Pinnacle Peak People: Halftime Shows Start in Scottsdale

Charlie Johnson with Comedian Jay Leno

Charlie Johnson with Comedian Jay Leno

By Robert G. Rogers

Impresario is a fancy word for the guy behind the curtain, the one who pulls the ropes, and makes the show go on.

More accurately, it’s the person who organizes, manages, promotes, and underwrites entertainment acts and entertainers of all sorts. There’s no shortage of these showbiz types along Sunset Boulevard or high above Broadway.

But one of the biggest is a Pinnacle Peak resident, and he goes places one wouldn’t expect to find such show people.

While not behind curtains, Charles T. (“Charlie”) Johnston can be found in mammoth sports stadiums – on the sidelines of baseball diamonds, football gridirons, basketball courts, hockey rinks, soccer fields, even NASCAR tracks. He knows well the ingress and egress quirks at just about all of the nation’s 150 major stadiums with seating capacities from 45,000 to over 100,000.

Each year, the company Charlie heads and founded in 1968, Scottsdale-based Select Artists Associates, produces more than 40 pregame, halftime, and postgame entertainment extravaganzas.

While these shows aren’t the main events where they’re staged – the athletic contests are – they’re the glue that attracts and keeps sports fans in their seats when they would otherwise up and leave stadiums to spend time and money elsewhere. Not infrequently, the concerts Charlie produces are what bring music fans to big league games they wouldn’t otherwise attend.

Distinguished and recognized as a pioneer in the management and production of stadium sports-oriented special entertainment events, Charlie enjoys close personal relationships with marketing executives of major sporting leagues, teams, events, and stadiums.

Charlie Johnston with Rapper PITBULL at 2013 MBA All Star Game

Charlie Johnston with Rapper PITBULL at 2013 MBA All Star Game

That’s partly because of his long and successful track record of producing sports-related entertainment shows. It also stems from his dual role as the exclusive booking manager for Chase Field. In addition to being the home venue for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chase Field has been the venue for football bowl games, Don King-promoted championship boxing matches, Monster Jam truck races, concerts, Presidential political rallies, and numerous corporate events.

Says Charlie: “We book ‘em and run ‘em.”

One of Charlie’s competitive advantages in the world of sport-related stadium entertainment, in addition to his experience and reputation for professionalism, is his firm’s patented roll-on, field-friendly staging system that is brought onto sports fields and set up within as little as 90 seconds after play has concluded, thereby assuring the start of entertainment music within five minutes of the conclusion of play.

Select Artists Associates owns four of these 16-foot by 32-foot stages. They are warehoused in the Scottsdale Airpark and Pittsburgh, to facilitate quick and efficient delivery to stadiums in all parts of the country. They are carried on 53-foot long trailers and operated by 12-man crews.

There are few MLB and NFL stadiums where Charlie has not left his footprint. He has put on 20 NFL Super Bowl pre-game shows, events at the last 15 MLB All-Star Games, others at post-season football bowl games, as well as countless others at regularly scheduled sporting events.

Charlie Johnston, Founder and Head of Select Artists Associates, with Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band at a Mets game in August, 2015.

Charlie Johnston, Founder and Head of Select Artists Associates, with Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band at a Mets game in August, 2015.

Not surprisingly, Charlie spends a lot of time on airplanes. On the Saturday evening before he sat for an interview for this story, he and his associates were putting on shows at Citi Field in New York City and Miller Park in Milwaukee. Producing two shows at the same time is a challenge, Charlie says, but goes with the territory of the business he’s in.

Born in Durango, Colorado, Charlie moved to Scottsdale as a child and graduated from Camelback High School. From there he proceeded on a music scholarship to Arizona State University where he majored in music and business. An accomplished player of the trumpet, bass guitar, and keyboards, he and fellow ASU students were first-place winners of the National Collegiate Jazz Festival.

When he graduated from ASU Charlie was an aspiring musician who, as he puts it, quickly realized this wasn’t going to be his vocation. So, he put his business education to work and started managing individual musical groups. That involved a lot of “babysitting,” he says, and neither he nor his firm is still involved in managing individual acts. Charlie estimates that there are over a hundred major classic rock, country, and urban hip-hop musical acts in the country that perform an average of 50 days each year. He works with the managers of almost all of these acts.

When Charlie is not busy putting on acts throughout the country, arranging for performances at Chase Field, he is, in addition to being involved in various charitable and voluntary activities, president of the Pinnacle Peak Country Club Estates Association. The 240-home community that runs along and abuts the Pinnacle Peak Country Club golf course was the first planned residential community in the Pinnacle Peak area. Charlie is proud of its history and committed to maintaining its unique architecture and layout. Says Charlie: “We’re trying to keep our community the gem that it has been since 1976.”

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Author: Les Conklin

Les Conklin is a resident of north Scottsdale He founded Friends of the Scenic Drive, the Monte de Paz HOA and is the president of the Greater Pinnacle Peak Association. He was named to Scottsdale's History Maker Hall of Fame in 2014. Les is a past editor of A Peek at the Peak and the author of Images of America: Pinnacle Peak. He served on the Scottsdale's Pride Commission, McDowell Sonoran Preserve Commission, the boards of several local nonprofits and was a founding organizer of the city's Adopt-A-Road Program.. Les is a volunteer guide at the Musical Instrument Museum.

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