Aurelia Butler

While other N.F.L. owners sail on their yachts far from prying eyes, Jim Irsay roams the country showing his museum-quality memorabilia and jamming with rock legends.Jim Irsay is not your typical team owner, especially in the buttoned-up National Football League.Last month, Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, replaced his head coach with a former player whose only coaching experience was leading a high school team. A few weeks earlier, Irsay called for a scandal-plagued owner to be removed despite his own very public troubles. And he continues to use his Twitter account to mourn the loss of beloved rock stars and football players and post videos of himself singing classic Bob Dylan songs in his raspy smoker’s voice.Irsay’s hobby also speaks to his singularity. While other owners splurge on art work, beachfront property and European soccer teams, Irsay has spent $100 million building a collection of music, sports and other pop culture memorabilia. He paid $4.9 million for the guitar Kurt Cobain used in the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” He acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. And this past summer, he paid $6.5 million for one of Muhammad Ali’s championship belts.Rather than stuff these items in a mansion or museum, Irsay, 63, shows them off during free, one-night-only events around the country, accompanied by an all-star rock band. Since September 2021, his collection has traveled to seven cities including Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles and Indianapolis. This Saturday, a sampling of his 1,000-plus-piece collection will make its way to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, where some of the items will lean into the city’s role in rock history and the blues legend Buddy Guy will be joined onstage by Ann Wilson, John Fogerty and Stephen Stills.“For me, I’d rather do this than be floating around on a $200 million yacht,” Irsay said before one of his shows this summer in Chicago. “If I float on that, I’m going to say, ‘I’m bored. Why am I here? Like, what am I doing here?’”Irsay has a particular love for the guitars of iconic musicians, including the one Kurt Cobain used in Nirvana’s music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s passion project is an unusually personal form of philanthropy and even therapy. The artifacts speak not just to his love of music, sports and history but also to the turbulence in his life, including the loss of his sister, who died in a car accident, and the alcoholism of both his father and grandfather. Irsay, too, has had battles with substance abuse. He was also suspended for six games by the N.F.L. in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence of painkillers.Irsay’s willingness to embrace his foibles make him something of an oddity in one of the country’s most exclusive clubs. He talks openly about his struggles with addiction and started a charity that raises awareness of mental health disorders. After getting injured playing football in college, he took up competitive power lifting, once squatting 725 pounds. Then he lost 55 pounds and started running marathons. Irsay still hits the gym despite having undergone 20 surgeries.Plenty of sports team owners are philanthropic, and some even live out their rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. For example, Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks who died in 2018, built a museum in Seattle to house his guitar collection, and James L. Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, performs as the frontman with his blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot. But unlike those famously private owners, Irsay has been uniquely unguarded about his life and his collecting.“Jim is sui generis, a one-off with no duplicate,” said Douglas Brinkley, who teaches history at Rice University and advises Irsay on his purchases. “He marches to the beat of his own drum and honors his own passions and believes there’s an audience for it.”Items in the collection include, clockwise from top left, a cape worn by James Brown, the original, hand-written script for “Rocky,” Hunter S. Thompson’s “Red Shark” convertible, and one of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight championship belts.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay first got hooked on baseball cards, though with less than altruistic motives. Growing up on the north shore of Chicago, he rode his bicycle to the local drugstore on Monday mornings and bought entire boxes of baseball cards before other boys could get there. He funded the purchases by selling bubble gum at a markup at school.“I guess I was an illegitimate dealer in grade school,” he joked.Irsay said he wanted to begin collecting after college, but his father, Robert, who used the fortune he made in the air conditioning business to buy the Colts, paid him a $100,000 salary. With a mortgage and three children, there was not much left to bid on prized objects, he said.But 25 years ago, when Irsay inherited the team, he also gained the wherewithal to bid for top shelf items. His first big foray into collecting came in 2001 when he paid $2.4 million for the 120-foot-long scroll that contained the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road.” It was the only time Irsay showed up, paddle in hand, to bid for an item.“I’ve always been mostly attracted to great writers,” he said. “The scroll became a writer’s Holy Grail.”Collecting at this level is unpredictable, but Irsay seems to revel in the chase. He consults with Brinkley and other experts as well as with his curator, Larry Hall, whom Irsay texts and calls at all hours to talk about items he covets. He will relay his bids by phone, which he did from Hawaii when Cobain’s guitar was auctioned. He gave Hall a top bid of $2.2 million, then dropped out after it passed $2.4 million. But on a hunch, he raised his top bid to $3.6 million and went to bed. When he awoke, he discovered he got the guitar for almost precisely his maximum. (With fees and taxes, the total price hit $4.9 million.)Irsay acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s interests range across American and film history as well. The oldest item in his collection is a lottery ticket from 1765, sold to raise money for Faneuil Hall in Boston, that was signed by John Hancock. He spent nearly $600,000 on the rocking chair John F. Kennedy used in the White House, and another $550,000 for one of Abraham Lincoln’s pocket knifes. Sylvester Stallone’s original, handwritten script for the movie, “Rocky,” cost Irsay $500,000.Irsay has never sold pieces in his collection, despite the explosion of the memorabilia market in recent years. And though he has toyed with the idea of building a museum for his acquisitions, for now he is committed to taking them on tour.“He gets so attached to the items because he knows the joy they bring when he shows them,” said Hall, who verifies the quality of the items that Irsay brings to him. “That’s why he never charges a penny to share his collection.”Irsay said the rush of acquiring these items and planning to show them can mirror the adrenaline rush of how football teams get ready on game days. Sometimes, he said, his football brain might take over at his events.“I admit it’s a little bit of a different hat,” Irsay said. “When it comes to professional football, the intensity above the goals of winning and all those sorts of things, sometimes that comes out in organizing this thing. So all of a sudden you find yourself talking like the general manager or head coach, and people onstage are like, what?”Irsay was the center of attention in Chicago, where he showed off his collection at the AON Grand Ballroom in early August. Friends and fans stopped him so often that he was late to his own news conference to kick off the event. Standing between Muhammad Ali’s title belt and the founding document of Alcoholics Anonymous, known to adherents as the “Big Book,” Irsay introduced Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns star and Hollywood actor whom Irsay flew in from California.“It’s an eclectic collection, but really it’s about spirituality, it’s about human beings being as great as they can, and changing the world with love and strength,” Irsay said.“I want the best of the best,” Irsay added when describing why he bought Neil Armstrong’s items from the Apollo 11 mission. “Nothing against Buzz Aldrin,” referring to the second man to walk on the moon.At the concert in Chicago this past August, Buddy Guy was one of the main attractions.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesThen Irsay marched back to the green room where he nursed a bottle of Hawaiian Punch and waved off minders trying to keep him on schedule. Buddy Guy walked in and Irsay was distracted all over again, peppering him with questions about Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and other blues greats.The two-hour concert began around 8:30 p.m. with Irsay sitting onstage and singing Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” After Irsay left, the band, led by Mike Mills of R.E.M., ripped through blues and rock classics. Guy — a hometown favorite — came on to a big ovation, as did Ann Wilson from Heart.At times, the concert and the collection blurred. Midway through the show, Irsay came back onstage with Edgerrin James, the former Colts running back who threw a dozen signed footballs into the crowd. Fans wandered between the stage and the back of the venue to look at the artifacts, including the guitar Dylan used when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Hunter S. Thompson’s Chevrolet Caprice convertible (known as the “Red Shark”), or the hat that Harry S. Truman wore at his inauguration.Irsay returned to sing the last three songs — “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” by Neil Young and “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones — before the lights popped on. Several Colts cheerleaders in white outfits and blue pompoms ushered the crowd out. For another night, Irsay had turned the threads of his life into a shared spectacle, one that helps him keep the demons at bay.“Many a man has tried to manage the opiates, you know, for millenniums, whether it’s Jerry Garcia or Tom Petty or Prince or Elvis,” Irsay said. “The pursuit can get really bungled and mismanaged. So, it’s really a thrill in life as we get older to try to have more experience and know what’s always the light and not the dark, because sometimes the shadows can fool you.” More

In an emotional Instagram video, the pop superstar explained she had stiff person syndrome and is postponing shows to rebuild her strength “and ability to perform again.”In an emotional Instagram video on Thursday, the Canadian pop superstar Celine Dion announced that a severe neurological disorder had forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.In the five-minute-plus video, Dion said she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare autoimmune and neurological disease that is the cause of the spasms she said she had been suffering.“Unfortunately, these spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I am used to,” she said.“It hurts me to tell you today,” she continued, as her voice cracked, “this means I won’t be ready to restart my tour in Europe in February.” She said she was working with doctors and therapists to rebuild her strength “and ability to perform again.”Dion, a theatrical and powerful singer best known for her octave-busting renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On,” had earlier postponed her most recent Las Vegas residency and European tour while canceling North American tour dates because of health issues. Thursday’s announcement will push her spring 2023 shows to the following year while canceling eight of her summer 2023 performances.“All I know is singing,” she said. “It’s what I’ve done all my life, and it’s what I love to do the most. I miss you so much, I miss seeing all of you, being on the stage, performing for you. I always give 100 percent when I do my shows, but my condition is not allowing me to give you that right now.”“I love you guys so much, and I really hope I can see you again real soon,” she added. More

His background was in country music. But Stax, the label he founded with his sister, achieved a level of success with Black artists that rivaled Motown’s.Jim Stewart, who with his sister founded Stax Records, home to R&B luminaries like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave — and, after Motown, the best-selling soul music label of the 1960s and ’70s — died on Monday in Memphis. He was 92.His death, at a hospital after a brief illness, was confirmed by Tim Sampson, communications director for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis.A former banker, Mr. Stewart first ventured into the music business in 1957, when he and his sister Estelle Axton established Satellite Records in a relative’s garage. Intending to release recordings of country and rockabilly music, Mr. Stewart and his sister, who died in 2004, never suspected that three years later their label would be producing some of the most enduring Black popular music of the era.“I had scarcely seen a Black person till I was grown,” Mr. Stewart, who grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on a farm in rural West Tennessee, was quoted as saying in Peter Guralnick’s “Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom” (1986).“When I started, I didn’t know there was such a thing as Atlantic Records; I didn’t know there was a Chess Records or Imperial,” he continued, referring to record companies that promoted Black vernacular music. “I had no dream of anything like that.”His remote upbringing notwithstanding, Stax placed more than 100 singles on the pop chart during Mr. Stewart’s tenure at the label, among them Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood” and Isaac Hayes’s theme from the movie “Shaft.” The influence of its catalog on generations of performers has proved wide and deep, extending to Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones as well as to the many hip-hop and R&B artists who have sampled Stax recordings.In a 2013 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Stewart attributed his decision to start recording Black music to a single epiphany: hearing Ray Charles sing “What’d I Say.”“I was converted immediately,” he said. “I had never heard anything like that before. It allowed me to expand from country to R&B, into jazz, into gospel, wrapped all in one. That’s what Stax is.”Mr. Stewart was the audio engineer, and often the credited producer, on many records made at Stax, including Mr. Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour.”The label began to make its mark in 1960, shortly after Mr. Stewart and his sister moved their operations to the former Capitol Theater at 926 McLemore Avenue in South Memphis. One day the popular singer and local disc jockey Rufus Thomas walked into the record shop that Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton operated at the front of the building and announced that he wanted to record a duet with his daughter Carla.The record in question, “’Cause I Love You,” was only a regional hit, but “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes),” a dreamy ballad released the same year, reached both the R&B and pop Top 10 for Ms. Thomas in 1961. The same was true of 1961’s “Last Night,” a slinky saxophone-driven instrumental by the Mar-Keys, the R&B combo that evolved into Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Stax’s storied house band.Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton in an undated photo. Mr. Stewart’s decision to start a record company would not have been possible had Ms. Axton not taken out a second mortgage on her home to buy him recording equipment.Charlie Gillett Collection/RedfernsThe success of “Gee Whiz” and “Last Night” changed the artistic and commercial direction of Satellite Records. It also acquired a new name, combining the first two letters of the owners’ last names to form the portmanteau Stax, after Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton learned that another label owned the rights to Satellite.In 1962, “Green Onions,” by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, further cemented the label’s credibility on the emergent soul music scene, climbing to the pop Top 10 (and No. 1 on the R&B chart). A gutbucket instrumental, “Green Onions” served as a prototype for the groove-steeped, blues- and gospel-bred music that became synonymous with Stax — a sound as lean and funky as Motown’s was lush and refined.Just as inspiring as the music made at Stax was the social climate Mr. Stewart cultivated there. Known for its laid-back and inclusive vibe, the label was guided by a spirit of good will — almost all the recording artists were Black, the house musicians both Black and white — that bore witness to possibilities for racial harmony at a time when segregation prohibited Black and white people from sharing public spaces.“There was so much talent here, under circumstances that were almost considered impossible in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1960, with the racial situation here,” Mr. Stewart told The Associated Press in 2013, reflecting on the spirit of camaraderie that he helped foster at Stax. “It was a sanctuary for all of us.”James Frank Stewart was born in Middleton, Tenn., on July 29, 1930, one of three children of Dexter and Olivia (Cole) Stewart. His parents were farmers, and his father supplemented the family income with work as a bricklayer.Young Jim grew up playing gospel music at home on the fiddle with his father, uncle and two sisters. After graduating from high school, he moved to Memphis, where he worked at a local bank for several years before being drafted into the Army.In 1953, after completing two years of service, he returned to Memphis and resumed working as a bank clerk while playing fiddle in local country dance bands. He earned a degree in business from the University of Memphis.Mr. Stewart’s decision to launch Satellite Records in 1957 would not have been possible had his sister not taken out a second mortgage on her home to buy him recording equipment.A distribution deal with Atlantic Records further opened doors for Mr. Stewart’s fledgling label, especially after the success of “Gee Whiz” and “Last Night.” A few years later, Mr. Stewart hired the songwriting and production team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, enabling Stax to expand its capacity to develop artists and repertoire and, ultimately, its roster.The arrival of Al Bell as national sales director in 1965 further strengthened the label’s capacity, lending it the promotional muscle needed to market its artists beyond Memphis and the South. But tragedy eclipsed this flush of prosperity when Mr. Redding and four members of his band, the Bar-Kays, died in a plane crash in 1967.Mr. Stewart in 1969 with Al Bell, left, who joined Stax as national sales director in 1965, and Isaac Hayes, who was a songwriter and producer at Stax in partnership with David Porter and also had hit records as a performer. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesAround the same time, Stax dissolved its distribution deal with Atlantic, a settlement that, because of a contractual loophole, cost the label the rights to virtually its entire catalog.The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in April 1968 cast even more of a pall over conditions at Stax, threatening the racial amity that had prevailed up to that point. Later that year Mr. Stewart, Ms. Axton and Mr. Bell, by then also an owner, sold Stax to Gulf & Western in exchange for stock in the company.Ms. Axton sold her stock in the label to Mr. Bell in 1970, and Mr. Stewart eventually followed suit.In 1975, following a revival of good fortune under Mr. Bell’s leadership, including the signing of the Staple Singers and others, creditors forced Stax into bankruptcy, leaving behind a legacy of some 800 singles and 300 albums.Stax’s foreclosure was a hardship for Mr. Stewart, who had invested much of his personal wealth trying to satisfy the creditors. He resurfaced in the early 1980s, occasionally supervising projects for former Stax artists, but soon retired from the business except for occasional appearances at the Stax Museum and Stax Music Academy. The label has since changed hands a few times.In 2002, after decades out of the public eye, Mr. Stewart was elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the nonperformer category for his contributions to the creation and evolution of Southern soul music.Album covers on display at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis.Adrian Sainz/Associated PressHe is survived by his son, Jeff; two daughters, Lori Stewart and Shannon Stewart; and two grandchildren. Evelyn (White) Stewart, his wife of more than 50 years, died in 2020. Another sister, Mary Louise McAlpin, died in 2017.“Mr. Stewart was the unpretentious soft-spoken diminutive white guy with a Brylcreem-lathered hair part and fat-rim glasses that I met in 1962,” Deanie Parker, Stax’s longtime publicist, told The Memphis Commercial Appeal after Mr. Stewart’s death.“He gave us opportunities denied to most Blacks in America and we gifted him with an indelible Memphis Sound that, together, we created at Stax Records.” More

In addition to Smith’s “The Wife of Willesden,” the Academy will present its annual DanceAfrica festival and a music series curated by Solange Knowles.The Brooklyn Academy of Music gave a fuller picture of its spring season on Thursday, announcing the New York debut of the novelist Zadie Smith’s first play, “The Wife of Willesden,” and performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. A revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s drama “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” and a spring music series by the pop star Solange Knowles were announced earlier this fall.Smith’s “The Wife of Willesden,” adapted from the Wife of Bath’s tale from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” will arrive at BAM in April, after runs at the Kiln Theater in London, where it is currently onstage through Jan. 28, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where it will receive its U.S. premiere in February. The play, set in an 18th-century London pub, centers on the Jamaican-born Alvita (Clare Perkins), who recounts a bawdy history of her five marriages to a group of strangers. Directed by Indhu Rubasingham, “The Wife of Willesden” celebrates the joys of storytelling, especially when you add alcohol, said David Binder, the Academy’s artistic director.“If you don’t know Chaucer, or if you have no reference of Chaucer, you would enjoy it just as much,” Binder said. “It’s hilarious. It’s joyful. It’s exuberant.”In February, a rare production of Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” will begin performances. The play, about two bohemian artists struggling to save their marriage, debuted on Broadway in 1964. The revival, starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan, will be directed by Anne Kauffman, who also directed it in 2016 at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.In March, Knowles, whose first ballet score was included in New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala in September, will curate a spring music series with her creative arts company Saint Heron. It will include a selection of films and live performances.The Academy will also present its yearly showcase of hip-hop and spoken word with “Word. Sound. Power.” in April, the 46th annual African dance festival DanceAfrica in May and a week of performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in June.The season will also mark the return of the popular BAMkids Film Festival, from Feb. 4-12, and, for the first time in six years, Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, from March 3-19. The company will present the U.S. premiere of Bausch’s “Água,” a piece incorporating the sounds, movements and music she encountered during a residency in Brazil in 2001. More