POP/ROCK - Aug. 21, 2001

Arts Center to Honor Slain Rapper Shakur

DeKalb County political leaders joined with the family of Tupac Shakur to break ground over the weekend for an arts center honoring the slain West Coast rapper.

Organizers expect the Tupac Amaru Center for the Arts to open in March 2003 in Stone Mountain, Ga. Shakur’s family has lived in the area for nearly a decade.

The center will feature studio space for the performing arts and a gallery that initially will hang the art of Shakur’s fans who have sent their work to his mother, Afeni Shakur. An adjacent garden will commemorate Shakur, who was shot and killed in Las Vegas in 1996, and other victims of violence.

Uh, Mr. Nelly, How Many in Your Party?

The rapper Nelly and an accompanying crowd of about 3,000 people were refused entry to a Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., nightclub Saturday night. The St. Louis native apparently was there for a private party at the resort area’s water park.

“We were already full by midnight and had anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 people already inside,” Shooter’s 21 owner John Teichman told the Lake Sun Leader. “When I realized Nelly and thousands of friends were trying to get inside the front door, I called the cops for help.”

Though the crowd was not violent, said Missouri Water Patrol Officer J. Pragman, people continued to try to push through the club’s locked doors. It took police almost two hours to disperse the crowd. No injuries occurred and no one was arrested.

Auctioning Patsy Cline Crash Memorabilia

Pieces of the Piper Comanche that crashed in 1963, killing country singer Patsy Cline and three others, are going up for a 10-day E-Bay auction, beginning Sept 1.

The plane went down while flying through stormy skies March 5, 1963, near Camden, Tenn. Cline, famous for such hits as “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces,” was 30 and at the height of her popularity when she died.

Eric and Scott Mills, of Jackson, Tenn., say their father paid a family acquaintance $20 for the tail and “an undisclosed amount” for a portion of the belly in 1978. Minimum bid for the pieces: $50,000.

The landing gear and a clock on the plane are housed at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Overdue Headstone for Blues Legend Johnson

Mystery still shrouds the death of Delta blues legend Robert Johnson, who died in 1938 at the age of 27.

Some say Johnson--an inspiration for such legends in their own right as Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters--died of pneumonia, while others point to syphilis or poison. And though his gravesite has been a source of debate, a headstone was recently erected at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Greenwood, Miss.

It was Rosie Eskridge who provided the lead--based on her husband’s contention that he’d buried Johnson there on Aug. 16, 1938.

Gaylon Wardlow of Pensacola, Fla., a self-described “blues investigator,” said her story affirms other little-known details of the death.

“I think it is going to be real good for the church and the community,” said Sylvester Hoover, chairman of Little Zion’s Deacon Board. “This guy was popular.”

Financial remuneration, it seems, was also overdue. Johnson’s music didn’t begin earning money until the 1990 release of “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.”

THE ARTS

Las Vegas Museum Project Hits Snags

New casinos in Las Vegas are known for opening on schedule, whatever the obstacles. The goal: to get the roulette wheels turning, the slot machines jingling and the cash flowing as soon as possible.

When art is concerned, however, things aren’t so neat. Plans to debut two new museum spaces--the Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Hermitage Guggenheim Museum--at the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino on Sept. 16, have been pushed back because of the “complexity of the project,” according to a spokesman for New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The openings of the Guggenheim Las Vegas, with a traveling show dubbed “The Art of the Motorcycle,” and the Hermitage Guggenheim Museum, which will showcase Modern masterworks from the legendary St. Petersburg museum, have been postponed to October 7.

QUICK TAKES

A memorial for Academy Award-nominated conductor-composer Jack Elliott (“The Unsinkable Molly Brown”) will be held tonight at 6 at CBS Television City, 7800 Beverly Blvd., Stage 36 .... Time magazine critic Richard Schickel will receive the Maurice Bessey award for film criticism at the Montreal World Film Festival, which takes place Aug. 23 to Sept. 3. Past recipients include Variety’s Todd McCarthy and the New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris .... As expected, CNN anchor Jack Cafferty will take the helm of a new CNN business and general news program, “CNN Money Morning” beginning Sept. 10. The show will air from 6-7 a.m. (ET) on CNN and will continue until 8 a.m. on CNNfn--CNN’s Financial News Network