In a recent interview, I noted that jazz musicians performed in nightclubs where they couldn’t sit and hotels where they could not stay. The jazz legends whose music paved the way for the Civil Rights movement were subjected to racial discrimination as they traveled while black.
In 1936, Victor H. Green, a postal worker and civil rights activist, published the first edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide to navigate Jim Crow laws in the South and de facto segregation in the North.
“The Green Book,” as it was called, lists tourist homes, restaurants, nightclubs, beauty parlors, barber shops and other services. Philadelphia hotels in the 1949 edition include the Attucks, Chesterfield and Douglass.
The list of taverns includes Emerson’s, the setting for the Tony Award-winning play, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.
The Café Society and Watts’ Zanzibar are listed.
After passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, “The Green Book” was no longer published. As All That Philly Jazz breathes life into the city's jazz heritage, my appreciation of jazz is increasing exponentially.
Today is the centennial of the birth of Billie Holiday. Contrary to popular belief, she was born in the City of Brotherly Love in Philadelphia General Hospital.
The misapprehension about Holiday’s place of birth may account for why she hasn't been inducted into the Walk of Fame. Despite her arrests and conviction in Philadelphia, she had love for her hometown. It was, after all, the place where she could work in the nightclubs. After her conviction, she lost her cabaret license and could not work in any place where alcohol was sold. She could perform at a sold-out Carnegie Hall, but couldn't get a gig at a hole-in-the-wall in Harlem.
Parenthetically, Holiday was inducted into the Apollo Theater’s Walk of Fame yesterday.
Yes, there’s an historical marker noting that when Lady Day was in town, she often lived at the Douglass Hotel.
Holiday is depicted in the Women of Jazz mural in Strawberry Mansion. But the mural is scheduled to be demolished by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
The Walk of Fame plaque is the highest honor Philadelphia bestows on a musician:
The Music Alliance is best known for the Walk of Fame along Broad Street’s Avenue of the Arts. This series of over 100 bronze commemorative plaques honors Philadelphia area musicians and music professionals who have made a significant contribution to the world of music. The Walk of Fame is the City’s most impressive public monument to the people who have made Philadelphia a great music city.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. So I nominated Billie Holiday for induction into the Walk of Fame.
Happy birthday, Lady Day. We love you more than you’ll ever know.
UPDATE:The Philadelphia Music Alliance announced that “as a special birthday gift,” Billie Holiday is the newest inductee into the Walk of Fame. In a statement, Chairman Alan Rubens said:
The Philadelphia Music Alliance wanted to present what we think is a 'perfect' birthday gift to an extraordinary vocalist, Billie Holiday, and announce her induction on her 100th birthday. It will be an absolute pleasure to be able to walk down Broad Street and see her name where it rightfully belongs, on the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame, with other homegrown jazz giants like John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, and Grover Washington, Jr.
Since 2002, April has been designated Jazz Appreciation Month. This year’s celebration was kicked off with a big bang. The Smithsonian announced the LeRoy Neiman Foundation donated $2.5 million towards the expansion of jazz programming.
The foundation also donated “Big Band,” a painting by LeRoy Neiman.
Neiman considered the painting “one of the greatest in his career.” Four of the 18 iconic jazz musicians have been inducted into the Philadelphia Walk of Fame – John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Gerry Mulligan.
As Women in Jazz Month winds down, I want to salute Pearl Bailey who began her singing and dancing career at the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia. She lived in this house which is located just a few blocks from North Philly’s famed “Golden Strip.”
In 1946, Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman, a musical written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
The Knight Foundation issued an open call for ideas on how to get more Americans involved in their communities so that they will have a voice in local, state and national issues. I answered the call and submitted an idea to increase Millennials’ interest in elections, boost voter turnout and jump-start civic participation.
Some background. Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 have the lowest turnout. In Philadelphia, Millennials are not targeted for voter outreach because they are “inactive” (meaning they have not voted in five years or are not registered to vote).
With the cutback in civic education in the schools and no targeted outreach, it’s not surprising that Millennials are not showing up on Election Day. In 2014, turnout for Pennsylvania’s competitive gubernatorial race was 36 percent. That was Philadelphia’s lowest citywide turnout in a midterm election since 1998. By one estimate, youth turnout was 20 percent, the worst turnout in a midterm election since 1940.
The takeaway of the 2008 and 2012 elections is that young people will turn out if they are the target of voter education initiatives. But the dirty little secret about voting is that incumbents have a vested interest in keeping the electorate small. Philly’s political machine spends few, if any, resources encouraging new voters to get involved. The lack of information and the city’s archaic ward system are barriers to participation.
Yo! Philly Votes will bridge the information gap. Our mobile app will provide a calendar of nonpartisan candidate and policy forums, and an Election Day incident reporting tool. The flattening of newsrooms means there are fewer journalists to report on what’s happening at polling places. So we will crowdsource election protection.
This month marks the 60th anniversary of the death of legendary saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker who died on March 12, 1955. Bird lives on in the musicians he influenced from bebop to hip-hop.
As luck would have it, the first performance will be on June 5th. On June 5, 1945, the Dizzy Gillespie Quartet, featuring Charlie Parker, played the Academy of Music. Seated in the next-to-last row was John Coltrane who was seeing Bird for the first time. Coltrane later said:
The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
These are the kinds of stories we will share at All That Philly Jazz, which will be launched on Friday at the March convening of Open Access Philly. The event is free and open to the public. To register, go here.
In 1964, Dizzy Gillespie threw his beret into the ring and ran for President of the United States.
In a piece for Al Jazeera America, Tom Maxwell wrote:
It started as a joke, as so many serious things do. His booking agency had some “Dizzy Gillespie for president” buttons made around 1960, because, you see, it’s funny. Somebody even asked Gillespie why a black jazzman — a permanent member of the underclass if there ever was one — would even think of trying for the job. “Because we need one,” he said.
“Anybody coulda made a better President than the ones we had in those times, dillydallying about protecting blacks in the exercise of their civil and human rights and carrying on secret wars against people around the world,” Gillespie wrote in his autobiography “To Be, or Not ... to Bop.” “I was the only choice for a thinking man.”
This thinking woman would have voted for him. Vote Dizzy! Vote Dizzy!
