner knew what so many other musicians and music lovers know, that the blues can heal, the blues can teach, the blues can provide a window into the soul of a single person and into society as a whole. The blues can cure the blues, and the best way, some would say the only way, to experience the blues is by seeing and hearing it played live. D.C. Minner knew this as well, and this Labor Day weekend, like every Labor Day weekend since 1991, blues fans will come together in tiny Rentiesville for the festival that Minner founded, the Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival. This year’s festival will be a tribute to Minner, who died in May, and will feature many of the bands playing songs he wrote and covered in celebration of the man who put Rentiesville on the blues map.

Born in 1935, D.C. Minner was raised by his grandmother, Lura Drennan, and his not-quite traditional up-bringing would serve to plant the seeds for his lifelong love of music and the blues. You see, Grandma Drennan ran the Cozy Corner, a rollicking juke joint and whiskey palace where local musicians had been gathering since the Prohibition-era to sample the outlawed sauce and play the blues. In those days electricity scarce in little Rentiesville, and the musicians played acoustic sets for raucous crowds that were searching for a little diversion in a place that had yet to recover from the devastations of the Great Depression. It was in this humble setting that D.C. Minner would plot a course that would take him on a lifelong journey that would allow him to influence and be influenced by some of the greatest musicians in American history. And it would bring him together with the two great loves of his life.

After serving as a medic in the Korean War, D.C. Minner worked out of Oklahoma City, where he made a living with his bass guitar backing up a veritable who’s who of blues greats, including Freddie King and Eddie Floyd. Throughout the 50s and 60s Minner worked the area playing bass with Larry Johnson and the New Breed, a band that backed up such artists as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and O.V. Wright. Minner was doing exactly what he had always known he would do: making a living playing the blues.

In time Minner found his way to California, along the way changing his instrument of choice from bass to blues guitar. His love affair with the blues in full swing, Minner bounced around different cities on the west coast, playing and learning, learning and teaching, until one day he met the second great love of his life. By the 70s, Minner had moved north to Berkeley, where friends introduced him to a young bass player named Selby. Their attraction was mutual and immediate, leading them to form a partnership in music and life. The two began playing together as Blues On The Move, D.C. on guitar and Selby on bass, touring non-stop for the next 12 years.

By 1989 D.C. and Selby, now married, had followed that long road back to tiny Rentiesville and the place where it all started all those years before, the Cozy Corner. After more than a decade on the road, it might seem that the Minners would be ready to settle down and take a nice long rest. But there was still work to do. First came renovating his grandma’s old place and renaming it The Down Home Blues Club. This provided D.C. and Selby a place to play, and listen to others play, and gave blues fans from all over this part of the state a real honest to goodness blues club, where they could hear the real thing played by people who knew how to play it. The club was a success, not in a way that would make D.C. a rich man, at least not financially, but in a way that let him realize that the thing he was doing was appreciated, and maybe even needed. In 1991 the Minners took it a step further, and The Dusk Til Dawn Music Festival was born.

Through the years D.C. continued to touch people with his music. In addition to his club and annual festival, he and Selby brought the Blues in the Schools project, which had originated in Memphis, to Oklahoma’s schools. The weeklong program provides students with alternative learning exercises using blues music as a teaching device. While offering the program to a variety of schools, D.C. seemed to take a special interest in the at-risk and alternative school programs, with students who were having trouble functioning in traditional classroom environments. Their work with the program earned D.C. and Selby numerous awards of recognition, including a W.C. Handy award and the Keeping the Blues Alive Award from the Blues Foundation. But the awards can’t speak for the lives touched by the man. His legacy lives on, not only in the festival, or by the fact that his name is permanently etched in both the Oklahoma Jazz and Oklahoma Music Halls of Fame, but in the memories of the students he has touched, or perhaps those fans of the blues, who were looking for something to do one Oklahoma night, and found themselves in a club in tiny Rentiesville, listening to the music played by folks who knew how to play it.

And that legacy will indeed live on this Labor Day at the 18th Dusk Til Dawn Music Festival, which will be a celebration of the life and work of D.C. The event will feature local and regional artists, including Guitar Shorty, Johnny Rawls, Tony Matthews and another member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, Tulsa’s own Wanda Watson, among many others. With artists performing on three stages over three nights, the festival is sure to be a nice Labor Day Weekend alternative to overcrowded lakes, and, being in Rentiesville, which is about a 15 minute drive south of Muskogee, it is also close enough that the skyrocketing gas prices shouldn’t be so hard to handle.

The Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival will take place August 29-31 in beautiful Rentiesville, located south of Muskogee on US 69 (take either the Checotah-Rentiesville or Oktaha-Rentiesville exit). Once in Rentiesville, go east on Honey Springs Road two miles until you get to D.C. Minner Street and you’ve found it. Tickets are $15 per day, and kids get in free. The show starts daily at 5pm and music will be playing, you guessed it, from dusk ‘til dawn. For additional information go online to www.dcminnerblues.com.