Harlem of the West

[ghost of miles]

Re-posted from the Yahoo Songbirds list. Something I thought our Bay Area posters might be interested in:

Fillmore District's Jazzed-Up Glory Days

by Delfin Vigil

San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 2006

In the early 1970s, San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood got a nickname: the

Fill-No-More.

Thanks to a far-reaching San Francisco Redevelopment Agency plan that gutted

about 200 black-owned businesses, the part of town once world-renowned for

booming black jazz clubs in the backs of Victorian homes -- where the smell of

barbecued meat filled the air, enticing folks who worked good jobs at the

shipyards and had money to spend -- was no more.

Around the same time, San Francisco native Elizabeth Pepin found herself

becoming fascinated with the Fillmore.

"I'd drive through the neighborhood with my parents when I was a kid and I

always wondered why block after block there were huge lots with nothing in them.

I always wondered what was there," says Pepin, who will share what she found in

an exhibition called "Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era."

The exhibition, whose subject was touched on in a documentary film for KQED and

in a book published earlier this month, is a collection of photographs of some

of the greatest jazz players taken by some of the greatest black photographers

in the Fillmore's history. The complete exhibition runs Feb. 8 through June 10

at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum. The Feb. 7 opening

reception will feature live music from some of the few players remaining from

the old Fillmore's jazz heyday.

Filmmaker Pepin and the show's photographer Lewis Watts met while they were both

trying to recapture the images and memories of the Fillmore jazz clubs.

"I was walking down Fillmore Street one day in the late '80s and stepped into an

old shoeshine parlor where I was told I could find some old photographs from

that era," says Watts, 59, who caught a glimpse of the jazz days when he moved

to San Francisco in 1964. "And there was the owner, old Red Powell. He had

pictures of everybody. But he wasn't having it. He threw me out."

About a month later, when Watts returned to the parlor to try again, old Red was

gone and so were the photographs.

"The walls were bare," Watts says. "I didn't understand what happened. I asked

around and I looked for the pictures for five years."

Turns out, Powell had suffered a stroke a few days after Watts showed up, which

might have explained his bad mood, Watts believes. Once Powell was out of his

apartment, the landlord got rid of all the pictures.

Eventually Watts got a tip that Reggie Pettus of the New Chicago Barber Shop in

the Fillmore might know what happened to the pictures.

"I walked in and he said, 'Oh yeah, I've got those pictures in my back room,'"

Watts says. "He had negotiated a deal with the landlord to save the pictures

from being thrown in the Dumpster."

The classic shots, some torn, creased and faded, are among the only artifacts

left from clubs like Bop City on Post Street, the Blue Mirror on Fillmore and

Jack's Tavern on Sutter Street.

"These were the only places black people in the neighborhood could see Ella

Fitzgerald or Duke Ellington because the venues downtown were for whites only,"

Pepin says.

The pictures represent some of the rarest work from such talented photographers

as Steve Jackson Jr., the official photographer of Bop City, and David Johnson,

the first black photographer to study under Ansel Adams.

"People like Steve Jackson Jr. and David Johnson -- some of the most talented

photographers of their generation -- nearly disappeared into history," Pepin

says. "Now they can finally get some recognition."

During her interviews for the book, Pepin would talk with neighbors who would

break down and cry, remembering what the Fillmore used to be. She met Powell,

too, a few years before Watts did. She remembers him being sad and angry.

"A lot of the people from the old days blame the Redevelopment Agency, which

tore down these beautiful old Victorian buildings and put in really, really ugly

replacements in the '60s," says Pepin, who believes there is also another reason

for the demise of the great Fillmore jazz clubs.

"Jazz, blues and R&B," she says. "It's just not the predominant music anymore."

_____

"Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era": Feb. 8-June 10 at the

San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, fourth floor, Veterans

Building, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Museum admission is free; tickets to

the opening celebration and concert on Feb. 7 are $25-$500. (415) 255-4800,

http://www.sfpalm.org/

[BruceH]

Thanks ghost. Interesting, and sad. The Redevelopment Agency has a lot to answer for.