Dr. Joe Barry Mullins truly the
“musician’s musician”, probably musically enriched
and affected the lives of more students and teachers
of music during and after his fifty four plus years
of teaching in the Southeast, than has any other
person. In fact, the abbreviated resume of his
accomplishments is much too lengthy to enumerate
here, as it covers more than three pages!
Dr. Mullins began his musical career
rather late, learning the drum his senior year in one of
Roy Martin’s bands in Arkansas. He achieved national
prominence that same year winning a national High School
drum contest and was featured on the cover of the
“School Musician”. He taught band in Pine Bluff,
Arkansas from 1934 to 1936, and moved to Itta Bena,
Miss. In 1936, where he taught until 1940. he married a
former student, Virginia L. Mullins and had two
daughters, Alice and Joyce, bother teachers, and two
sons, Joe Barry Mullins Jr. and Thad Mullins, both band
directors.
Mullins received his Bachelor’s Music
from Memphis College in 1994, and later earned a
Master’s from Peabody and his EdD from the
University of Illinois. He spent ten years at
various positions in Florida, Mississippi, and
Louisiana from 1949-1951 he taught at Louisiana
Tech. His bands at Northeast Louisiana University,
from 1951 through 1969, were legendary, and in 1969
he crowned his career with 11 years as Director of
Bands at the University of Southern Mississippi .
Dr. Mullins has served as a clinician, adjudicator,
orchestra, band, and choir director in over thirty
states, and he continues to demand and receive the
highest level of musicianship from all of the groups
he directs. Even in “retirement”, he has served as
director of two college and three municipal bands.
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