Clubs

1940 · 169491 — United States: c.1940-60. A visual record of a rarely seen and poorly documented world - an accidental history An unusually extensive group of these evocative "table photographs" striking records of largely African-American audiences in the glamorous sociable and intentionally inclusive world of mid-century nightclubs. Shot by in-house photographers developed on site and sold for a dollar at the end of the evening these quick souvenirs now amount to a rare visual history of a poorly documented milieu. As Gold notes they "turn the camera round": instead of performers we see the audiences - a critical part of what Jason Moran calls the jazz "ecosystem." The collection offers a nationwide survey of venues from the extravagant to the resolutely down-home. At New York's Café Zanzibar with its spectacular floor shows and "Zanzibeauts" the audience was integrated but largely white prompting Langston Hughes's caustic observation about the seating hierarchy - an impression borne out by the image here. Detroit's Gay Bar Lounge another "black and tan" joint catered to a mostly Black clientele and offered a rougher edge: in 1947 the barkeep famously shot two stick-up artists with the.38s kept beneath the cash register. Equally compelling are the histories of Black enterprise that surface. Oakland's Athens Elks Cocktail Lounge home to Lodge 70 of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World stood at the centre of West Oakland's vibrant musical scene hosting countless jam sessions and serving as the informal checkpoint for touring African-American musicians. In Los Angeles Dootsie Williams's Dooto Music Center founded by the trumpeter-turned-entrepreneur provided one of the city's foremost Black cultural venues praised by the Los Angeles Sentinel as "the most-needed cultural and recreation center in Southern California." The photographers themselves remain surprisingly elusive though a few can be traced. In Columbus George Pierce ran a record shop and studio in Bronzeville and supplied images to the Ohio Sentinel and other regional papers; in Detroit Earl Fowler's Top Hat Photo developed into a significant presence in the Black Press with Fowler later serving as chief of the Los Angeles bureau of Now! magazine. Beyond these contexts the photographs' enduring appeal lies in the human dramas unfolding across their tabletops: the conviviality style and fleeting alliances captured in a moment of collective ease. A scene from Gamby's in Baltimore is emblematic - six convivial hat-tipping men and two young women smiling through a forest of shot glasses presided over by a portrait of Fats Waller. It is warmly enigmatic yet inviting an offhand welcome extended across time. A more detailed description and full listing is available on request. Together 66 black and white gelatin silver print photographs 62 c.127 x 178 mm; 3 approximately 178 x 254 mm around 50 are in their original plain or printed souvenir folders the balance loose. Loose photos and folders with occasional wear and mild damp-staining some annotations verso of prints and to folders prints occasionally stapled into folders overall the group remains about very good. Ronald Auther "The Oakland Larks" The Shadow Ball Express: African American Baseball Renderings and other Facts of Life online; Clora Bryant et al Central Avenue Sounds; Jazz in Los Angeles 1930s-1950s 1998; Jeff Gold Sittin' In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s 2020; Robert Petersen "Before Motown: L.A.'s Black-owned Music Empire" PBS SoCal online. unknown