Ripley’s Music Hall was located in the former Hippodrome in South Philly. The music venue played host to greats of all genres, including McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Sam & Dave, Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Ripley’s Music Hall was demolished. A new building constructed on the site was occupied by Tower Records, which closed in 2012.
In 1957, Sister Rosetta Tharpe moved to Philadelphia. She was a first-generation resident in the historic Yorktown neighborhood, and a member of Bright Hope Baptist Church.
From Philadelphia, she did some of her finest recordings, releasing five LP’s and gaining a Grammy nomination with her 1968 album, “Precious Memories.” Her tours of Europe in the late 1950’s helped to spark the British blues revival and the onset of 1960’s popular music.
Sister Rosetta was gospel’s first superstar who brought spiritual music into the mainstream with a blend of blues, jazz, big band, and rhythm & blues. Her ringing soprano voice and guitar virtuosity set her apart from other greats of gospel’s Golden Age. In 2007, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
In 2011, a historical marker was installed outside the house in Yorktown where she lived for 15 years until her death in 1973.
On the first day of summer, I had to report for jury duty at the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice. As I stood in line to go inside the Jury Assembly Room, I noticed a panoramic mural. I made a mental note to check it out during the break.
Words cannot convey my shock and awe to discover some of the images depict Philadelphia’s legendary jazz clubs, including the Blue Note, the Showboat and Pep’s.
It is clear the details only could have come from folks who were there. So it was no surprise to learn the mural was conceived by Doug Cooper in collaboration with “Philadelphia elderly.” Cooper wrote:
I brought together more than 40 elderly residents to complete it, and I worked jointly with them at the Center in the Park in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Local artist, Deborah Zwetsch and I assembled their memories over the previous 80 years.
[…]
The memories of the elderly are highly personal. Some are sentimental, some painful, some humorous, some ordinary.
There is nothing ordinary about the depiction of the Ridge Avenue jazz corridor.
Ridge Avenue is ground zero in the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s plan to transform the Sharswood neighborhood. There is widespread concern that PHA has no plan to preserve the neighborhood’s cultural heritage and historic resources.
Cooper’s mural, showcasing Pep’s, the Showboat, Blue Horizon, Uptown Theater and jazz clubs on Ridge Avenue, tells part of the story of Philadelphia’s rich jazz heritage. We must capture the rest of the story while the folks who were there are still here. If we don’t, their stories will be lost for current and future generations.
First it was #PopeInPhilly. Now this: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia plans to put the oldest church for black Catholics on the auction block. St. Peter Claver Union was named after the “Apostle of the Slave Trade,” a 16th century Spanish Jesuit priest who fought against the slave trade.
St. Peter Claver was an anchor in the community. Future blues legend Ethel Waters recounts in her autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, that at age six, she was gravely ill with typhoid fever and double pneumonia. Her grandmother sent for Fr. Healey who baptized and anointed her.
In 1942, St. Peter Claver’s Catholic Church, Fifty Golden Years, a self-published history, was released:
It was also toward the end of the 19th century that a sizable population of blacks developed their own Catholic congregation in Philadelphia. Prior to 1886, black Catholics had worshiped in the parishes of St. Joseph, St. Mary, and St. Augustine in the city. In 1886, Holy Trinity Church, a traditionally German Catholic Church at 6th and Spruce, began holding a mass for blacks. The pastor of Holy Trinity, Father Hilterman, encouraged his black congregants to form their own union, which adopted the name St. Peter Claver Union, after the native of Catalonia, Spain, whose efforts in behalf of emancipation earned him the title, “Apostle of the Slave Trade.”
In July 29, 1889, Rev. Patrick McDermott, arrived in Philadelphia to take charge of the burgeoning black Catholic congregation at the request of Mother Katherine Drexel, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, after she visited Holy Ghost College (now Duquesne University) in Pittsburgh, PA. McDermott’s congregation began assembling in a small chapel in the second story of a home at 832 Pine Street in 1889, but it soon became too crowded, and the group began to look for a large church home.
When in 1890, the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia offered its building at 12th and Lombard for sale, the congregation began to pool its resources to purchase it. When Patrick Quinn, treasurer of the Beneficial Savings Fund Society, one of Philadelphia’s largest banks at the time, died the same year, his will stipulated that $5,000 of his fortune was to go to the “proposed Colored Catholic Church of Philadelphia.” With donations from other well-to-do Philadelphians and loan from a bank, the congregation managed to assemble the funds to purchase Fourth Presbyterian Church at 12th and Lombard, which was dedicated as St. Peter Claver’s Church, Philadelphia’s first black Catholic church, on January 3, 1892.
Fast forward to today. The Archdiocese is in Orphans’ Court petitioning for the removal of racial language in the deeds that would rewrite history.
Arlene Edmonds, community historian and author of the African American Catholic Youth Bible, told Sabrina Vourvoulias of Philadelphia Magazine:
I feel a special connection because I’ve always been interested in historical sites, particularly the Underground Railroad and the sites that were built from by those enslaved Africans who creatively masterminded their escapes. Setting foot in St. Peter Claver one can feel it is part of that lineage. As a Catholic, so many of the earliest African connections to the faith have been overpowered by Western traditions after the faith was embraced by Europeans. Most American Catholic churches are centered around a Eurocentric interpretation of the faith.
Then you have a St. Peter Claver Church that was donated to the Black community for the purpose of evangelizing to African Americans. They lived in Philadelphia during the antebellum era, were among those who escaped along the Underground Railroad, or who migrated here later from the south as well as the Caribbean and Latin America. This was their church before there was an Archdiocese of Philadelphia [emphasis added]. It housed their history in photographs and artifacts. To have that taken from us is very sad. That is why many feel as I do, that others are trying to erase our history even those who say they share our faith.
I don’t share Edmonds’ faith, but I share her concern that gentrification is erasing African American history. Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church, is host of “Urban Insight” on 900amWURD. In an interview with Edmonds, Rev. Tyler observed:
St. Peter Claver is sandwiched between Big Wesley and Mother Bethel. The neighborhood is awash with great history of founding events in the black community. It’s an American story. We must help the Archdiocese find a different way to deal with this property.
Given the givens, I put my faith in Orphans’ Court. So I filed an objection to the Archdiocese’s Petition for Cy Pres.
On March 29, 2016, at the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall at Newark Symphony Hall, the United States Postal Service released the Sarah Vaughan Forever Stamp.
Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman dedicated the stamp:
As one of the most compelling vocalists in American history, Sarah Vaughan was renowned for her artistic eloquence. Her dynamic vocal range, iconic vibrato, and innovative phrasing helped to transform jazz and popular music. The Postal Service is proud to honor Sarah Vaughan. Let this stamp serve as a lasting tribute to her legacy.
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who played with Miss Vaughan when he was 21 years old, sent a video tribute:
It’s only fitting that Sarah Vaughan is being memorialized with a forever stamp. She was great on so many levels. In honoring her, we honor ourselves. And her talent is truly forever.
The Sarah Vaughan Forever stamp is available at local post offices or online.
Barney Gordon’s was located in South Philly. In her autobiography, Philadelphia Walk of Famer Ethel Waters wrote:
Barney hired me, and after I’d sung two nights at his place he offered me a steady job at fifteen dollars a week. I sang there six nights a week and on Thursday afternoons. Servant girls and houseworkers had that afternoon off, and they’d come to Barney Gordon’s to drink and relax. We called them “the Thursday girls.”
[…]
Barney Gordon’s saloon was on the ground floor. We entertained, though, in a big room upstairs where the customers sat at tables. There was only a two-piece band. Toots Moore, the drummer, and a piano player who could play only in two keys.
Ethel Waters’ autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, is available at Amazon.com.
Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels will direct a documentary about the legendary Harlem showplace, “The Apollo Theater Film Project.”In keeping with the Apollo’s tradition of audience participation, the project is crowdsourced:
If you or someone you know has visual or audio-visual material documenting the APOLLO THEATER or the neighborhood of HARLEM, we want to hear from you! We are looking for film footage, photographs and audio recordings to help tell this remarkable story.
Daniels wants you to go to the website and “help a brother out.”
Here at All That Philly Jazz, we celebrate black history 365. Outside the African American community, black history is recognized, if at all, in February, the shortest month.
For the first time, the New York Times is sharing unpublished photos from its archives:
Hundreds of stunning images from black history, drawn from old negatives, have long been buried in the musty envelopes and crowded bins of the New York Times archives.
None of them were published by The Times until now.
Were the photos — or the people in them — not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words here at an institution long known as the Gray Lady?
[…]
Photographers for The Times captured all of these scenes, but then the pictures and negatives were filed in our archives, where they sat for decades.
This month, we present a robust selection for the very first time.
Every day during Black History Month, we will publish at least one of these photographs online, illuminating stories that were never told in our pages and others that have been mostly forgotten.
It’s better late than never.
For more information, visit Unpublished Black History.
Located at Broad and Bainbridge Streets, the Strand Ballroom was managed by legendary dance promoter Reese DuPree in the 1930s and ‘40s.
In 1938, Bill Doggett and his orchestra played here every Tuesday to Saturday.
From the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia:
From 1965 to 1975, Broadcast Pioneers member Sid Mark hosted a widely acclaimed television show, first carried by Philadelphia’s Channel 17, WPHL-TV and then later aired by WHYY-TV, Channel 12. “The Mark of Jazz” was THE broadcast of that era for jazz.
In an interview with All About Jazz, Sid Mark talked about Nina Simone:
SM: And one of the people I was actually responsible for when it came to her success was Nina Simone.
AAJ: I know that Nina spent some time in Philadelphia.
SM: She started her career in Philadelphia. In her autobiography, she said the reason for her success was a white Jewish disc jockey, Sid Mark. She said, “If I knew him today, I don’t know if I’d kiss him or smack him in the mouth!” (laughter.) That’s a quote. We had a hell of a relationship! By the way, did the tribute concert by her daughter ever take place?
AAJ: It was performed at Town Hall last year. From what I understand, it was extremely successful.
SM: I love that picture of the two of them together.
AAJ: She’s been very active in promoting Nina’s legacy.
SM: Nina was something else. We had hours of discussions on the numerous radio and TV shows we did together. When I discovered her, she was just playing piano at a little joint in Philly at 22nd and Chestnut. It was a bar, and she wasn’t singing, just playing the piano.
All That Philly Jazz 