Big industry, small community: UNA’s music program celebrates 50 years

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus

Like many students before her, Janna Malone entered college hoping to find a career in the music industry yet also wondering what opportunities might be available to someone who wasn’t after the spotlight.

“I had a musical family,” she said. “I had played piano since I was six, I sang in church, all those kinds of things, but I knew I wasn’t talented enough to be an artist or musician. I had no desire to be in the studio, to mix or produce, but I wanted to be in this industry.”

After Malone enrolled at the University of North Alabama and attended her first few classes with the Commercial Music Program — as it was called then — she said her eyes were opened to all the possibilities that did exist for someone like her.

“The easiest way for me to explain to parents or students — mainly parents who come wondering, ‘OK, what can my child do with this degree?’ — is to think of Taylor Swift,” Malone said. “Love her or hate her, she’s the biggest thing right now. Think of Taylor Swift and all of the people she has working for her. If you think of your favorite artist, they have hundreds of people working for them.”

Malone graduated from the program in 1987.

Today, she chairs the UNA Department of Entertainment, overseeing the same program that gave her a start in the industry and helped her land a job with FAME Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals just a couple of months after her graduation.

As Malone came to realize, and as she shares with students and parents curious about the department, the program offers courses in songwriting, audio engineering and production, but also offers classes more specific to business, legal or niche aspects of the industry.

Classes like Live Production Technology, Concert Promotion and Touring, Entertainment Industry Law have been added as the department continues to grow.

When Malone left UNA, her plan wasn’t always to end up teaching in the field that she forged her career in.

When she got her start at FAME, working as an assistant to Rick Hall, she said she had opportunities to explore everything from registering copyrights and licensing for someone who wanted to use a song owned by the studio to booking sessions for musicians and handling contracts for artists.

“I really was exposed to a lot of different things. I could have moved to Nashville and worked for a company and had a cubicle — there’s nothing wrong with that, but at FAME, I got to try a lot of different things,” Malone said.

The freedom to explore all those avenues in entertainment is another thing that makes the program at UNA such a unique opportunity for students.

“There are plenty of universities now that offer songwriting,” she said. “You know, you can go in and take a class in this or learn a little about the technology, but if you’re a songwriter, you need to know about the technology. If you’re in the studio doing demos, you need to know the business. It’s such a great thing for anyone going into this industry to be well-rounded in many aspects of this business.”

That has always been the aim of the program since it was introduced to campus in 1975.

The Commercial Music Program, the first of its kind on any university campus in the nation, was born from an idea Dr. Frank McArthur had presented to then campus President Dr. Bob Guillot.

At that time, the college was known as Florence State University. Guillot had just stepped into his role, and Dr. McArthur was serving as the university’s band director and chair of its Music Department.

“The first week (Guillot) was here, he asked me to go to lunch. During lunch, he asked me what five things I would do if I were in charge,” McArthur said in a video produced by the UNA Department of Entertainment, celebrating the department’s 50th birthday this year.

Among those five changes McArthur suggested was to implement programs that offered employment opportunities to students in their prospective fields.

When the university took those steps with one such program, the first person McArthur called was Terry Woodford, an experienced publisher, producer and engineer with Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and a studio owner himself.

Woodford lent his talents to the program, and with some help from Henry Romersa, the coordinator of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) Institute, developed course work for the new four-year program.

“With no other program to use as a model, the program courses were set up on a ‘survey’ basis, with the theory being that the student be exposed to as many ‘basics’ as possible, then via the internship, learn more about a particular area of interest,” a release from UNA states about the program’s earliest beginnings.

“I thought, if I could cover the whole music business in four classes and then have what they called a practicum back then, which was really an internship, that would be something that could be really beneficial to young people who wanted to go into the music industry,” Woodford said in the UNA Department of Entertainment video series.

Those four classes were Music Publishing and Songwriting, Record Production, Recording Studio Techniques and Record Company. Woodford was the lone instructor for the program.

At that time, classes were being held on the ground floor of the Art Department building near Flowers Hall. In those earliest days, those courses were taught in a traditional classroom setting.

“I taught them all these things that I learned,” Woodford said. “The other thing I’d let them do is use the studio. We had no facilities back then, whatsoever. We had nothing. No offices, let alone a recording studio and all the stuff you’ve got.”

Today, Malone teaches courses in a building dedicated solely to the Department of Entertainment. It’s equipped with a full, state-of-the-art in-house studio, writing room, classrooms and more.

“They love it down here because it feels so creative,” Malone said, sitting in one of the student’s songwriting spaces. “I think that’s one of the things that sets our students apart, because we’re like a community. We’re down here, and it’s a little bit different, you know. They’re creative people, and they’re different. We’re different.”

Malone said the campus’ proximity to so many independent studios in the area is a big plus. And with so many successful artists, producers, publishers and others in the industry willing to dedicate their time and talents to helping students lay their own path, those contributions have helped ensure the success of the program over the past 50 years.

“We’re a close-knit group,” she said of her fellow department leaders and off-campus partners in the industry. “I think a lot of it is that it’s just a Shoals thing. It is Muscle Shoals. This is a big industry, but it’s a small community, and we have so many people in this tight-knit group who want to give back.”