Billy Ivey was born in Detroit, Michigan on September 6, 1944. Ivey was reared in Calumet, a mining town located in the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1966, received a master's degree in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 1970, and became a PhD candidate in folklore and history in 1971.
Career
Ivey was the first full-time director of the Country Music Foundation and the related Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, having been promoted to the directorship a few months after first being hired as CMF librarian. He served from 1971 until 1998. In 1972 Ivey also became the founding editor of the Journal of Country Music, serving as editor until 1975. In 1974 Ivey won a Billboard Country Award for album note writing. He also served as the chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences from 1981 to 1983 and then again from 1989 to 1991, the only individual elected to two separate terms, and he has also served as the national chairman of the academy's Board of Trustees. In 1983 he said of the organization he headed that, “As time goes on, the Grammys have come closer and closer to satisfying the critics by recognizing what is happening now, but I don’t think we will ever get to the point where the critic’s choice for the most imaginative and innovative record of the year is going to be the Grammy winner. There will always be a little distance, and that’s probably healthy.” In 1988 Ivey was co-writer of the 30th Grammy Awards Telecast, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed Ivey to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Ivey was appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, by then-President Bill Clinton, serving from 1998 to 2001. His "Challenge America" small-grant initiative is credited with restoring congressional confidence in the sometimes-embattled NEA. He gained national notoriety in 1999 for unilaterally revoking a grant to Cinco Puntos Press to publish La Historia de los Colores, over concerns that the funding might end up in the hands of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The grant was subsequently picked up and doubled by the Lannan Foundation. Following government service Ivey founded the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy, at Vanderbilt University, serving as director from 2002 to 2012. He returned to Washington in 2007 as Team Leader in Arts and Humanities for the Barack Obama presidential transition. Ivey has written and lectured extensively about the importance of cultural policy and the value of cultural engagement in the pursuit of a high quality of life. He coined the phrase "Expressive Life" to define the part of the human experience shaped by cultural heritage and creative practice. From 2007 to 2018, Ivey was senior advisor for China to the American Folklore Society. has been awarded honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University, and Indiana University, and is a four-time Grammy Award nominee in the Best Album Notes category. Bill Ivey currently serves as Visiting Research Scholar to the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and is a trustee of the Washington, DC-based Center for American Progress.
Television
Ivey produced several television shows for the Country Music Foundation, including producing and writing Country Music Hall of Fame: 25. Ivey was advisor to the PBS television series, American Roots Music, and was writer and co-producer of In the Hank Williams Tradition, also on PBS. In 2016 he was co-executive producer of the documentary on the impact of rock music on the collapse of the Soviet Union, Free to Rock.
Writing
In 2007 Ivey co-edited the book Engaging Art: the Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural, and In 2008 Ivey's book Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights was published by the University of California Press. Then in 2012 he released the book Handmaking America: A Back-to-Basics Pathway to a Revitalized American Democracy. In 2018 he published the book Rebuidling an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America. Ivey was also the co-editor of the books The Pocantico Gathering: Happiness and a High Quality of Life – The Role of Art and Art Making, Cultural Awareness in the Military: Developments and Implications for Future Humanitarian Cooperation, and Cultural Discourse: China-US Intangible Cultural Heritage Forums. He has also written articles on the music industry and the role of various players within it. Ivey has also written about music history, including the lack of diverse representation in the early decades of 20th century music recording.
