best overall
Story By Mike Overall, Photo By Susan O'Connor

Although Greg Arnold’s Back Beat Music store often appears as busy as your proverbial, chaotic beehive, appearances at the 128 Southwest Drive emporium are most often deceptive. The 40-year-old Arnold, sole owner and proprietor of the oldest music store in Jonesboro (circa 1995), runs his business in a “laid-back” manner that his customers find appealing, relaxing and conducive to “hanging out,” the latter for purposes ranging from talking shop with fellow musicians and comparing axes (musicians’ slang for instruments), to teaching private lessons and, yes, transacting business with Arnold or a member of his staff.

Not that Arnold isn’t a highly competent and successful businessman. He is, as evidenced by the fact that his store has an ever-widening customer base, and an inventory that “moves” with an increasing regularity. It’s just that Arnold, who is rangy of physique as well as self-effacing, pleasant and cooperative in his demeanor, is so good at what he does, even though his approach to doing it does not adhere to the normal businessman’s orthodoxy, that musicians of all stripes are drawn to his store because of its ambience and its noticeable absence of the hard-sell, head-’em-up-and-move-’em-out approach to running a successful enterprise.

An accomplished drummer himself, whose latest gig is holding down the demanding drum chair in the popular, impossible-to-pigeonhole group Plain Meanness, Arnold plies his trade while surrounded by people he knows, likes and respects the most: musicians of all ages, whose love for their craft is emboldened by the music that has long since captivated their hearts and souls.
“I like to think of my store as a library of sorts,” Arnold said in an interview.

When players come in, they may, musically speaking, ‘check out’ the latest thing in our little corner of the music world,” whether it’s a new instrument that’s just hit the market, or maybe somebody’s ideas relating to instrumental techniques, artistic avenues to doing thus and so on a certain song or in a certain style of playing, or just the opportunity to be among their peers, where the touchstone of most conversations is the music they love to study and perform.

It’s of little or no consequence to Arnold what stripe of musician gravitates to his store. On a recent busy Wednesday afternoon, those milling about included several jazz instrumentalists, a coterie of rock and roll guitar players, a versatile drummer whose main gig is playing in a band that provides the music at a local church, two composers and arrangers, a classical trumpet player, several music educators, numerous country and western performers, and, as the afternoon progressed, a steady stream of youngsters with an eager eye trained toward learning all they could from professional teachers who deem the teaching process cathartic, educational and, oftentimes, inspirational.

Arnold’s generosity toward musicians sometimes extends to offering bands the necessary space and time for rehearsing their music in one of his practice rooms. One such group is preparing a special performance for KASU-FM’s popular Blue Monday series of concerts. The group currently rehearsing at Back Beat will regale their live audience, as well as those who listen to the concerts on Arkansas State University’s radio service, with a repertoire of jazz selections whose structure was built around that uniquely American art form, the blues.

When asked to comment on Back Beat’s progress under his retail tutelage, Arnold reiterated the old but true saw that for many businesses, physical location may be everything in the success department. “Here in Jonesboro, we’re in sort of a buffer zone between two major cities, Little Rock and Memphis,” Arnold said. “Many of my customers can get what they want from my store without having to make the drive to Memphis or Little Rock. That’s a significant advantage for us and our clientele. We’re centrally located in a city that’s growing and thriving. And our location is especially attractive to my customers who are professional players.’ The latter spend so much time on the road that when they come home, they would rather do almost anything than get back in their vehicles and drive to a music store that may be located an hour or more away from where they’re enjoying their down time between gigs.

In the educational arena, Back Beat is in the school band instrumental rental business. “We serve as a broker for Shivelbine’s Music Store in Cape Girardeau, Missouri,” Arnold said. Shivelbine’s, a family-owned business which has been in business for several generations in the Mississippi River community, has been a major player in the band instrument rental business for many decades.
Arnold is particularly proud of Back Beat’s summer music camps program, which, since its inception several years ago, has become a summertime tradition for music students, from beginners to players at the intermediate level of ability. The youngsters opt to spend much of their vacation time learning how to play an instrument.

The store’s summer educational program began with one camp, but has since expanded to the extent that last summer, four camps were held to accommodate the almost 200 students who exhibited an eagerness to study and play music with youngsters their own age.

“We place them (students) in bands so they can experience playing in an ensemble,” Arnold said. “And at the end of the camp week, the students get the opportunity to perform for the public in a venue that is conducive to the performance of live music.”

Although Memphis, for example, has a worldwide reputation as a hotbed of music when it comes to blues, rock and roll and jazz, “many, many people in Jonesboro and throughout this area just don’t realize how many fine musicians there are right here in Jonesboro and Northeast Arkansas,” Arnold said. He noted that Arkansas State University’s school of music is one factor that accounts for the number of talented musicians who live and work in and around Jonesboro, but not the only one.

“Situated as we are in the Northern Mississippi Delta, and given the long tradition of Delta music and the musicians it has inspired for many generations, it’s not surprising that many of the great musicians who first made their mark, say, at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, just across the river from us, came from Jonesboro and this entire area. I could start naming names of those who got in on the ground floor of what became rhythm and blues and rock and roll, just in the rockabilly field alone, but that would probably take up most of the afternoon.”

Suffice it to say that Back Beat Music, which has undergone several significant physical expansion projects since it first opened its doors in the mid-’90s, is much more than a full-line music store that sells all manner of musical instruments, related supplies and audio equipment. “Greg’s store,” as one musician put it, “is an important gathering place for musicians of all kinds, from beginners who want to learn how to play, to accomplished professional performers who are artists in their own right, including many who make their living performing throughout this country and all over the world.”