USA TODAY International Edition
Roaring nights shaped America’s sound
Musicians became legends in clubs of Jim Crow South
Fifteen- year- old Bobby Rush needed a match. With a pinch of soot from the rubble of a flame, Rush scribbled a mustache above his lip. He pulled his hat low and slunk into Drums, a gravel road joint with cracks in the ceiling that, on a good night, squeezed in a few dozen people.
A kid in 1940s Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Rush knew he shouldn’t be sneaking into backwoods clubs. But he couldn’t help it.
The music was too good.
On stage, at Drums or the “Big Rec” auditorium in town, Rush watched the great blues shouter Big Joe Turner and searing steel guitarist Elmore James – artists who shaped a region- defining sound for decades to come.
As a young Black artist in the segregated South, he saw musicians who wielded blazing, unrivaled passion.
Shunned from white theaters, Black musicians in the Jim Crow South entertained on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” a network of clubs and theaters in African American neighborhoods that hosted some of the best talent in American music history.
“The juke joint, man, that’s all there was,” said Rush, a Grammy Award- winning Mississippi troubadour who’s been working crowds since the 1950s. “I didn’t know anything about what they call ‘ upscale’ place. ... I didn’t know anything about nothin’ but juke joints. I thought that was it.”
Artists on the Circuit – a centerpiece of the Black music industry during decades of segregation – honed performance skills and sounds that continue to influence music today.
In cities where Black musicians forcibly were told where they could and could not play, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Marvin Gaye and countless others perfected songs that stand today among the most important contributions to the American musical canon.
The Circuit was named after chitterlings, a dish prepared from hog intestines some view as second- class. Yet there was nothing second- class about the music made in those rooms.
“It’s those nightclubs where the music happened,” said Dr. Steven Lewis, curator at the National Museum of African American Music. “You really don’t have the story of so many of these musicians without understanding the African American entertainment world that was grounded in the Black community. That’s where so many of the artists that we celebrate in the museum got their start.
“It’s an essential part of the story.”
Tough On Black artists
Roots of the Chitlin’ Circuit can be traced as deep as vaudevillian entertainment in early 20th century African American communities. These artisans – dancers, comedians and musicians – performed in clubs as far west as Oklahoma, stretching through the South and much of the East Coast.
These shows were booked by Theater Owners Booking Association, or TOBA, a network of theater owners catering entertainment in Black communities.
TOBA launched in the 1920s and Milton Starr, a white Nashville businessman who owned the Bijou Theater, served as its president. These venues often hosted artists featured on race records – a marketing tactic deployed in early years of the record business to segregate Black and white listeners.
“TOBA acts, they would’ve been almost like a minstrel show,” said Preston Lauterbach, author of “Chiltin Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘ n’ Roll,” a definitive book on the Circuit. “There would’ve been a number of different acts. It was a variety show.”
Creative circles at the time, however, referred to the group by a different name: Tough On Black Artists.
Conditions for entertainers were often unpleasant and demeaning, Lewis said.
TOBA didn’t withstand the Great Depression. It folded as entertainment circles reeled from the years of financial hardship that began the 1930s.
But the music survived.
Black owned, operated and patronized venues welcomed Black artists throughout the South, opening doors to a lively arts community cultivated in an era defined by Jim Crow segregation.
Some were juke joints with dirt floors, others were nightclubs that weathered the Depression.
Some artists played in barns, some filled dance halls and some ripped four gigs a night at polished theaters ready to overflow with a toe- tapping escapism that washed away hardships that waited just outside the door.
Many of these halls would eventually shutter. But some, such as the Apollo Theater in New York City, Royal Peacock in Atlanta or the Dreamland Ballroom in Little Rock, Arkansas, still stand today – brick- and- mortar vestiges of the art created decades earlier.
Tickets on the Circuit sometimes cost a $ 1 or $ 2, and drinks were cheaper. Pay for the entertainers? That depends on how hungry they were, Rush said.
“Sometimes you play for the chitlins, that’s what you would get,” said Rush, the self- described “king” of the Chitlin’ Circuit. “We played so well in Argo, Illinois, not Chicago, a suburb of Chicago, the guy [ gave] us two plates of chitlins and four hamburgers. We ate one chitlins, we sell the other for35 cents and we sell the hamburgers for 25 cents. I’d make a $ 1.25 or a $ 1.35 on my hamburgers every night.”
In most neighborhoods, the venues were situated on “the stroll,” a busting strip where one could find markets, BBQ pit stops and beer joints lining the road. Most segregated cities had a stroll – Sweet Auburn in Atlanta, Rampart in New Orleans, Jefferson Street in Nashville and, arguably the best known today, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.
These blocks were often monopolized by a local entrepreneur who dabbled in real estate, gambling, liquor and entertainment. Lauterbach referred to these metropolitan “kingpins” as the “true backbone of the Chitlin’ Circuit.”
And if club owners provided a backbone, then the music was the pulsing heartbeat.
“It’s vital because it’s not only a gathering place, it’s also a place where a local community is able to plug into the national African American entertainment world,” said Lewis.
People “would work their asses off all week,” said Alan Leeds, a music industry veteran who cut his teeth working for James Brown on the Circuit. Many who paid $ 1 to dance to the week’s redhot single did so after logging tense hours in factories, fields or other jobs.
“When Saturday came, you really wanted to relieve the stress,” said Leeds, who organized Brown tours in the early 1970s. “Psychological stress as much as physical stress, because of the 24/ 7 oppression of Jim Crow, which on the surface people adjusted to. There’s a subliminal affect to living that way that we’re only now beginning to really recognize.”
And some who filled weekend dance-floors found their own path to stages.
About 1958, at Currie’s Club Tropicana in north Memphis, a teenage drummer named Howard Grimes joined the house band.
Grimes began his career at age 12, drumming for Memphis soul singer Rufus Thomas. Under Thomas, he’d get a first- hand view at the Flamingo Club and Club Handy, marquee Memphis spots.
But first came nights at Tropicana, a brick- front cafe on Memphis’ bustling Thomas Street – an uptown district in the 1950s known for clubs, movie theaters and local grub. By 1961, Tropicana hosted a young Isaac Hayes three nights a week.
“Mr. Currie brought all of the top acts in there,” said Grimes. “I got a chance to see Hank Ballard and the Midnighters there. I saw Bill Doggett there. I saw Ramsey Lewis there.
“That inspired me ... but what in-
“That inspired me ... but what inspired me more was the people that received that kind of entertainment. They was workin’ people. All types of people. They worked and they came out on the weekends and they had a grand time. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”
Howard Grimes Session musician at Satellite and Stax Records
spired me more was the people that received that kind of entertainment,” Grimes continued. “They was workin’ people. All types of people. They worked and they came out on the weekends and they had a grand time. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”
His skills honed, Grimes would graduate to session musician at Satellite Records, the label precursor to soul powerhouse Stax Records. He’d play as one of the Hi Rhythm Section, a troupe of musicians who backed Stax artists. Grimes played on records with Otis Clay, Willie Mitchell and Al Green.
Duke, Hendrix and more
In its heyday, groundbreaking artists including Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Fats Domino, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding performed on the Circuit.
Little Richard – once an aspiring female impersonator known as Princess Lavonne – perfected his flamboyant persona on Circuit stages. Before he became a poster child for 1960s rock stardom, Jimi Hendrix worked many nights on stage at Club Del Morocco in Nashville.
Before Hendrix or Little Richard came Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock ’ n’ roll, who brought her revolutionary gospel- and- blues cocktail to clubs in the 1930s and ’ 40s.
On a given night, audiences could see a comedian, exotic dancer, local cover group, a few songs from male and female support singers and an hour- orso headlining set.
Touring groups often performed multiple times a night in one city – an 8 and 11 p. m. show, for example, with potential for a matinee on weekends if demand called for it.
Artists who couldn’t afford to pay a touring band relied on local musicians to know the tunes when they rolled into town.
In his 2011 memoir “Le Freak,” Nile Rodgers, innovative co- founder of disco- soul outfit Chic, described the Circuit as “our equivalent of class A baseball.”
Clubs varied from tin- roof huts to flamboyant versions of the cantina in “Star Wars,” he wrote.
“You had a long way to go to get to the majors, but it was a necessary step,” he wrote, per GQ, adding: “If a patron called out ‘ Chocolate Buttermilk,’ ‘ Pusher Man,’ or even ‘ I Want You Back,’ the band had better play it and play it well.”
On stage, audiences saw artists who “presented themselves in an elegant way,” said Jerry Williams Jr., a former Chitlin’ Circuit performer known best by his stage name, Swamp Dogg. Williams cut his first record as a 12- year- old in 1954 under the moniker Little Jerry, and then carved a name for himself as an eccentric soul singer in the 1970s.
“And if you got a chance to go backstage or something, you’d see them back there sewing, puttin’ costumes together,” he continued. “When they came out on stage, they brought you something you’d never seen.”
It would be like seeing Prince, drenched in his purple- clad prime, stage a show in a neighborhood besieged by poverty, Swamp Dogg said.
“But he would still be Prince, doin’ his thing,” Swamp Dogg said.
For many, the Circuit offered a full, albeit grueling, work schedule.
Brown once played 37 shows in 11 days, Leeds wrote in his 2017 book, “There Was a Time: James Brown, The Chitlin’ Circuit, and Me.”
Brown referred to gigs as “jobs,” often touring 51 weeks a year.
“He represented everyone on that Circuit, just out of the basic economics of it,” Leeds said. “He never lost sight of the fact he was doing this to make a living. Yes, it was artistic in the sense that you were making great music ... but, financially, you were still struggling to support the system that you wanted and needed for your art.
“( You) were never turning down a fair offer.”
Rush echoed that sentiment. Often dressed in a boisterous outfit – a “flashy” and “loud” look, similar to jazzman Cab Calloway – he’d hit a guest spot down the street from his headlining set, playing for 20 or 30 minutes, before returning to his own crowd.
“It’s how I survived, man,” Rush said. “I’m an entertainer. It ain’t about playing or singing or whatever. It’s about entertaining.”
Jim Crow South
Segregation, prejudice and systemic racism – a cultural sickness still haunting the South today – made travel difficult, sometimes dangerous for Circuit artists.
Restaurants and hotels in some towns? Forget about it, Rush said.
“You weren’t able to sit down in no diner nowhere, man,” Rush said of touring in the deep South at the time. “Especially a Black guy playing the blues. You weren’t able to sleep in no hotels.”
In major cities, A- list artists could afford rooms in Black hotels, and most knew which neighborhoods along the Circuit would welcome a convoy of African American travelers at the time.
Black entertainers faced different obstacles in small towns, said Lewis.
“In a small Southern town where there was an audience and you could make money, you may have to endure some really difficult conditions,” Lewis said. “That was especially hard on the less famous groups, who were less likely to be a headliner at a big theater.”
Those who couldn’t afford a room relied on the kindness of locals.
“You’d go into a town and you’d find somebody nice enough to fix a dinner for you and let you sleep in a bed,” Rush said. “You’d put some mattresses on the floor ... or you’d sleep in your car. That’s what we had, man, and we didn’t think nothin’ about it.”
Potential danger would come as artists passed between cities, Lauterbach said.
Lauterbach interviewed around 25 people for his Chitlin’ Circuit book. He heard stories that varied from police discrimination to Ku Klux Klan run- ins.
“Many of them have told me about getting pulled over by police while they were carrying all of their band gear,” Lauterbach said. “The police would make them unload their equipment and set up and play by the side of the road to prove they’re musicians and not running drugs.”
He continued, “They’d be set up on the side of the road performing while the cops are looking for drugs, which, of course, they didn’t find. There were those types of humiliations.”
“And if you got a chance to go backstage or something, you’d see them back there sewing, puttin’ costumes together. When they came out on stage, they brought you something you’d never seen.” Swamp Dogg Former Chitlin’ Circuit performer
The Circuit today
The South would desegregate after years of marches, sit- ins and sacrifices by civil rights leaders, but echoes of the Circuit – known now to some as the “Southern Soul Circuit” – remain present in communities today.
Urban renewal plans in the 1960s and ’ 70s led to demolition of many landmark Black venues. Those that survived, plus some new spaces, host a rotating cast of artists preserving the blues, rock ‘ n’ roll and soul music.
“Most people do not call that the Chitlin’ Circuit,” Lewis said, “but the social hold of those venues is similar.”
Comedy and theater still play on the Circuit, too.
Actor, writer and producer Tyler Perry may be the most famous contemporary entertainer to cut his teeth on a 21st century urban theater circuit.
“About this Chitlin’ Circuit, a lot of time we as African American people have evolved so much that we look down our nose at certain things,” Perry said on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 2013. “What I found about this circuit, it was so wonderful. ... You had all these people who could not perform in white establishments, so they went on the road in all these small juke joints with chicken fries and chitlins, and they traveled the country and they became so famous among their own people that they were able to support themselves and and live well.
“Cut to 1998 an I’m doing the exact same thing ... traveling around to African American people. They have made me so famous within my own culture that I couldn’t walk down the street without getting recognized.”
Today, a few labels release Southern soul records and some radio stations spin the songs.
Today’s Circuit exists as a place for artists such as Rush or blues singer Benny Latimore to perform for those with a hunger for the sounds of decades past.
“The audience still needs the music,” Lauterbach said. “And they’re not getting the stories, artists and songs that they want from mainstream music.”