Darryl Tookes: FAMU's music professional in residence

Darryl Tookes, Director, The Institute of Music Research and Music Industries Studies, at FAMU brings real life industry knowledge and excellence to his position with his experience, professionalism, and extensive rolodex.  

Tookes, a FAMU campus baby, the Hansel Tookes Student Recreation Center is named after his father, was one of the first African Americans to chart in the Adult Contemporary category of Billboard magazine with the debut of his self-penned classic Lifeguard reaching #3 on the Billboard Charts.  

In his 30 plus year music career, Tookes has worked with the likes of Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, Roberta Flack, Burt Bacharach and Christina Aguilera, to name a few. He counts Sting, Michael Bolton and George Benson among his personal friends.

Tookes who is about two and a half years into his job as director of the music industry studies program in FAMU’s Department of Music.  “This is just an opportunity, I couldn’t say no to,” he said.

“I’m teaching jazz history, which I have lived, and I’m teaching some classes in music industry, which I have lived,” Tookes told Tallahassee Magazine last year. “So I’m really teaching the life that I’ve lived professionally. I use textbooks and I use anecdotes, and it’s constantly changing. It’s more of, let’s try to have a holistic approach to having a solid education at an accredited university, an HBCU, that is within a conservatory approach — and entrepreneurship has got to be the bottom line.”

“It has been my initiative, to make sure that FAMU students have their feet on the ground and that they still dream big dreams and do the work, and I’m hoping that I can convey to them that there’s true reward in doing the work.”   

Tookes, remains a highly sought after clinician by conservatories including the Berklee College of Music, and has taught Voice at New York University in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, and the Tisch School of the Arts where as a founding faculty member he developed the Music Theory curriculum for Music Theater in the Drama Department.

   
A long professional resume
He maintains a vibrant career as a composer, producer, and concert artist.  He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the White House for sitting Presidents Clinton and Obama, in New York at The Apollo Theater, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, The Cafe Carlyle, The Blue Note Jazz Clubs in New York and Japan, London's Royal Albert Hall, The Oslo Concert Hall, among venues worldwide.  He has appeared on Saturday Night Live, Oprah, Late Night with Letterman, and many national television shows, and has performed for dignitaries Nelson Mandela, Muhammed Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Maya Angelou, and Sydney Poitier, to name a few.  

He is preeminent in the music field as a member of the Board of Governors of the Recording Academy, the Board of the Society of Singers, and is recognized for his service as Chairman of the New York Singers Collective, and for his activism as a longtime member of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Deep FAMU roots 
His father, Hansel Tookes, served as athletic director at FAMU, founded the FAMU Sports Hall of Fame and oversaw the university’s transition to NCAA Division I athletics. His mother, Leona Washington Tookes, was a telephone switchboard operator and for decades was the unofficial voice of FAMU, and a professional singer who filled their home with music. 

Tookes graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in physics from FAMU in 1977. He moved to New York and turned to singing and songwriting. Now he's back at FAMU to pass all that he has learned to the next generation of Rattler music industry professionals who whether they are singers, songwriters , musicians, or sound and stage technicians.