Mark Twain Museum Collaborates on Legacy CD Poject

Mark Twain Museum Collaborates on Legacy CD Project with Carl Jackson

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is collaborating with Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and producer Carl Jackson to tell Twain’s life story in spoken word and song on a CD, Mark Twain: Words & Music, planned for release on November 30, 2010 – the 175th birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

The project will honor Twain’s legacy and raise needed funds during these challenging economic times. The Museum preserves eight historic properties that are open to the public including the Boyhood Home, a National Historic Landmark and home to Clemens from the age of 4 to 17.

Jackson has worked with top talent since childhood and has brought a combination of well known artists and up and coming talent to the project including Brad Paisley, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, Doyle Lawson, Bradley Walker, the Church Sisters, Valerie Storey and others. Jackson will also lend his voice to the project, and Garrison Keillor will narrate.

The Museum’s executive director, Cindy Lovell, conceived the idea. She has been a fan of Twain’s writing since she was a child and a fan of bluegrass music all her life.

“When I heard Carl’s Grammy award-winning album, ‘Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’: Songs of the Louvin Brothers’ back in 2003, I came up with the idea of the Twain CD,” Lovell said.

Jackson paired voices for that all-star project, such as James Taylor and Alison Krauss, which covered some of the Louvins’ best songs. The CD became a favorite of Lovell’s, and although she hadn’t spoken with Jackson since the two were teens, she contacted him in 2005 and pitched the idea of telling Twain’s life in a similar format— integrating narration, quotes and songs. Jackson liked the idea and planning began. The goal was to release the project in 2010 as a benefit for the Museum and to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death and 175th anniversary of his birth.

Jackson and others have written several original songs for the CD including “Huck Finn Blues,” which Jackson co-wrote with Danny Wilson and Emily Hayes, two schoolteachers from Carbondale, Ill. who first came to Hannibal in 2009 to attend the Teachers’ Workshops that are supported by the Missouri Humanities Council. Brad Paisley recorded the song.

“It’s a thrill to work with such talented people on a project that honors this great American author,” Jackson said. “Twain’s words still inspire and enlighten, and we hope he’d be pleased with our homage to his life story.”

The Museum hosted the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibit on American Roots Music earlier this year, which was funded by the Missouri Humanities Council, so the CD project fits in nicely with the yearlong emphasis on Twain’s connections to roots music. Twain played piano and guitar and was especially fond of the old spirituals he learned from slaves during his childhood.

Museum supporters donated funds to produce the CD, and artists donated their time and talent. Proceeds will benefit the Museum’s endowment fund. Further information is available at http://www.marktwainmuseum.org

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