THE VISIONARY: DAVE WOOLEY

BY ERICA BLOUNT DANOIS

It wasn’t any ordinary day in the Frederick Douglass projects in Harlem in 1977. At least not for Dave Wooley. As residents peeped and craned their necks to see out of their windows, they screamed and clapped approvingly, as a 16-year-old Wooley collected his drums and equipment and slid into the backseat of a black limousine. Drummer, producer, and recording artist Norman Connors had sent the limo. Wooley had met Connors in Mikell’s, a jazz club on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, as a teenager. Trying to be inconspicuous the young Wooley would draw on a mustache and sneak into the club.

“There was something about him,” said Connors about Wooley. Connors had produced artists like Michael Henderson, Jean Carne, and Phyllis Hyman. “I just felt like he [Wooley] would do well. I can spot talent right away. He was more percussion than drummer. He played more dance, hand drumming, bongos, congas, things of that sort.”

That evening Wooley and Connors traveled to Nashville to play a gig at the Exit/ I N club. For many years afterward, they would go on to play prestigious venues together and gigs all around the country.

“Norman showed me another world when he took me on the road. I would play songs like ‘Betcha By Golly, Wow,’ ‘This is Your Life,’ and ‘You are My Starship,’ and he would do the jazzier songs. I would play percussion. We would switch back and forth,” said Wooley.

Connors, of course, was spot on about recognizing his talent. Wooley had already built a reputation around Harlem as a talented drummer. Both of his parents were musicians—though not working professionally in music; his mother Bettye Wooley St. John was a pianist, and his father Herman J. Wooley was a jazz singer. By the age of 6, he was taking drum lessons with virtuoso African drummer Babatunde Olatunji who’d given him his first conga drum. He took free music lessons, courtesy of the Jazzmobile, from Michael Carvin learning how to read music, how to swing, and play straight-ahead jazz and funk. Pioneering jazz drummer Max Roach selected Wooley as the drummer in an off-Broadway play. He would go on to become a studio musician in New York and realized a life-long dream when he had the opportunity to perform alongside legendary drummer Buddy Rich in a battle of the drums. He’d also work with Cissy Houston recording her demos.

Although he loved playing music in the New York scene, by the time he turned 20, Wooley had moved to Delaware and out of the big-city jazz and R&B scene in New York. He was starting to think more about the business side of music. He focused his attention on graduating from Wilmington University with a bachelor’s degree in business and later earned a MBA.

In 1985, Connors asked Wooley about getting a gig in Wilmington, Delaware.

He asked Wooley to find a promoter that would put up the money and advertise for the band.

Wooley told Connors that Wilmington was a small town, not like what he was accustomed to in New York and other big cities. It would be hard to find a promoter to bring the band to Delaware to do a concert.

“He said, ‘Well, aren’t you Dave Wooley?’ “I said, ‘yeah.’ “He said, ‘Well, you can be the promoter then.’”

And it was just that simple. Wooley suggested Ambrosia’s, a Black-owned club in Delaware, and he became a promoter that day fulfilling his desire to focus on the business end of music.

“We sold out for two nights. I made more money being a promoter than a drummer in the group,” Wooley recalls.

This first gig with Connors was Wooley’s starting point to promote larger venues which he did for many years.

“Unfortunately, it’s a crapshoot,” said media mogul and television personality Cathy Hughes about promoting and the lack of Black promoters. “If the weather is bad, if the artist comes down with laryngitis, the artist falls out with their significant other, there are so many moving parts to booking them, promoting them, and then selling their tickets. It’s a very risky business.”

Wooley eventually found a niche market that he would work primarily with for many years – promoting HBCUs in Pennsylvania like Lincoln University and Cheyney University, and in Delaware and Maryland, like Delaware State, Bowie State, and Maryland Eastern Shore in the 1980s.

Wooley had a competitive advantage for this market from having direct relationships with top agencies based in New York City like William Morris, ICM and ABC Bookings from years of booking top acts.

“I knew the agents because I had done a bunch of concerts on my own, and they were all successful,” said Wooley. “Not one cancellation. So, when I would call for Natalie Cole or the O’Jays or Run DMC, I would get a huge discount. They knew it would be promoted right, and the artists would be treated first class. Because I was a musician,. I knew when the sound was right, the lights, not just from a technical perspective, but from a musical perspective.”

Because HBCUs historically have been underfunded, they often could not afford the prices of top-tier talent. Artists often preferred predominantly white universities (PWI’s) simply because they were better funded, so the artists were paid more.

Wooley was able to produce both fledgling acts like Queen Latifah who was at the beginning of her career at the time and established acts for HBCUs.

“If HBCUs had called the agents directly, they wouldn’t have had that clout, so the prices wouldn’t have been discounted; and they would not have been able to afford those big names, “said Wooley.

Working with HBCUs, he expanded from just doing concerts, to booking lectures with such luminaries as Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.’s daughter Yolanda King, Malcolm X’s daughter Attallah Shabazz and basketball Hall of Famer Walt Frazier.

Artists wanted to perform at these HBCUs, but there were very few Black promoters that were able to book top-tier talent. Wooley helped to fill that void for HBCUs – giving artists the chance to appear in front of Black students and conversely to allow those students to be able to watch stars like Run DMC and Frankie Beverly and Maze perform live, taking HBCUs in the region to another level.

Once, acclaimed jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis called Wooley. Marsalis was aware of the cost disparities for HBCUs and asked Wooley about doing a tour for a minimum honorarium. He was able to book Marsalis at the HBCUs he’d been working with like Lincoln University and Cheyney University.

By the late ‘90s, Wooley confided in Connors that he was looking for a change. He had been raising his two young daughters, who were three and four, as a single dad with custodial rights. He had started working as an adjunct business professor at Wilmington University so he could be present for his daughters.

When he couldn’t find a babysitter, he would often bring them to his class where they gained a business education through osmosis and got acclimated to college life.

“He took us everywhere. We were backstage and met so many people,” remembers his oldest daughter Veda Wooley, Esq.

“I give 100 percent to my Dad. We grew up not watching television, and we were homeschooled in addition to going to public school. We had activities almost every day of the week – computer classes, dance. We were always in the back of the classroom when he was a professor. Eventually, we were learning a lot of the business concepts, and we would call out the answers. It gave us a lot of confidence when we went to college.”

Veda Wooley would become an attorney, finishing her Juris doctor program in two years; and his youngest daughter Davina Wooley became a computer engineer and earned two master’s degrees.

As a young man, Wooley wasn’t content with being a musician without understanding all the cogs that make up the music industry and the business of entertainment. And as he got older, he continued to grow in different parts of the entertainment business operating under his production company, Dave Wooley Productions.

He moved into one of the most lucrative promoting sectors at the timeprofessional boxing.

Back then, one of the only ways to see a live mega boxing match was to go to an arena and watch it on closed-circuit television on the big screen. Boxing was big in the 1980s and 1990s with boost to our arm in the early days. Boxing matches were such a major event for us to be a part of. It really boosted our credibility and image,” recalls Hughes. “The PR, the inclusion in the press room with all the big boys, no question it was Dave Wooley that opened those doors for us.” electrifying talent like George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Michael Spinks. Wooley rose to prominence in the industry as the only Black man in the country to be awarded exclusive paid-per-view and closed-circuit television broadcasting rights for several states for the Mike Tyson versus Michael Spinks fight - the largest fight at the time.

Around the same time, basketball Hall of Famer Julius “Dr. J” Erving retired and wanted to get into the business side of sports and entertainment and heard about Wooley. By 1992, he and Wooley became business partners.

One enterprising woman with an emerging media empire was impacted significantly by Wooley’s new venture into boxing. Media mogul Cathy Hughes, in the early days of her radio station WOL- AM in Washington, D.C., was always looking for big-ticket sponsors. Wooley made Hughes’ station the premiere fight station in

Washington, D.C.

“In the early days of WOL, we only had local businesses – thank God for the crab houses, the beauty parlors, the corner grocery stores, the independently owned boutiques, they were our first clients,” said Cathy Hughes by phone. “I met Fred Brown and then Henry Brown – the highestranking Black person at AnheuserBusch - and Budweiser Beer became our first national client.”

The Browns wanted Hughes to meet Wooley; and when she did, they hit it off immediately. Wooley, a single father of two girls, often took Hughes’ advice particularly during discussions on combing hair.

Hughes was well-versed in boxing. Her father, an accountant, had Muhammad Ali as a client when he was still Cassius Clay. She and Wooley bonded on boxing and raising children.

“In terms of prestige, Dave was a big

While working with Dr. J. and promoting fights, Wooley met Grammy award-winning singer Dionne Warwick, and she and Wooley started working together. He would go on to coauthor two children’s books with her, “Say a Little Prayer” and “Little Man.” And he was the co-author for her autobiography, “My Life, as I See It: An Autobiography,” which was the genesis of the documentary, “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over,” which chronicled her six-decade career in music and activism and premiered in January on CNN and is currently on HBO Max. Wooley wrote, produced and codirected the documentary which won several awards including, “Best Feature,” at the Gene Siskel Film Festival; and the film won first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award for documentaries at the Toronto International Film Festival. It also won the “Audience Award,” at both the Montclair Film Festival and the BronzeLens Film Festival.

“I must have watched it six times now,” said Hughes. “Not only is the story beautiful, but the process that he went through was too. Just like his daughters, this man is the poster child for dogged determination.”

“He had interviewed all these people without me knowing,” said Warwick by phone. Usually, people can’t keep anything from me,” she laughed.

“I loved it, it showed his ability – he told the true story which was most important to me. He captured me,” said Warwick.

Some of the exclusive celebrity interviews that Wooley garnered were Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Carlos Santana, Snoop Dogg and Elton John.

“It was like a big surprise party for her,” remembers Wooley when Warwick watched the documentary for the first time.

Both Dionne Warwick and Cathy Hughes consider Wooley family now, and they are known as Auntie Dionne ‘D’ and Auntie Cathy to Wooley’s daughters.

“One side of him is this consummate business entrepreneur,” said Hughes. The other side of him is rearing children. I’m watching him live this double life.”

“I met his daughters at the early stages of their lives, and I took on the role of the godmother. He managed to do it and got both through college. They are both doing exceptionally well, and I can be proud of them as if they were my own,” said Warwick.

Both Hughes and Warwick match Wooley’s commitment to HBCUs. Warwick sang in concerts at Howard University when Donny Hathaway was a student there. She performed at Marshall College for their homecoming. At Bowie State University, Warwick is active with their health department because of her activism around AIDS. They are renaming the performing arts center in her name.

Hughes’ roots with Howard University spans 50 years starting from WHUR and Melvin Lindsey and “The Quiet Storm,” to the naming of the Communications Department - The Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

Wooley recently married Debora Wooley, who says she admires his creative process.

“With all of the things he’s done, he’s one of the most humble people I’ve ever met,” said Debora Wooley. “He doesn’t have a problem being the behind-thescenes guy.”

Still behind-the-scenes today, Wooley has come full circle. The street where he promoted his first gig on 16th and North Claymont Street in Wilmington, Delaware, with Norman Connors for just $8 advance tickets was recently named after him - David F. Wooley Way in February in 2022.

“If it wasn’t for Norman Connors, I wouldn’t be here,” said Wooley. “And I wouldn’t be here without the Delaware States and Coppin State and Lincoln and all the other Black colleges because that’s where my career took off.”