Editor's Note

The HMEB Players

Let's recognize the most talented, skilled, hardworking team in the magazine business.

• By David Kopf
• Feb 01, 2017

Anybody who knows me personally knows that I’m nuts about soul music. I don’t know what it is, but the glory days of Stax, Motown and Atlantic (as well as the lesser known labels) produced music that absolutely moves me.

Mind you, this is not the music of my high school or college cohort. I’m your classic GenXer, and the hot music of my youth was new wave, punk, synth-pop and all sorts of music that was just about as far removed from soul as you can imagine. But play a YouTube snippet of Otis Redding playing in England with Booker T & The MGs backing him and I will immediately be sucked in.

My fondness for soul started back when I was in high school. I heard some Rufus Thomas and Sam and Dave, and I was instantly intrigued enough to head to the record store. I still remember the car stereo blasting a newly acquired cassette of “James Brown’s Greatest Hits” on the way home.

From then on it’s been a life-long love affair. So much so that even as a dorky middle-aged guy on the cusp of 50, I dragged my family to the Stax Museum in Memphis this summer to take in all it had to offer. Sure, Elvis Presley’s Graceland was cool, but did it have Albert King’s flying-V guitar, or Isaac Hayes’ gold-plated Cadillac?

One of my absolute favorite things about soul acts is when the front man or woman would take a moment to recognize or interact with the band and its members. James Brown calling out to his horns to hit him one more time, or Archie Bell enlisting each of the Drells to contribute to the “Tighten up?” Boom. I’m hooked. I think it’s because all those artists work together as a team to make a unified sound. Sure, each artist has a moment to shine, but they are all working on something that is bigger than themselves.

And maybe that’s why I picked writing and editing for periodicals as my career. I like being on a team. I like working with a group of people to produce a publication that other people enjoy or find useful. A magazine is more of than the words on the pages. There is a whole lot of work by a whole lot of people that go into making it. From the sources we interview to the staff doing final page checks before we go to press, it’s a team sport.

Bearing that in mind, permit me to introduce the HME Business band:

On the editorial team, besides myself, we have Sydny Shepard who is handing our products coverage. She works in our Dallas office, here she puts together our Product Solutions and Inventory departments, as well as Medtrade product roundups.

Joseph Duffy is a name you probably recognize. Since 2008, Joe has been a primary freelance contributor to HMEB. In addition to writing feature and department stories, Joe is often the person who puts together our special supplements and publications, such as DME Pharmacy.

Newest to the team is Leila Meyer. Leila is a longtime freelancer for some sister publications on 1105 Media’s Education publications, and now she’s started to branch out into covering the HME industry. You’ll see her in our online news coverage on HME-business.com and in the print magazine’s News, Trends & Analysis section (page 8) at first, but I’m guessing it won’t be too much longer before she starts tackling larger assignments.

Putting the pages together, we have freelance designer Wendy Byle, who’s been working with us over the last couple of issues. Take one look at 2017’s eye-grabbing covers and feature stories so far and you can see she’s helping us shine.

When it comes to HME-business.com, Marlin Mowatt, who heads up our online site production, is a pivotal player in ensuring that the site runs properly and that we are adding new features for readers. Moreover, she handles all the logistics of our webinars; doing all the heavy lifting of setting up the presentations in our webinar system and keeping everyone on-schedule.

Lastly, helping keep the whole show together is Chuck Johnson, our production coordinator. Not only does he help make sure that every element of every issue goes exactly where it should, but he’s also a wildly talented jazz musician.

So that’s the HME Business team. I hope you enjoy this hard-working group of performers as much as I do.

This article originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of HME Business.