My grandmother knew how to cook up a pot of “chitlins.” I’ve heard some overly proper people refer to them as chitterlings, but I grew up with the term “chitlins” and it’s gonna stay that way. To be honest, I couldn’t stand the smell of them cooking. The chitlins we’re talking about today, however, are not hog intestines, it’s the “Chitlin Circuit.” That was the name given to a map of the music venues and “juke joints” found wherever Black people lived in the U.S. These were places where folks could go to hear music, drink, dance, and even get a plate of soul food.
Born out of segregation and Jim Crow racial separation, along with the racist hierarchy in the music business that I explored in May, the Circuit was where many Black musicians got their start; some went on to fame and fortune, while others never became a household name, but still left their musical mark on the world.
The Mississippi Blues Trail archive gives you a taste of what some Chitlin’ Circuit venues were like, and features interviews with B.B. King, Denise LaSalle, and Dorothy Moore.
Next, here’s a look at Little Rock, Arkansas, as a major stop. When I think of Little Rock, I think of the Little Rock Nine and the fight over school integration. This video explains how Little Rock became a Black community, as a dropoff point for newly emancipated slaves, and the development of the Black urban middle class with Black representation in the state legislature.
Little Rock, Arkansas's, West 9th Street was once a vibrant, African-American business and entertainment district. Taborian Hall is the only remaining historic structure on West 9th Street and stands as a living witness of the street's former glory days. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Taborian Hall housed varied and important black businesses, including professional offices, a USO, the Gem Pharmacy and the Dreamland Ballroom. By the 1930s, Dreamland was firmly established as a stop on the "Chitlin Circuit," which showcased regional and national African-American bands and stage shows. It was also host to local musicians, dances, socials, concerts and sporting events.
For a fascinating dive into this history, Preston Lauterbach’s The Chitlin' Circuit: And the Road to Rock 'n' Roll is a must read. Richard K. Yu explored the book in depth in 2018.
One of the distinguishing features of the musicians featured in the Chitlin Circuit and Lauterbach’s review comes as their lower social class and success. It had been noted that more successful and talented black singers often simply played in higher-class white programs,
“These men were not promoting noteworthy black artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, or Lionel Hampton. Such exception black talents were able to secure play dates in white-owned theaters before white audiences from NYC to Los Angeles. The southern chitlin’ circuit was another world altogether” (Cooper 1).
Already, a distinction in class and wealth can be found between the spheres of white entertainment and black entertainment during these time periods. Lauterbach explicitly refers to this idea in his own accounts as well, stating,
“He [Duke Ellington] rarely performed for black audiences, though. Management’s priorities were strictly financial, and nowhere could black dollars outbuy white ones. Despite this, Duke was no turncoat in black America’s eyes…” (33).
This illustrated the racial disparities in performing venues that were both attracting black musicians. The Chitlin’ Circuit’s spreading influence would soon counterbalance this segregating force as it became more and more culturally relevant.
Lauterbach gave an in-depth lecture about his book in 2011.
The road to Rock 'n' Roll was paved by the numerous African-American musicians and promoters of the 1930s and '40s who were forced to perform in venues that were safe for them during this time of intense segregation. This informal network of juke joints and clubs gave us artists such as Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker and Wynonie Harris.
Louis Jordan’s impact on Black music earned him the nickname “King of the Jukebox.” He was a major star on the circuit, and made several key musical innovations, including cutting down the size of the traditional big band jazz orchestra, and putting singers with the band up front.
As Nelson George explains in The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Jordan’s big innovation was stocking his band with fewer horns. With more space in his arrangements, the rhythm became more pronounced. The “jump up blues” the group created became the hottest sound around. No blues artist who came after Louis Jordan could escape his influence. Even if they did not care for his music or directly borrow elements of his style, they witnessed his success and his stardom. Perhaps more than anything else, then, Louis Jordan was an inspiration.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution featured the Circuit during Black History Month last year.
Many of today’s renowned African-American performers owe their start to the Chitlin’ Circuit. On the circuit, artists such as B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Sam Cooke, Ike and Tina Turner, and Otis Redding helped give birth to modern-day black music.
Also on the circuit, some of Georgia’s greatest music legends cut their teeth, including Ray Charles, James Brown, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Little Richard.
I’ve spent some time in Atlanta, over the years, and the music scene still flourishes there, as a center for not only R&B and gospel, it also evolved into one of the major centers of hip-hop.
Elsewhere, other Chitlin’ Circuit venues still thrive, like this one in Austin, Texas.
August 14, 1945, better known as V-Day, was one of the most momentous days in American history. Across the country, people took to the streets to rejoice in Japan’s surrender to the United States, officially marking the end of World War II. But in East Austin, where the town’s African American community had been relegated by the city’s segregationist 1928 “Master Plan,” there were few places to revel in the occasion’s celebratory mood. For Johnny Holmes, a Black serviceman, that wouldn’t do—so he created his own juke joint, the aptly named Victory Grill, that same day.
Over the next 15 years, the establishment evolved from a small operation selling drinks and 10-cent hamburgers to the premier live music venue in town. Thanks to Holmes’ connections in Texas’ burgeoning blues and jazz scenes (he served as B.B. King’s road manager in the state for years), the club became a landing spot for entertainers playing the Chitlin’ Circuit, where Black musicians and comedians were welcomed during segregation.
A staggering lineup of artists graced its stage during that time, including James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, and T.D. Bell. It also birthed the careers of a number of local acts, such as Albert Lavada Durst, who became Texas’ first-ever Black radio deejay when he took to Austin’s airwaves in 1948. The Victory Grill didn’t just survive in the face of inequity and systemic racism: It thrived, says Harrison Eppright, an East Austin native and manager of visitor services at the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau.
In my lifetime, I got the chance to visit and see shows at some of the major theaters on the Circuit: The Apollo in New York, The Uptown in Philadelphia, The Regal in Chicago, The Royal in Baltimore, and The Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. Here’s Quincy Jones talking about The Howard:
The Howard was where I first saw “The Jewel Box Revue,” the famous integrated “drag show.” My girlfriends and I all had an immediate crush on the “male” MC of the show, who was actually the only woman in the show—Stormé DeLarverie.
Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box, a 1987 film by Michelle Parkerson, tells her history.
“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Storme DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950’s and 60’s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles. The multiracial revue was a favorite act of the Black theater circuit and attracted mixed mainstream audiences from the 1940s through the 1960s, a time marked by the violence of segregation. Parkerson finds Storme in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, now working as a bodyguard at a women’s bar and still singing in her deep silky voice with an “all girl” band. Through archival clips from the past, STORME looks back on the grandeur of the Jewel Box Revue and its celebration of pure entertainment in the face of homophobia and segregation. Storme herself emerges as a remarkable woman, who came up during hard times but always “kept a touch of class.”
Little Richard also got his start on the Circuit, in drag—as Princess LaVonne.
The Guardian explored the complexity of Little Richard’s career in May.
Rock’n’roll history has never exactly neglected or ignored Little Richard: it just has never quite known what to do with him. The longstanding pissing contest over who can claim the title “King of Rock’n’Roll” – Elvis? Jerry Lee Lewis? – is a case in point. While his authorised biographer went celestial in choosing to style Richard “the Quasar of Rock”, perhaps we might do better to listen to the artist, introducing himself at the Club Matinee in Houston, Texas, in 1953: “Little Richard, King of the Blues … and the Queen, too!”Might we hear in this brash boast an invitation to think in non-binary terms about Little Richard’s place in black musical history? At 20 Little Richard was already a showbiz veteran of half a decade, performing first as a turbaned mysterio and then as a drag queen named Princess LaVonne in the travelling shows that plied the southern black entertainment circuit of the late 1940s.
No one who has ever seen Little Richard live could forget his performances. His biggest hit, “Long Tall Sally” was covered by many famed white performers—like The Beatles, and Elvis.
In my late teens I got to work for the fabulous R&B singer Maxine Brown as a dresser, and got to see her show at the Apollo from the wings backstage. Next Sunday’s piece will feature her, and other underrated Black artists, but here’s a sneak peek of her talent.
I also got to travel with her to small Chitlin Circuit clubs. The other acts were groups like Sam and Dave, Brooks O’Dell, and Curtis Knight and the Squires—who had a young guitar player in the group named Jimi Hendrix.
The circuit and its blues history is intimately explored in the 2015 film I Am the Blues.
In this clip from the film, Bobby Rush and Duck Holmes discuss the racism they experienced performing in the Chicago suburbs.
Give Bobby Rush a listen.
For another look at the experience on the circuit, Alan Leeds’ There was a Time: James Brown, The Chitlin’ Circuit, and Me, which has a foreword from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is an absorbing narrative.
In the mid-’60s, Alan Leeds was a young DJ looking for his way into the music business. An interview with James Brown to promote a local show in Virginia led to an opportunity to promote one of Brown’s concerts, which then led to Brown hiring him to help run his tours. Soon Leeds was wearing many hats and traveling around the country as Brown battled a complicated web of local promoters and managers, all too willing to try to rip him off.
What is compelling about this book is the fact that Leeds, a young white guy from Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, would wind up “on the circuit” as a tour manager for James Brown. He would go on to do the same for Prince—but that’s another story. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who wrote the foreword, has also done an extensive interview with Leeds about his adventures on the road.
The Circuit even made it onto The Daily Show earlier this year.
I don’t know if you’ll be BBQ’ing this Labor Day weekend due to COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing, and even if you are, chitlins will probably not be on the menu—but you can always get into the mood with this music for the soul.
Join me in the comments for more.
