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As Roanoke moves on from centuries past toward a new identity as a destination metro, it’s important to not only look back at our glorious roots, but also to work to assure those roots continue to yield fruit of a kind that made us a national mecca back then as well.
jazz
In the three years I’ve called Roanoke home, I have felt a surging momentum in the Star City’s reshaping toward becoming a destination metropolis. Our appeal to millennials grows as our downtown and our neighborhoods add layers of urban complexity, niche living and craft brews, while holding fast to our old glory; that of being a “great place to raise a family.” With recent head nods from the likes of the Boston Globe, we Roanokers gain confidence in our transformation. We are invigorated; doubling down our efforts towards chic mountain urbanity and further away from our humble blue-collar roots.
But the truth is, Roanoke enjoyed one of its richest cultural and artistic eras during its manufacturing zenith. Not only this, but it was Roanoke’s least assuming people—the African American community—who were largely responsible for this era’s creation and decades of sustaining. I would even say it is these same Roanokers who are—in part—responsible for cultivating what is arguably called America’s first art form during its greatest era: the art and era of jazz.
The story of jazz in Roanoke begins in the decades post-Civil War. Millions of newly freed slaves began migrating across the South and beyond, anxious to put their freedom to work. In a hostile and often dangerous climate, freed men and women took the meanest land and lowest jobs, and created what beauty they could from it.
Enter one Roanoke, Virginia (known as ‘Big Lick’ back then): a growing town west of Richmond, on the eastern side of Appalachia. Roanoke boasted established tobacco manufacturing, a new railroad connection and a settled community of former slaves and free “negroes” (as stated in the 1941 account, “Our Colored People,” written by Isaac M. Warren of Roanoke). It was a mini-bonanza for the unskilled but willing laborer.
By the early 1920s, Roanoke’s African American community thrived. Jim Crow laws kept black people in their places, quite literally. In Roanoke, those people simply bloomed where they were planted. The Gainsborough community became a shining light and an oasis of hope amid an antagonistic South. It was a lively and vibrant place—a rich humus for jazz to grow. Gospel music rang from church pews, work sinks and rail yards. Stalwart educators, like Miss Lucy Addison, pushed their students to achieve beyond perceived limits; demanding excellence in every subject—especially in areas of language and culture.
At its heart was Henry Street, known as “The Yard;” home to the Morocco (later called The Ebony Club), the 308, and the Dumas Hotel—all entertainment hot spots for folks living on “the other side of the tracks.”
From “Henry Street,” a 1980s Mill Mountain musical production:
“Henry Street…buzzed like a busy hive of bees; it blazed like a billion hearts on fire; it rocked as though eternity waited just around the corner. To Henry Street came plain folks, fancy folks, and all those in-between folks, in every conceivable shade of ebony, tan and ivory. Henry Street was their meeting ground, their courting ground, their stomping ground, their Harlem, their Beale Street, their Catfish Row…On Henry Street there was no shortage of soul food, soul talk or soul folks.”
It was these “billion hearts on fire” that put Roanoke on the jazz map, particularly for African American jazz entertainers.
Old Jim Crow gave no quarter to traveling African Americans. It was difficult for blacks to find overnight lodging, especially across the South, and sleeping in their vehicle oftentimes proved dangerous. According to Charles Price, director for the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, Roanoke became a prominent stop along the Chitlin’ Circuit—the route entertainers followed, especially black entertainers, when taking their acts on the road.
“The Chitlin’ Circuit was a series of safe places you knew you could bed down; sleep over before moving on to the next town,” says Price.
He explains that since—out of necessity—African American folks had built a self-sustaining community in Roanoke, and because of its location west of Richmond, Roanoke became a hub for traveling African American entertainers.
The roll call of big-name jazz entertainers to Roanoke is astonishing: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Lional Hampton, Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Nat “King” Cole, Jimmy Lunceford and “Fats” Waller, are but a small sampling of jazz’s hottest names to grace Roanoke’s music halls. Many of these entertainers were at the height of their careers when they came to town. Naturally, the Dumas Hotel provided their lodging.
In an article published in The Roanoke Times in 1979, Crystabel Barlow, owner of the Dumas Hotel at that time, shared personal stories of hosting these jazz giants in her hotel. Duke Ellington was incredibly unassuming, she said, and wanted no special attention paid him. He had a habit of mixing his side dishes with his meat, creating a sort of stew.
Louis Armstrong and his wife, Lil, were simple people. He liked fried chicken, kidney beans and rice, and he’d always take herbs as a supplement. He used to tell Barlow, “Eat what you want, take herbs and in the morning you’ll leave it all behind you.”
She remembers Dizzy Gillespie as being “fat and congenial.” Fats Waller had a huge appetite and no discipline. Ethel Waters pitched a fit over a pork chop sandwich. Barlow was happy to see them both go.
In the way of all good things, jazz’s era in America, and in Roanoke, came to its end. While Roanoke’s jazz culture was special, or at least deeply blessed, it wasn’t special or blessed enough to support a jazz culture in a post-jazz America. As radio, and later television, embraced the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Top 40, Roanoke’s music scene ebbed away.
William Penn, a steady contributor to Roanoke’s jazz scene these past four decades, sat with me on an overcast morning at the Mill Mountain coffee shop to talk about all things jazz. We sat in window seats drinking our Mill Mountain iced teas. His hair was pulled back into a low thin ponytail, and he was prone to chuckling, especially when talking about himself. I asked him every question I could think of about jazz, and he patiently answered, as a wise and considerate teacher to his ignorant and generationally removed pupil.
“Jazz’s heyday was the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s,” explains Penn. “This was pre-television. The radio played all jazz—Big Band, mostly. Once the radio started playing Top 40, then jazz went to the wayside. So unless you lived in a big city with a lot of jazz influence, you didn’t hear a lot of jazz anymore. The rural people didn’t hear it. Roanoke was rural, you see.”
Another local, self-described “frustrated musician” explains it another way: “Roanoke wasn’t doing anything different than any other place in America. Jazz was hot in Roanoke when it was hot everywhere. And then it wasn’t.”
Maybe so. As Stan Hale, associate editor at the Roanoke Tribune, comments: Any musician trying to make it big in the music business certainly didn’t stay in Roanoke.
Take Don Pullen, Roanoke’s most celebrated jazz musician, for example. Pullen was born in 1941 into a musical family in Roanoke. In the common way of jazz artists—especially at that time—Pullen was heavily influenced by his church choir, learning to play piano at a young age. He also snuck out to the clubs on Henry Street at night to play jazz and blues with Clyde “Fats” Wright, his professional jazz pianist cousin.
Pullen left Roanoke to pursue a medical career, but quickly discovered music was the only career he desired. He went to Chicago, and then New York—not Roanoke—to find his jazz way. He worked with the likes of Charles Mingus, traveled the European and New York circuits, and recorded more than 20 albums with his own groups, and dozens more as a sideman, before dying of lymphoma in 1995.
With the exodus of jazz musicians from Roanoke, a void was left at a time when jazz music waned nationwide, and especially suffered to breathe in post-integration Roanoke. This makes William Penn’s fortuitous journey to the Star City rife with importance.
A Pulaski native, Penn remembers traveling to Roanoke and playing in the late-1950s at the Morocco, Henry Street’s biggest venue at the time. Penn played piano in his brother-in-law’s band, the Medallions, when he was still in high school. Years later through a chance encounter at the Blacksburg Marriott with a piano and a former Miss New York, Penn (along with the former Miss NY) was offered a regular gig at the Marriott. This encounter led to another encounter that landed Penn in Roanoke, playing all styles of jazz at the Patrick Henry Hotel.
Throughout his musical career, Penn has traveled to several southern states as a single act, and with his band—The William Penn Quartet. But the heft of his jazz happens in Roanoke, playing standards at private gigs. Penn was the musical director for the above-mentioned Mill Mountain musical production, “Henry Street.” He co-composed a folk opera about Miss Lucy Addison for Community School. He helped keep Roanoke’s jazz scene alive, despite urban renewal’s invasive handprint smeared across Henry Street and the Gainsboro community.
“[The Dumas Hotel] was always packed,” says Penn, recounting some of the weekly jazz jams held around town. “We used local musicians; we’d have one band headlining and then all the other bands would come and sit in…There are some excellent jazz musicians in Roanoke. We welcomed everybody, whether they were professional or not.”
The jams were held on Sundays and lasted several hours. Most sessions sold out. Tickets were $5 for the public; musicians were free.
Another popular joint was the jazz club in the basement of the Hotel Roanoke called the Ad Lib Club, that brought in both local and national acts during the late 1970s through the 1980s.
“It was a great jazz club,” says Penn, smiling still at the good times of jazz in Roanoke, even though its best times had long since faded.
Such organic, pop-up jam sessions no longer exist. Or if they do, Penn is not aware of them. He focuses on his private gigs now, and his bookings at the Hotel Roanoke.
These days it is the Jefferson Center, through the efforts of former artistic director, Dylan Locke, that has taken up the jazz charge for the Star City. According to a recent Roanoke Times article, Locke is the reason Roanoke’s been graced with multiple performances by such jazz giants as Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny and Esperanza Spalding.
The Center also created the Jefferson Center Jazz Institute, a five-day camp and scholarship fund that honors Don Pullen’s jazz legacy and helps students explore “America’s art form.”
But maybe the frustrated musician was right: Roanoke was only doing what was popular at the time. Most every Roanoke musician and historian did look at me dumbly when I asked what they might know about Roanoke’s jazz story. It seems that jazz in Roanoke streaked across history like a dying meteor leaving its trail scattered and quickly indistinguishable to the larger night sky.
Still, if it hadn’t been for those people on the other side of the tracks and their symphonic life on and around Henry Street, would Roanoke have had a jazz scene at all, let alone one so (briefly) dazzling? Would there have been a William Penn who drove from Pulaski as a kid and played at the Morocco, then spent the heft of his life supporting the jazz scene in Roanoke and giving voice to Roanoke’s African American community through music? Would there have been a Don Pullen, who grew up in a place replete with gospel sounds and jazz jams? And if there had been no Don Pullen, who would be the Jefferson Center’s inspiration now?
Ralph Ellison, 20th Century African American novelist, writer, scholar, and critic, once wrote:
“…at best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.”
These are wise words and Roanokers would be wise to consider them. As we continue morphing ourselves into Destination Mecca, let us honor the destination we once were. Let us honor the people and music that made it so. The riffs, the melody, the music the story. It’s already there. Our part is to help it sing again.
Writer’s note: The information for this article was gathered through personal interviews and conversations, research through archived article clippings of The Roanoke Times and books found in the Virginia Room at the downtown Roanoke Public Library, the documentary, “Jazz,” by Ken Burns, and the book, “Jazz Writings of Ralph Ellison.” Information on the Jefferson Center was found through their website: jeffcenter.org.