Auction Finds » nightclub

Club Plantation: Great music behind a racist fan

sherry — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:30:41 +0000

The paper fan lying there on the table at the auction house was like a slap in the face. It held all the stereotypes affixed to African Americans during a time when the country was less tolerant.

The image on the front was one that now sells as “Black Americana”: a black face with red lips, gapped teeth, bad English and bugged eyes. It made me grimace. Click on photo below for a view of the front.

The back of the Club Plantation fan.

The fan was an advertisement for a whites-only club that during its heyday just before and during World War II was one of the most popular in the city. Owned by gangsters, its patrons listened to the music of the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra – its black house band – and some of that era’s top black entertainers.

Billy Eckstine’s band played there, with musicians Charlie Parker, Lucky Thompson, Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie (as musical director), and vocalists Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. The Mills Brothers put on shows, along with the Noble Sissle Orchestra, the Ink Spots, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and plenty of others.

They played at a club that would not allow them to fraternize with the white customers or enter through the front door. Some of the entertainers noted later in interviews and their biographies that the club was one of the best places to perform in St. Louis, MO. They didn’t make a lot of money, they said, but playing there was apparently not bad.

Billy Eckstine and his band playing in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1944: From left, Lucky Thompson, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Eckstine. Photo from the ExplorePAhistory.com website.

I’m sure it was hard for them to get past the discrimination, which was quite evident in the fan at auction. The grinning caricature was one that the club repeated on its other advertising paraphernalia. I found on the web a souvenir photo folder with black and white photos of patrons taken inside the club, menu, matchbook cover and sign.

It seemed that some entertainers did defy the rules. I found one story repeated on the web about Eckstine and his performers deliberately thumbing their noses at the Jim Crow laws. The writer of a 2006 book on the history of jazz in St. Louis wondered, though, if the stories were more myth than truth.

In his 2009 biography, Gillespie recalled an incident in 1944 that led to the dismissal of the Eckstine Band:

“The Plantation club was a white club in St. Louis. They fired Billy Eckstine’s band because we came in through the front door and they wanted us to come in through the back. We just walked in with our horns, in front. And the gangsters – St. Louis was a stronghold for gangsterism – said, ‘Them guys got to go.’ … We went over to work at another place.”

In the 2006 book “City of Gabriels: The history of jazz in St. Louis 1895-1973,” author Dennis Owsley offered Pillars’ recollection of why the band was let go: because Eckstine’s music was a new experimental style – one that many apparently did not appreciate.

Billy Eckstine and Billie Holiday in 1944.

Also in the book, Blakey, noting that they were playing in a “prejudiced club,” also told of Bird, Holiday, Eckstine and Dizzy defiant exploits:

“The man told us to come in through the back door that night and these damn fools, they got together and they came in the front door. The guy is wigged. They all come in the front door havin’ a ball. He said, ‘I don’t want you fraternizing with the customers.’ When Charlie got to the intermission, they all sat at the tables and the guy was about to wig. He told someone: ‘You gotta get this band the hell out of here.’”

Blakey also told the story of pianist Tadd Dameron drinking water “out of one of those beautiful glasses they had to serve the customers” and Parker mockingly smashing glasses that Dameron may have drank from, according to the book. Another account was that Parker walked through the club drinking water from glasses on the tables and smashing them so the waiters wouldn’t have to wash them.

”Bird walked over to him saying, ‘Did you drink out of this, Tadd?’ Tadd says, ‘Yeah.’ Bam! He smashes it. ‘It’s contaminated. Did you drink out of this one?’ ‘Yeah,’ Tadd says. Bam! ‘It’s contaminated.’ He broke about two dozen glasses. A guy was glaring at Bird. He just looked back coolly.”

Club Plantation opened in 1931, with St. Louis pianist Eddie Johnson and his Crackerjacks performing, the band leader said in a 1971 interview. By 1934, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra was in the place. Childhood friends from Cleveland, OH, saxophonists Hayes Pillars and James Jeter arrived at the club for a short stint but remained there until 1944, when they moved on to the Riviera, a black club owned by Jordan Chambers. The George Hudson Orchestra replaced them at the Plantation.

Jeter-Pillars Orchestra was said to be the most popular band in the city by 1942. It was featured on both local and national radio programs, including “The Fitch Bandwagon,” a Sunday night NBC program that featured big bands from 1938-1948.

Club Plantation closed in 1947, the same year that Jeter and Pillars broke up their band.

Fela, spirits and African masks

sherry — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:21:29 +0000

I spotted it from across the room. An African mask, chalk-white, elongated face, hanging on a wall at one of my favorite auction houses on Sunday.

I had seen several like it the day before, about eight of them, on the set of a raucous, loud, energized preview performance of the music of Nigerian artist Fela Anikulapo Kuti at a Broadway play bearing the single name of Fela! (Check out the video at that site). The set was a reproduction of the musician’s Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, the walls extended out into the audience and decorated with drawings, baskets and masks. Putting us in the middle of the party. The wall of white-faced masks was not far from where I sat with friends.

As I looked closer at the mask at auction Sunday, I saw that some of the white chalk had rubbed off, almost down to the wood. The black paint denoting hair around the edge was still intact, as were as the brows. The eyes were slits. This mask looked more like a monkey mask. I bought it, though, because it appealed to me.

The ones on the set at the Fela musical Saturday were Igbo maiden spirit masks, in the shapes of women’s faces and heads, some with defined hairstyles. The white chalk represented the color of the spirit, and the masks themselves symbolized beauty and peacefulness. In the Igbo cultures of Nigeria, they are worn by elaborately costumed men in ritualized dances to female ancestors.

On Satuday, in one especially powerful scene in the musical, the actor Fela (played by Kevin Mambo) marked his face with chalk - white circles around his eyes and mouth, lines crossing his face. He donned the markings for a surreal visit to the spirit world to talk to his mother (Mom, played by Lillias White, can sing!).

I came across Fela’s music some years before he died in 1997. I recall reading a review of one of his concerts in my weekly newsmagazine (I believe it was a review or story in Newsweek). When I read that he was a protest singer, I knew I wanted to hear his music and his lyrics (he wrote in a pidgin language so all Nigerians could understand his words). So I went out and bought one of his albums – an old copy of “Shuffering and Shmiling” from 1985. I hadn’t heard it in years before seeing the play. And hearing it once again reminded me of why I bought the album. Like the musical, it makes you want to move.

Fela’s Afrobeat rhythms were on full-blast-high Saturday, and the actor Fela owned the stage, infusing it with the personality of the man who was hated by the Nigerian government. The actor protested in song (“Zombie,” one of Fela’s most popular, which attacks Nigerian soldiers) and in monologues (including a long scene to show how far the government would go to flush out evidence against him). You can watch and listen to one of Fela’s actual concerts.

The lyrics were beautiful, the singing was superb and the dancers could really shake a tail-feather.

In his life and the musical, Fela railed against the Nigerian government, and was beaten and jailed numerous times because of his stances. His Shrine nightclub was part of an independent commune he set up in Lagos in defiance of what he considered a corrupt government. The incident that had the most effect on him there was the 1977 death of his mother at the hands of soldiers.

If you’re in the New York area and want to party, stop by Fela! It opens Nov. 23 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, 230 W. 49^th St.

Side note: This has nothing to do with the Fela concert, but is about the Igbo peoples. Legend says that when a slave ship landed off the coast of St. Simon’s Island, GA, the Africans on board, all Igbos – embarked, still in chains – made a decision. Rather than live as slaves, they walked back into the ocean together and drowned. Now, the place – called Ebo (or Ibo) Landing - is supposedly haunted, and spirits are said to still roam.

St. Simon’s is one of my most favorite islands. My family spent Christmas there some years ago, and I located the site of the legend. Didn’t go alone, took my niece with me. What we found was a quiet serene place overlooking the Atlantic. Maybe the spirits are at peace.