Continued from Part One.
Rodney Marsh, of Marsh Woodwinds, does recall a nightclub in the Capital Floor Care and Vacum building. “I played there in 1972, with terrible band called Gene Barbour & The Cavaliers. Gene was an early Beach Music figure who was trying to cash-in on the revival of the Beach Music thing. The club was “The Embers Club”, a Beach Music club operated by the band, The Embers. It wasn’t a black club, it was a white Beach Music club, but I think there would have been black people dancing with white people there.” The history of Beach Music is really more interesting than most of the music itself. In the Jim Crow south of the 1940’s and 1950’s, young white people in conservative cities and backwater towns could be exposed to R&B through late night radio shows, as well as live music, and jukeboxes at the beach. The drinking age was 18, and kids visiting the beach were exposed to a heady world of alcohol, dancing and R&B music, for the first time in their lives and those good times sometimes broadened people’s minds about race and culture. The Beach Music variety of R&B never ventured far from the “Swing” sound of the 40’s and early 50’s and now the phrase “Beach Music” usually means the whitest aspects of black music. Similar conditions created Rock Music but whereas Rock mutated and evolved, Beach Music became a “Golden Oldies” format. John Swain at the Record Hole, used to love answering phone calls asking him the difference between R&B and Beach Music. “Buy the record, give me the god damn money, and I’ll call it whatever the hell you want.”
Speaking of “The whitest of white”: Metro Magazine had this blurb a few years ago:
BBC producer Andy Kershaw interviewed Reeves at the legendary Mecca Restaurant in downtown Raleigh to ascertain what the city was like in 1964. Reeves discussed the musical scene of the era, remembering the many nightclub and concert appearances of the leading black musicians who, as the song says, “rolled into Raleigh.”
The Metro publisher explained that racism was not a visible problem in Raleigh due to its gentility, its lack of industry and unions, and the large population of college-age students attending area universities and colleges.
Said Reeves: “Of course I remember the black and white water fountains, the separate entrances to movie theaters, but back then we didn’t know it was wrong. But now we know it wasn’t right.”
Reeves also remembered “young, white music lovers going to black nightclubs and going to see black entertainers at the many clubs that existed in Raleigh—including the Cat’s Eye, the Embers Club, the Frog and Nightgown—and attending concerts at Memorial Auditorium and Dorton Arena, where as many as 15 acts would appear on the same bill.”
WTF? You may already think that Bernie Reeves is a facist blowhard but it’s nice to learn that segregation and racism didn’t greatly inconvenience him. God knows, labor unions might have agitated and made racism seem like a problem to old Bernie!
Continue reading ‘Jim Crow Was Here. Part two’
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