Ed. note: Selby Minner was the first person I wrote a feature about when I started with the Eufaula Indian Journal and McIntosh County Democrat in August 2012.
What began as a simple article to promote her up-coming Dusk ‘Til Dawn Blues Festival turned into a lengthy story about a fascinating woman who has touched countless lives over the decades.
The story began with a reference to “destiny,” and what destiny has in store for us.
Destiny guides the life of Selby Minner, who with her husband, the late D.C. Minner, created the annual Dusk ‘Til Dawn Blues Festival in Rentiesville.
She was destined to become a blues musician, even though she was schooled as an artist.
Destiny demanded that she meet her future husband, fate arranging for both of them to find themselves performing at the same nightclub in Berkeley, Calif., thousands of miles from their respective homes.
D.C. himself was a man of destiny — blues was drawn to him like a magnet.
Even the blues festival, which celebrates its 22nd event Labor Day weekend (Aug. 31 – Sept. 2) was destined to be.
Every year since the husband and wife blues team conceived the idea for a festival it has been a resounding success, in spite of the fact that it is held in a tiny, remote community of fewer than 100 residents — most of them retired.
Selby finds her passion “I always wanted to sing,” said the 62-yearold Selby, born and raised in Rhode Island. “But my folks were scared of the nightlife and didn’t want me to be a musician… besides, they liked classical music and didn’t consider this real music.”
She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where one spring weekend in 1968 she attended a fourhour concert by Janis Joplin. Soon after, she attended a concert by Jimi Hendrix.
“That was it for art school,” Selby said. “Blues spoke to me big time.”
She didn’t have a lot of exposure to the blues growing up in Providence, R.I.
“On the radio all they played was Motown,” she said. “We didn’t get Al Green and guys like Muddy Waters — so the first blues I heard was that music guru The Rolling Stones.”
“My favorite Mick Jagger quote from then was ‘I hope they don’t think we’re a rock and roll band.’” Selby completed the four-year art program, but didn’t graduate.
“I left with a musician and went to California,” she said.
It wasn’t a direct route. She and guitar player Jim Donovan performed in Washington D.C.
“We did the D.C. street scene. We practiced our music all day, every day. Performed on the streets and at all the open mike nights.”
They drifted up to Chicago and down to New Orleans, where they performed after hours in front of businesses in the heart of the music district.
“Our first real paying gig was at Andy’s, in New Orleans. A folk kind of club. We went on at midnight.”
Then, back to Providence, R.I.
“We did lots of gigs there and in Newport, until finally we went out to Berkeley (California) and got a gig at the Odyssey bar,” Selby said.
Her destiny came to her in that bistro.
A marriage meant to be It was the mid-’70s. Selby and her companion Jim Donovan were among the acts playing at the Odyssey. D.C., born and raised in Rentiesville, was playing there also. The three became close friends and eventually Donovan left to pursue his own destiny and Selby and D.C. were together from then on. That was 1976.
“Six weeks after we got together, we left Berkeley,” she said.
They traveled the west coast from L.A. to Seattle but eventually found themselves in D.C.’s old house in Rentiesville, which through the years has been has been a farmhouse, grocery store, a corn whiskey house, dance hall, a rental home, a eventually a blues club, a headquarters for the Blues Hall of Fame and the heart of the on-going blues festival.
They were married in 1979.
“My father (in Rhode Island) said if we had a wedding, he would pay for it but if we eloped he would give us $1,000 cash,” Selby said.
They took the cash and married in Santa Fe, N.M.
“We used the thousand dollars to open a store in this house,” she said.
Eventually, they closed the store, began renting out the house and then toured the country playing the blues.
Then in ’88 they decided to move back to Rentiesville permanently and convert the old house into the Down Home Blues Club. D.C. remodeled the house. Cashed in aluminum beer cans to get money to buy lumber; pulled nails from old lumber and reused them. After a year and a half, the club was finished.
It was open from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. It attracted blues fans from Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Fort Smith, Ark., and the towns and rural communities in the immediate area.
Eventually the bar became the headquarters of the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame, its walls adorned with pictures of some of the top musicians in the country.
A blues festival is born The joint was hopping two nights a week, with as many as 150 guests each night. A number that almost doubled the town’s population.
After three years, the couple decided to condense all those nights into one big weekend festival.
“So we could get all our friends from the road and come and meet each other here,” Selby said.
D.C. remodeled the house and the property again for the festival.
“That first year, we promised all of the musicians if they would play for free then the next year, if it was a success, we would pay them,” Selby said.
The first festival was in 1991.
“It worked,” she said, “More than 700 came to the festival and the next year we went to two stages and all the bands got paid.”
Today, there are three stages– the main stage, the back porch stage and a stage inside the night club. The fame spread and the crowds grew– more than 3,000 attend most weekends of the 3 day festival. The Oklahoma Arts Council became a sponsor to help support it. Many local businesses also became supporters. Admission was kept low, $15 per night per person. More than 30 bands perform each year. Children are not only welcome, but parents are encouraged to bring them.
It takes on the trappings of a carnival for the young blues fans. D.C. was a highlight of the show, until he passed away in 2008 after a series of illnesses.
“He very carefully trained me the last two years of his life to keep the festival going,” Selby said.
The continued success of the event is a tribute to D.C.’s vision, talent and ability to pass his knowledge along to Selby, a respected musician in her own right.
“He lived to be 73,” Selby said, “He died of a lot of things, kidney failure, heart attack. Even though he was ill for a long time he still played the gigs. He said, “Just roll me in there, I can get up onstage.’” In addition to keeping the festival alive, Selby plays gigs around the state and sometimes out of state; on Sunday nights she hosts a blues jam session at the club. She takes blues into the classrooms on behalf of the Arts Council’s Arts in School programs.
She envisions the festival continuing for years to come, just as blues music will never die.
“You can’t kill something people do when they do it because they love it,” Selby said, “Sure, a lot of gigs have dried up, but anybody who plays blues to get rich is missing a screw.”
