The Great Black Way

[ghost of miles]

I'll definitely be picking this one up--in conjuction with Isoardi's book about Horace Tapscott and the later jazz community in L.A., should make for a pretty good compendium of Los Angeles jazz/cultural history:

Life on the Avenue

"The Great Black Way: L.A.'s Central Avenue in the 1940s and the Lost Negro

Renaissance." By RJ Smith. PublicAffairs: 400 pp., $26.95.

"Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th Anniversary Edition." By Billie Holiday with

William Dufty. Harlem Moon: 256 pp., $15.95.

by Cecil Brown

Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2006

Come, let's stroll. Let us stroll to a different time and place -- Los Angeles'

Central Avenue during its heyday in the 1940s.

Our guide is a flâneur, one RJ Smith, an urban stroller, a white man who has a

deep affinity for African Americans and their culture. Few know this avenue as

well as Smith, and he is so passionate that when he writes about it he has the

musicality of a jazz man.

In his new book, "The Great Black Way," Smith adopts the French flâneur guise to

introduce us to Los Angeles' historic African American boulevard as he imagines

it existed then. Step off the train at Union Station, he implores, and walk a

few blocks south to 1st Street, where the journey begins. "Central Avenue was

like a river, like the Amazon or the Nile," he says (quoting musician Clifford

Solomon), "and downtown was the mouth."

Our guide takes us down Central Avenue to Watts and finally to Carson. We learn

about the Elks Hotel at 34th Street and about Club Alabam. Next to it was the

famed Dunbar Hotel, where boxing champ Joe Louis, pianist Billy Strayhorn and

chanteuse Billie Holiday stayed.

In a rich aside, he reminds us that in the 1940s segregation was the law of the

land. In Los Angeles, where W.E.B. DuBois famously said things were better for

African Americans than in other cities, even pet cemeteries were segregated.

Blacks had begun migrating to Los Angeles during the early 1900s, and many of

them were Pullman porters or other railroad workers. They congregated in the

neighborhoods along Central Avenue, which was flourishing as a center for

African American music and entertainment by the 1920s.

By the time the U.S. entered World War II, Smith writes, "Black status had fully

emerged before the eyes of white Los Angeles, and with it came open

discrimination." City council districts were drawn to divide black political

power, black students were segregated, and the LAPD declared that no white cop

should take orders from a black person. The police "brutally established order

up and down the street, invading homes, shooting suspects in the back."

Restaurants put up "No Negroes" signs. Blacks could not use public swimming

pools, bowling alleys, boxing rings, ice rinks and ballrooms.

Segregation was bitter, but it produced some beautiful and powerful results in

L.A.

As Smith strolls along Central Avenue, he introduces us to the people who would

become power brokers. We meet John Kinloch, editor of the California Eagle,

wearing a green zoot suit. Born and raised in Harlem, Kinloch came out of the

Harlem Renaissance, an artistic flowering that was supported by upper-class

blacks but never reached the average black man and woman. For Kinloch, Los

Angeles represented a new start for blacks struggling to free themselves from

second-class citizenship. Kinloch turned his aunt's newspaper into a mouthpiece

for black empowerment. He reached out to other like-minded people, such as the

Rev. Clayton D. Russell, pastor of the People's Independent Church of Christ.

Together, they used pulpit, press and radio to rally blacks to political power.

We meet Eddie Anderson -- "Rochester" on Jack Benny's radio program. Born in

Oakland to a vaudeville family, he became the symbolic mayor of Central Avenue.

The community scrutinized the show so closely, Smith writes, that when

Anderson's Rochester called Benny "Boss," not "Sir," it was viewed "as a step

forward -- one man speaking directly to another."

Smith writes with insight about another Central Avenue figure, Dewey "Pigmeat"

Markham, the last of the blackface comics. For Markham, blackface was a symbol

of comic art, a mask that let him "distance" himself from the character he was

playing. As a member of the new generation, Kinloch begged Markham not to wear

blackface when he performed at the Lincoln Theater, the avenue's biggest venue.

Markham complied -- and this effectively ended his career.

In 1941, Duke Ellington produced the musical "Jump for Joy" in Los Angeles, a

production that featured the song "Take the 'A' Train." Then the Japanese bombed

Pearl Harbor. Everything changed on Central Avenue.

Blacks responded by demanding jobs and the right to fight for their country. To

commemorate their efforts, they came up with the "Double V," a sign of victory

against fascism abroad and against racism at home.

Chester Himes, a black writer not embraced by the Harlem Renaissance movement,

arrived in L.A. in 1941 to work in the defense plants and left disillusioned in

1945. It was his experience with racism in the plants that informed his

brilliant 1945 novel, "If He Hollers Let Him Go." Two characters in his later

detective novels were based on black detectives who worked on Central Avenue.

One reportedly beat a black woman so badly that weeks later she was still

hospitalized, unable to testify against him.

On March 1, 1942, Gen. John L. DeWitt sent thousands of people of Japanese

ancestry to the internment camp at Manzanar, Calif. Many from Central Avenue's

Little Tokyo were forced to leave their houses, which were then taken over by

blacks. Soon African Americans opened jazz clubs in the area, which became known

as "Bronzeville." The most famous was Shepp's Playhouse, where bebopper Charlie

Parker held court. It quickly became the hotspot for white stars such as Judy

Garland.

Pentecostalism took root in nearby Azusa Street. The biggest church, pastored by

William J. Seymour, crossed races -- "color line washed away in the blood." It

was a syncretism of Christianity and West African religion passed down through

the oral tradition of the plantations. By adding guitars, banjos and

tambourines, the services of this church paved the way for rhythm and blues. We

meet Bulee "Slim" Gaillard, a jive talker and jazz improviser who performed his

new mixture of rhymed patter, a forerunner of hip-hop, in Seymour's church. Born

in Detroit in 1916, Gaillard was an adventurer and clown who became the toast of

Hollywood.

At the end of the 1940s, another newspaperman, Loren Miller, campaigned against

property owners and agents who refused to sell to nonwhites. The result was a

gradual easing of segregation's grip on Central Avenue.

If racism and segregation produced unique institutions, like the jazz clubs

where West Coast bebop was first played, they also led to law enforcement

cracking down on some high-profile blacks. The treatment of the great blues

singer Holiday attests to that. Even the white manager she trusted most, Joe

Glaser, also Louis Armstrong's manager, let her down. Claiming that he wanted

only to get Holiday medical care for heroin addiction, he cooperated with

government agents to get her convicted of a felony. This made it impossible for

her to get well-paying work. When she went to England, she was surprised that

heroin addiction was viewed there as a medical problem, and addicts were allowed

to seek help from doctors. Americans viewed addicts as criminals.

Holiday's life story is a personal version of Central Avenue and a microcosm of

the segregated avenues of America. From the time of her first arrest until her

death, her life was controlled by segregation. She had been a maid and a

prostitute in real life, and those were the roles she played in motion pictures.

The unwritten laws of Hollywood reflected society's racism; Holiday was trapped

by both.

The literary establishment was not far behind in exploiting Holiday. Her reputed

1956 autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues," which is being reissued next month,

is told by a white ghostwriter, William Dufty. Like Smith in "The Great Black

Way," Dufty adopted a vivid, slangy, idiomatic language, which may be

appropriate for his topic. But he gives that voice to Holiday.

Dufty was a journalist who cobbled together his previously published newspaper

articles on Holiday. He concentrated on anecdotes of drug use and arrests, and

implications of lesbianism. Apparently, Holiday never read the book. She said

she regretted that he had relied so much on sensational material. The sad truth

is that Holiday never expressed herself in a book. "Lady Sings the Blues" is

brilliantly written, but it is not the voice that comes out in her music. She

put her pain into the profundity of such songs as "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless

the Child."

Central Avenue no longer exists -- except as a memory, or in the great jazz

music created there. But when you see an African American man, woman or child in

L.A., you may well be looking at a survivor of our segregated past. Central

Avenue still lives -- in all of us.

_____

Cecil Brown, an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara, is the author of the

nonfiction book, "Stagolee Shot Billy," the novel, "I, Stagolee" and the

forthcoming "Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department?"

[marcello]

You might also try:

Central Avenue Sounds

Edited June 18, 2006 by marcello

[ghost of miles]

Already have! I actually interviewed Steven Isoardi, who helped put it together, several years ago for my old community-radio program. It and the accompanying 4-CD box-set are wonderful documents of mid-20th century Los Angeles jazz; I'm hoping THE GREAT BLACK WAY will provide further illumination on the era and its culture in general.

[marcello]

Here's a three good ones from my library:

UNFINISHED DREAM: THE MUSICAL WORLD OF RED CALLANDER

[ghost of miles]

Have not read any of those--not even sure I was aware of the Collette (though I do have the musical/autobiography CD). Thanks for the recs; will look them up for sure.

[AllenLowe]

I like Johnny Otis, but I would take many of his pronouncements with a lot of grains of salt - he whines and whines, for example, about exploitation, yet himself made a few efforts to steal song credits (as in the original Houndog; he was successfully sued by Lieber and Stioller); also, his anti-rock and roll rants are tiresome. However, I love his 1940s and 1950s bands -

[fasstrack]

This sounds like a great read. Thanks.

There was perhaps a glimmer of insight into this scene in Art Pepper's Straight Life, a book I hated myself for liking so much then ended up hating on GP. But he really does communicate beautifully a recollection of his joy of getting his first wind of jazz music and people on Central Ave. I've had similar experiences re community and how musicians love each other when left alone and given work.

Will be reading this. It's on the top of my list.

[Christiern]

Allen, if you were about to read both books (Dufty's and Otis's) and had before you two huge grains of salt, one bigger than the other, which one would you apply what book?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

what the hell does he mean Central Ave. doesnt exist. trust me its still there

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This looks like a good one. I recently read "The autobiography of Jazz" - mainly about Chicago - and this looks as interesting.

MG

[sidewinder]

I picked up a copy of the 'Central Avenue Sounds' book from the Borders in Long Beach many years ago now, just after many of the musicians featured had appeared at the store (unfortunately I just missed the in-person signing - Jackie Kelso, Clora Bryant, Gerald Wilson, Buddy Collette). Was able to pick up one of the signed copies they left behind though (although it doesn't have Gerald's signature). A good read !

Also got hold of the Buddy Collette book - amazingly at half-price clearance sale at a store here in the UK.

The Horace Tapscott biography is also a must-have.

[makpjazz57]

Very hard to find, but Lois Shelton's documentary, Blues for Central Avenue, featuring vocalist Ernie Andrews talks about Central Avenue's history, mixed in with performance clips of Andrews. The documentary also shows Andrews driving on Central Avenue with some dramatic stops along the way - where some of the jazz clubs were - Club Alabam, Lovejoy's, etc.

Marla