History takeover: MAP sheds light on concerts
Scarlet & Black 2025-03-04
The work of Georgia Dentel, who coordinated concerts and films at Grinnell College from 1960 to 2001, has not historically been publicized. With support from L.F. Parker Professor of History Sarah Purcell and alumni, four students sought to increase Dentel’s visibility by creating a Mentored Advanced Project detailing her life and accomplishments.
“Georgia is probably one of the most, if not the most culturally important figure in the history of the College,” said Hayden Suarez-Davis `25, who started the project and served as chair of the Grinnell concerts committee from 2022 to 2023. “You can go to really any alum, basically until 2001, and even now … some of their best memories of college came from attending events, and that does not happen without her work and her prowess at negotiating and getting shit done.”
Purcell, who graduated from Grinnell in 1992, said that alumni interest was crucial to developing the project, which has been ongoing since January 2024 and is set to be completed this summer.
“The most interesting thing overall is just the intensity of alumni memories and their support for campus and for student culture, in some ways energized by their memories of concerts and films and things on campus in their time,” Purcell said. “I was not a big, giant concerts person other than classical concerts. But I did go to a few of these concerts myself.”
While the Sept. 20, 1975 Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band performance in Darby Gym may be the most well-known Grinnell concert, Dentel also brought other famous acts to campus. This included Nina Simone on Feb. 27, 1965 and The Jackson 5 on April 5, 1969, as well as jazz and blues acts such as Dizzy Gillespie on Sept. 28, 1962, Louis Armstrong on Oct. 28, 1967, Duke Ellington on April 12, 1969 and Charles Mingus in 1976.
However, the process of finding information on Dentel was not easy for the student researchers.
“The archives had a file on her,” Suarez-Davis said. “There was basically nothing in there.”
There might have been multiple reasons why Dentel’s work was not often publicly recognized.
“A part of it is wanting to sort of stay in the background,” Suarez-Davis said. “A part of it is just that she was working primarily at a time where not a lot of women were doing her position. And I think that her working style was difficult for the people in the college administration to work with.”
By combing through archived issues of The S&B and activity calendars, looking at primary sources from Dentel’s hometown library in Ackley, Iowa and conducting oral histories with alumni, Suarez-Davis, Bowen Wei `25, Jackie Harris `26 and Maya Albanese `26 were able to build a picture of her life and work.
Crucial qualities for Dentel’s success were her ability to book rising stars and her relationship with both West and East Coast booking agents.
“She would often book people right before they became super, mega famous,” Purcell said. “It’s true of Bruce Springsteen. It was true of The Jackson 5. It’s also true of more recent acts like the Smashing Pumpkins … she would get them and then it would seem like within months they would be really a huge act. It was mainly through the telephone relationship she had with the booking agencies and over her career, she built up a reputation for being a really good person to work with.”
Ethan Reske `27, a current concert coordinator, said that the methods of booking artists have changed since Dentel’s time.
“She did a lot of wonderful work that we are trying to live up to,” Reske said. “Now we have to email the agents and see if the artists are willing, and all that kind of stuff. It’s a little more formal and less formal at the same time. It’s definitely more disconnected than a phone conversation.”
An important memory for Barry Ancona `68 and Hal Fuson `67 was Jefferson Airplane’s Oct. 22, 1966 performance in Darby Gym for the Grinnell Homecoming Dance during family weekend, involving a light show. That performance was vocalist Grace Slick’s first performance with the band outside of California.
Fuson, who covered the concert as the 1966 editor-in-chief of The Scarlet & Black, said the Jefferson Airplane performance was his favorite concert that he attended.
“There were parents in the audience, and I suspect that some of these parents were appalled,” Fuson said. “I couldn’t tell you how I felt about it as I stood there in the room with my camera. I just knew it was kind of a big deal and the sounds that were being made were not the kind of sounds I was used to listening to on my record player or my radio … Darby was packed.”
Fuson said he appreciated how Dentel brought music to students with all sorts of different interests.
If there’s one result of the research and of the project, it would be that the College and the community understand and appreciate the role that concerts have played on this campus for decades now
— Hayden Suarez-Davis `25
“There were a lot of people around who were much more sophisticated about music, certainly, than the average student like me who just showed up because the door was open and you could walk in,” Fuson said.
Ancona said the music experience he most remembers from his time at Grinnell was after the New Lost City Ramblers, a country music group, played in Darby Gym on Saturday, Nov. 16, 1963 as part of a Grinnell folk festival.
“The Ramblers were wondering if they could get something to eat. It was a late night in Grinnell so the only thing that was open at that hour in those days was the Skell diner,” Ancona said. “So I drove the Ramblers out to the Skell diner … everybody’s kind of staring at us when we walk in, but Mike Seeger, who was one of the Ramblers and the half-brother of Pete Seeger, goes over to the jukebox with a couple of quarters and plays every country song on the jukebox, and everybody was happy. So that was one of those cultural events where the College and its concert people meet the town.”
Despite Dentel’s immense impact on campus culture, the college administration attempted to consolidate her position multiple times in the 1980s and received pushback from students and alumni.
“Every time that her job was threatened, it was front-page headline news in The S&B, very, very, heavily reported on for months at a time,” Suarez-Davis said. “There were people who were alums and students who were writing op-eds in the paper saying, ‘We need to keep Georgia.’”
Dentel passed away in 2018 at the age of 92.
Suarez-Davis said that he hopes the MAP brings awareness to the importance of concerts to Grinnell.
“If there’s one result of the research and of the project, it would be that the College and the community understand and appreciate the role that concerts have played on this campus for decades now,” Suarez-Davis said. “I don’t really think we do a good enough job appreciating the history of people who have come and visited this little town in Iowa to play shows … we should be proud of the fact that there is such an incredible history, and not only be proud of that, but continue … to allocate money to bring in outside acts and support students booking concerts.”