The original star maker, legendary music impresario Jim Halsey set the standard in music management. From right here in Tulsa, he built what was then the largest country music management and booking agency in the world. Over his 75-year career, Jim helped make household names of performers including Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson, Waylon Jennings, The Judds, Reba McEntire, Hank Thompson, Freddie Fender, Minnie Pearl, Clint Black, Roy Orbison, Lee Greenwood, Tammy Wynette, Mel Tillis, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, James Brown, Leon Russell and more. At 95, he still manages the Oak Ridge Boys.
To ensure that others enjoy the same success he found, Jim created The Jim Halsey Music Business Institute at universities in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and continued to develop the program in Nashville and beyond. Through a book and curated interviews with leaders in music and entertainment, Jim shares the secrets that helped him guide the careers of 30 members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Halsey was awarded the Cherokee Medal of Honor in 1997 and was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2015. He was a visiting professor at HED Music College in Yehud, Israel and served on the Board of Directors for The Country Music Association, The Academy of Country Music, Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, Will Rogers Memorial Foundation and the Five Civilized Tribes Museum.
Halsey believes accomplishments are wonderful, but they are not who he is as a person. Rather, Jim would like to think he has spent a lifetime helping others to live a full and meaningful life through music and art.
An avid interest in the arts is shared by both Jim and his wife, Minisa Crumbo. The daughter of acclaimed artist, Woody Crumbo, Minisa is herself an artist and craftsperson of several disciplines including painting, silversmithing, basketry, potting, quilting, cooking, gardening and writing.
Crumbo has drawn on her Muscogee Creek and Citizens Band Potawatomi Indian heritage to become a leading artist. She has exhibited her works worldwide, and is the first and only Native American artist to be invited by the Soviet Government, in the former USSR, to create a one-person exhibit of Native American poets and poetry. Minisa credits the Mother Earth and the Father Sky-Sun as her first and most important teachers.
Jim and Minisa are world travelers by virtue of their respective professions, concerts, lectures, seminars, exhibitions and music festivals. “Unity” is the enduring theme of Jim and Minisa Halsey’s contribution to the world through their lives and work.
Together, Jim and Minisa share four children: Sherman Halsey (1957-2013), Gina Halsey, Crissy Carter Rumford and Woody Carter.
