About Ade
* Age: 30* Job: Music marketing director for the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitor’s Bureau* Career: A Chattanooga native, she went to Auburn University and worked in New York City at Cause & Effect Productions and Spin Magazine before returning to Chattanooga for her current job last summer.
Nashville is known as the capitol of country music. Memphis, home to Elvis Presley, has been called everything from the birthplace of rock ‘n roll to the home of the blues. So how can Chattanooga compete with these two cross-state Tennessee music meccas and draw tourists to check out the Scenic City’s music scene?
Mary Howard Ade has a few ideas.
“We are trying to raise awareness in the region and beyond that Chattanooga is a music destination,” says Ade, who was hired last summer as the first-ever music marketing director for the Chattanooga Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
Ade, 30, is a Chattanooga native who chose to leave New York City, where her career included working as a business manager for Spin magazine, and come home.
Chattanooga has an approachable music scene, Ade said, and it’s not locked into any one genre. She has put together playlists of local music that range from blues to bluegrass and rap to hip hop that she plans to share on social media.
Ade says she also plans to let people know about Chattanooga’s music history.
“Highlighting the history here is definitely part of it,” she says.
Glenn Miller’s 1941 recording of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was the first certified gold record, she said. Chattanooga also was home to blues singer Bessie Smith, who recently was portrayed by Queen Latifah in an HBO television film.
“She’s huge, she’s the empress of the blues,” Ade says.
Supporting street musicians, or buskers, Ade said, is another way the tourism bureau can help make music part of Chattanooga’s fabric. She has other ideas to use music tourists to lure tourists, here. One is to have indoors concerts go for multiple days at multiple locations.
Music – along with water and trains is just something that people love, says Bob Doak, the president o the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“You’re always looking for new ways to get people here,” Doak adds.