Read Online The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal by Mark Ribowsky - Free Book Online Page A
Book: The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal by Mark Ribowsky
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Ribowsky
Tags: United States, General, Biography & Autobiography, music, Biography, Women Singers, Genres & Styles, Cultural Heritage, Women, History & Criticism, Composers & Musicians, Pop Vocal, Supremes (Musical Group), Soul & R 'N B, Vocal Groups, Women Singers - United States, Da Capo Press, 0306818736 9780306818738 0306815869 9780306815867
Ads: Link
rusty old bolt, may be the most identifiable vestige of the old, now dismantled, Detroit, its stubborn refusal to go down a bold refrain of what once was. In its salad days, by its location St. Josaphat’s was part of the rhythm and blues of the east side, a gateway to the seductions of John R and Canfield—and, to the parish, a refuge, with priests on duty around the clock to catch a stray soul or two after a particularly memorable night.
Not incidentally, the shortest walk from the front door took one to the biggest seduction on the block, the Flame Show Bar at 4664 John R
Street. Its name could not have been more perfectly applied. The Flame Show was beyond hot. At around 10 on a Saturday night, the joint was jumping, stinking of sweat, stogies, cheap beer, and cheaper perfume. It wasn’t merely crowded, it was Siamese-twin close, felicitously, joining blacks at the shoulder with a fair number of whites still extant on the east side or on loan from the better neighborhoods. The fire marshals didn’t try to enforce the capacity limit of 200 seats, allowing a great fuse of bumping and grinding when an act came on to sing or play jazz and the blues with the Maurice King combo, the Wolverines.
The exterior of the Flame Show quickened the pulse. The front door, angled catty-corner at the crux of the two streets, was recessed beneath a giant semicircular marquee with wooden letters spelling “FLAME,” 23
0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 24
24
THE SUPREMES
each letter illuminated by dozens of neon lightbulbs. Acts were billboarded on three tiers of wraparound ribbons, and “FLAME SHOW
BAR” emblazoned the entire white wall on each side. The best sign, though, was outside the lobby—“NO DOOR CHARGE.” At any given time, the acts could be T-Bone Walker, Billie Holiday, Wynonie Harris, Sarah Vaughn, hometown sons like John Lee Hooker, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Little Willie John, or anyone who’d passed muster with the also aptly named King, who in his spangled turquoise tux was nearly royalty among the clubbing crowds. Having once led an all-girl touring jazz band some years before that had comprised whites, blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, and Native Americans, King wasn’t just a bandleader; he and the band seemingly could make anyone into a crowd-pleaser with a few well-turned moves.
He’d done just that with no less than Johnny Ray, the white crooner whom King let live with him during his tutorial, whereupon Ray had a brief but explosive run as a ’50s record heartthrob.
With lines always stretched down John R, patrons realized the preferred way of entry was to flash some green, not just for the doorman but inside, where the hustles went on nonstop, most heatedly along the 100-foot-long bar that snaked around two mirrored walls. As Thomas “Beans” Bowles, a horn player in the band, noted, “If you had enough money, you could get anything at the Flame”—and by that he meant anything , whether it be booze, reefer, women, and possibly a hot watch or ring.
But then, such bartering rituals were played out all around downtown, in the roughly sixty-block corridor that included Black Bottom—
so named not for a racial component but because the soil tilled by its French settlers was so dark and fertile, yet centuries later no less suitable for the asphalt-paved streets—and the more bucolic-sounding Paradise Valley (a grid more recently named for the Asian paradise trees that lined its thoroughfares). Both metaphors, opposite yet in tune, had become quasi-official euphemisms for the inner-city experience, a tacit suspension of hard reality eased into wistful plausibility by the bounds of music and community.
One went with the other, gravy to the mashed potatoes, and the plate was especially full in the late ’50s. The clubs were everywhere, clumped thickly along the motherlode of Hastings Street running straight down the heart of the Valley and bleeding onto
Not incidentally, the shortest walk from the front door took one to the biggest seduction on the block, the Flame Show Bar at 4664 John R
Street. Its name could not have been more perfectly applied. The Flame Show was beyond hot. At around 10 on a Saturday night, the joint was jumping, stinking of sweat, stogies, cheap beer, and cheaper perfume. It wasn’t merely crowded, it was Siamese-twin close, felicitously, joining blacks at the shoulder with a fair number of whites still extant on the east side or on loan from the better neighborhoods. The fire marshals didn’t try to enforce the capacity limit of 200 seats, allowing a great fuse of bumping and grinding when an act came on to sing or play jazz and the blues with the Maurice King combo, the Wolverines.
The exterior of the Flame Show quickened the pulse. The front door, angled catty-corner at the crux of the two streets, was recessed beneath a giant semicircular marquee with wooden letters spelling “FLAME,” 23
0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 24
24
THE SUPREMES
each letter illuminated by dozens of neon lightbulbs. Acts were billboarded on three tiers of wraparound ribbons, and “FLAME SHOW
BAR” emblazoned the entire white wall on each side. The best sign, though, was outside the lobby—“NO DOOR CHARGE.” At any given time, the acts could be T-Bone Walker, Billie Holiday, Wynonie Harris, Sarah Vaughn, hometown sons like John Lee Hooker, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Little Willie John, or anyone who’d passed muster with the also aptly named King, who in his spangled turquoise tux was nearly royalty among the clubbing crowds. Having once led an all-girl touring jazz band some years before that had comprised whites, blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, and Native Americans, King wasn’t just a bandleader; he and the band seemingly could make anyone into a crowd-pleaser with a few well-turned moves.
He’d done just that with no less than Johnny Ray, the white crooner whom King let live with him during his tutorial, whereupon Ray had a brief but explosive run as a ’50s record heartthrob.
With lines always stretched down John R, patrons realized the preferred way of entry was to flash some green, not just for the doorman but inside, where the hustles went on nonstop, most heatedly along the 100-foot-long bar that snaked around two mirrored walls. As Thomas “Beans” Bowles, a horn player in the band, noted, “If you had enough money, you could get anything at the Flame”—and by that he meant anything , whether it be booze, reefer, women, and possibly a hot watch or ring.
But then, such bartering rituals were played out all around downtown, in the roughly sixty-block corridor that included Black Bottom—
so named not for a racial component but because the soil tilled by its French settlers was so dark and fertile, yet centuries later no less suitable for the asphalt-paved streets—and the more bucolic-sounding Paradise Valley (a grid more recently named for the Asian paradise trees that lined its thoroughfares). Both metaphors, opposite yet in tune, had become quasi-official euphemisms for the inner-city experience, a tacit suspension of hard reality eased into wistful plausibility by the bounds of music and community.
One went with the other, gravy to the mashed potatoes, and the plate was especially full in the late ’50s. The clubs were everywhere, clumped thickly along the motherlode of Hastings Street running straight down the heart of the Valley and bleeding onto
Similar Books
