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 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.
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.
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.
My father was the gangster that tossed out Billie Eckstein. The family story has always been that it was because of his dislike for the experimental music style. There were plenty of stories of racism, the Billie Eckstein episode was all about the music.
Thanks, Joseph. My blog post mentions that Hayes Pillars attributed Eckstine’s dismissal from the Club Plantation to an objection to his style of music.
Sherry Howard