Week 24 – MUSIC -Big Names Small Places
In the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s the best music was made in the juke joints and nightclubs that catered only to African Americans. Brunswick was a well- known stop on the “Chitlin Circuit,” a nickname for the string of venues in the 1920-1970s where African American musicians and entertainers could perform.
The Chitlin Circuit provided musicians of color with safe lodgings and food and on the job training for young players who showed promise. These venues were also the explosive incubator of some of the greatest blues and soul music ever played.
“Traveling Down the Chitlin’ Circuit” May 9, 2022, Floridahumanities.org
Young musicians like Louis Armstrong, BB King, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, and Chubby Checker cut their teeth and polished their skills in small venues catering to black audiences. Some played here, too. The Dolphin Club on Jekyll Island brought in Wilson Pickett, Joe Simons, Jerry Butler, and Otis Redding. At Selden Park, Genoa Martin booked popular acts like Sam Cooke, Percy Sledge, James Brown, Duke Ellington, and Lena Horne. One week these performers might play Carnegie Hall or The Apollo; the next week, en route to another gig, they would trade a meal and a place to sleep in an African American neighborhood and sit in at the local juke joint. Smokey Robinson told Billboard magazine, “We couldn’t even stay in the hotels in the South. We had to go to the Black side of town to stay in rooming houses …” In the same article Stax singer William Bell said “we usually found some Black family that had an extra room that would put us up.”
(Rascism on the Road: The Oral History Black Artists Touring in th4e Segregated South” by Steve Knopper, 11/10/2020, billboard.com)
Often a local musician such as Chic Morrison who toured with big bands brought the bands here. Buddy Johnson, an American jump blues pianist and bandleader active from the 1930s through the 1960s, described it this way in an interview with Down Beat magazine, “Personally I like classics… , but our bread and butter is in the south. The music I play has a southern tinge to it. They understand it down there.” (Wikipedia).
On St. Simons Island the clubs located on the South End and at Harrington were not large venues for big entertainers. They were small neighborhood clubs in buildings “only about half the size of the schoolhouse,” said SSAAHC member Emory Rooks. Many had a juke box loaded with the latest hits (you had to pay 10 cents per play). “The clubs were a way of living….a place to relax and gather after a hard week of work,” described Rooks.
The Dew Drop Inn was on South Harrington Road and the Tacadero was on North Harrington Road. Alphonso’s Plantation Supper Club started as a nightclub before opening as a restaurant. Henry Morrison’s Camp was located on the marsh between North and South Harrington with a view over the marsh towards Sea Island, “Morrisons was the coolest place on the hottest day,” recalled Rooks. On the South End near the pier were clubs called Atlantic Inn, The Pig, The Pavilion, The Blue Inn, The Melody Lounge, and LeQuart. Amy Roberts and Chip Wilson remember that part of their fun growing up was to sneak down to the club on the river “because kids weren’t allowed to go down there. But after dark we’d take a path which went right almost through almost on the other side of the school here and we would sit down there just to see who gets the drunkest … cause we would love to see them staggering around.”
When asked what the church people thought about the clubs? Rooks replied matter-a-factly: “Folks went to the clubs on Friday and to the clubs on Saturday, and to church on Sunday. Anyone who had restrictions, kept to themselves.”