CCU COURSE POSSIBILITY: Beach music may shag into classroom
By Kent Kimes, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach SC

(Posted on Mon, Nov. 25, 2002) Imagine thumbing through your college course catalog and finding Beach Music 101 sandwiched between introductory anthropology and biology.

That could be a possibility for Coastal Carolina University students.

CCU President Ronald Ingle and beach music performer Billy Scott, who is chairman of the Beach Music Association International, recently signed a deal to further the study of beach music at the Conway university.

"We are the logical place to do this," said Ingle, who grew up listening to beach music in Moncks Corner. "I would like for people around the world to think of Coastal Carolina University as the repository of beach music."

Ingle said he wants CCU's study of beach music to be similar to the University of Mississippi's scholarly work on the Delta blues.

"Will we blend this into the regular curriculum? Who knows," Ingle said. "But I wouldn't be surprised."

Among immediate plans are an academic symposium on beach music to be held sometime in 2003 by CCU's Waccamaw Center for Cultural and Historical Studies and a continuing education course on beach music, taught by BMAI President Harry Turner, starting in January.

Meanwhile, there are other connections between beach music - the Palmetto State's official form of popular music - and CCU.

CCU history professor Charles Joyner will include a section on beach music in his yet-to-be titled book on Southern music, which he said will be published by the University of Virginia Press.

In addition, CCU computer science students are helping maintain a Web site for BMAI (http://www.bmai.net), an organization that was formed in 2001 and was involved in South Carolina's "beach music day" celebration held on the Statehouse steps in Columbia.

Ingle said the seeds of studying beach music at CCU were planted when the university extended an honorary degree to Bill Pinkney of The Original Drifters in 2001.

Pinkney is also slated to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" at CCU's inaugural home football game Sept. 6.

While definitions vary, beach music is basically 1950s and '60s R&B performed by black artists but tagged "beach music" by whites who listened and shagged to it in beach clubs in Myrtle Beach and along the Grand Strand.

Peter Carpenter, president of the Cammy (Carolinas Magic Music Years) Awards, described beach music as "R&B with an upbeat tempo."

The BMAI's official definition reads: "Beach Music is original style American Rhythm & Blues and Rock & Roll that always maintained its popularity in both Carolinas as popular music tastes changed elsewhere. Carolina artists and others who headquartered in the Carolinas played and recorded this music style during the ensuing years, thus being largely responsible for its continuity. The focal point where it has always been heard is the Grand Strand/Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina, thus the linkage to the term Beach Music."

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland does not categorize any of its archives as beach music, according to assistant curator Howard Kramer. He said the institution is more concerned with major movements within popular music. "I mean, we don't recognize Norwegian death metal, either," he said.

Still, slowly but surely, beach music is being recognized, preserved and promoted - in part through academic study - as a distinctive sound, Turner and Scott said. "Here's what makes it distinct," said Turner. "When the British invasion happened in 1964 as The Beatles came across the Atlantic, the Carolinas never lost their love for the original rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll black-based music. You would always be guaranteed you'd hear it at the beach."