Tag Archives: Count Basie

Black History Month – Count Basie and Robinson Center

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count-basieWilliam James “Count” Basie performed at Robinson Center throughout his career.  His first appearance was in the early days of the building, when it was known as Robinson Memorial Auditorium.  His last appearance was in the early 1980s.

Born in New Jersey, he grew up playing the piano.  He arrived in Harlem in the early 1920s and took part in the rise of jazz during the 1920s.  He split the decade between touring and playing in a variety of Harlem night spots.  In 1929, he relocated to Kansas City and became the pianist for Bennie Moten.  It was during this time that he started arranging for bands as well.  By 1936, Basie had his own band – Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm.  He also started introducing blues music into his sets.

In 1937, he moved back to New York.  It would be his base throughout the 1940s. Though he also started appearing in films starting in 1942.  He also started incorporating bebop into his music.  After World War II, he disbanded his Big Band and reformed with an orchestra.  He would lead this group until the early 1980s.

While an outstanding musician, he was also notable for his role as a composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was constantly experimenting.  When two of his tenor saxophonists were complaining, he split them and placed them on opposites of the band creating dueling tenor saxes. He also started incorporating flutes into his orchestra, introducing them into more popular music.

As a musical personality, he joined the ranks of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong in helping to break the color barrier. He was featured in movies and TV at time that segregation was still well in practice.

Over his career, Count Basie received nine Grammy awards and has four recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame.  He was a 1981 Kennedy Center Honors recipient, and received the Grammy Trustees Award in 1981 and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 2002.

Black History Month Spotlight – Taborian Hall and Dreamland Ballroom

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The new Arkansas Civil Rights History Audio Tour was launched in November 2015. Produced by the City of Little Rock and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock allows the many places and stories of the City’s Civil Rights history to come to life an interactive tour.  This month, during Black History Month, the Culture Vulture looks at some of the stops on this tour which focus on African American history.

Completed in 1918, Taborian Hall stands as one of the last reminders of the once-prosperous West Ninth Street African-American business and cultural district. West Ninth Street buildings included offices for black professionals, businesses, hotels, and entertainment venues. In 1916, the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal insurance organization, hired local black contractor Simeon Johnson to enlarge an existing building to accommodate their activities, other offices and a ballroom.

During World War I, black soldiers from Camp Pike came to the Negro Soldiers Service Center here. In World War II, Taborian Hall was home to the Ninth Street USO, catering to black soldiers from Camp Robinson. By 1936, Dreamland Ballroom hosted basketball games, boxing matches, concerts and dances.

A regular stop for popular black entertainers on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” Dreamland hosted Cab Callaway, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Ray Charles. Arkansas’s own Louis Jordan also performed here. Between the 1960s and 1980s, West Ninth Street declined, and many buildings were demolished. In 1991, Taborian Hall was renovated to house Arkansas Flag and Banner. Once again, Dreamland Ballroom hosts concerts and social events.

The app, funded by a generous grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, was a collaboration among UALR’s Institute on Race and Ethnicity, the City of Little Rock, the Mayor’s Tourism Commission, and KUAR, UALR’s public radio station, with assistance from the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau.

2015 In Memoriam – Jim Porter

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1515 Porter

In these final days of 2015, we pause to look back at 15 who influenced Little Rock’s cultural scene who left us in 2015.

Jim Porter, Jr., spent a lifetime promoting music in Little Rock.  Along the way, he created social change as well.

A native of Little Rock, he graduated from Little Rock High School and the University of Arkansas.  After college, Jim started out in the family businesses and tried to follow a “traditional” path that his father had paved for him. Working in sales and public relations, he became active doing volunteer work.  Jim realized that the “traditional” path was not for him, and while working in the family businesses, he started bringing in top name entertainers, many of them black, to perform in Little Rock. He was not a singer, nor did he play any instrument, but his love for music and all things connected to music led him towards his calling as an agent/manager and promoter of musicians.

As a promoter of national artists and bands, Jim ran into southern racism and segregation. The Central High crisis in 1957 caused many black artists to refuse to come to Little Rock, fearful for their safety. Jim was forced to concentrate more on booking and managing local musicians through what was at the time Arkansas’ only full time booking and talent agency, Consolidated Talent Corporation (later to become Porter Entertainment). During his booking career from the late 50’s until his retirement in 2001, Jim placed talent across Arkansas (and even in Las Vegas) at clubs, hotels, restaurants, and private functions- anywhere that people needed entertainment.

Jim saw first hand the inequities of black musicians in Arkansas, the separate and very unequal accommodations, and the segregated venues. Never giving up promoting national artists, the 60’s led him and his co-investors to bring in such national names (mostly jazz artists) such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Woody Herman, the Four Freshman, Dave Brubeck, George Shearing, Harry James and others.

In 1961, he was arrested for integrating a concert at Robinson Auditorium. A white man, he had entered the segregated balcony.  Knowing the challenges of booking acts in a segregated house (indeed Duke Ellington would cancel his booking at Robinson), Porter had tried to get the facility to change its rules.  It was 1966, when Louis Armstrong returned to Little Rock and played before an integrated house that the new rules were here to stay.  In the early 1970s, he helped bring the musical Hair to Little Rock, with the specter of full nudity causing consternation to Robinson Auditorium and some of the citizenry.

Jim was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Arkansas Jazz Heritage Foundation Hall of Fame in 2006. He was appointed to the Martin Luther King Commission in 2005 and entered politics to serve as a member of the Pulaski County Quorum Court from 1998 until 2006.

Always an entrepreneur, Jim also started MusAd Recording Studio, where commercial jingles were produced and bands could record demo tapes. The Hot Air Balloon Theatre (in the old Center Theatre on Main Street) was the site for G-movies and live entertainment for kids. The Yellow Rocket, an arcade in the “Heights” is still remembered by now middle-aged adults who spent afternoons and weekends feeding money into the game machines and eating snacks. Jim wrote several books, hosted TV shows (“After Five” and “Scene Around”) featuring restaurants, bars, clubs and their patrons and employees. He was featured on a weekly radio show about dining and entertainment, and wrote “Scene Around” columns and a dining and entertainment guide for the Arkansas Democrat.

Black History Month Spotlight: O.C. Smith

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bhm o cThe life of O. C. Smith, according to one biography, ‘has had the flow and tempo of a hit song that finds its audience and never lets go.” His million-seller song “Little Green Apples” won a Grammy nomination.

Smith also is known for the hits “Hickory Holler’s Tramp” and “Daddy’s Little Man,” and is remembered for singing the themes from the motion pictures “The Learning Tree”and “Shaft’s Big Score.” Songs such as “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times,” “That’s Life,” “Don’t Misunderstand,” “Dreams Come True” and “What “Cha Gonna Do” are all contributions to the music world from Smith.

Smith’s story begins in the small community of Mansfield, LA. At age 10, his parents, both teachers, relocated to Little Rock. After his parents divorced, Smith and his mother moved to Los Angeles.

Smith later returned to Louisiana to attended Southern University at Baton Rouge, majoring in psychology. He served the Air Force and Special Services as an entertainer on military bases all over the world.

After his stint with Uncle Sam, Smith settled in New York and began his singing career, working in clubs in the winter and at the legendary “Borsch Belt” hotels in the Catskill Mountains in the summer. He eventually signed on with Count Basie and toured with him for three years. He left Basie for a solo career that got a boost with the hit “Little Green Apples.”

At the height of his music career, Smith began studying Religious Science and subsequently became a minister. In 1985, he founded the City of Angels Church of Religious Science, where he practiced for 16 years. One of his last recordings, “Save The Last Dance For Me” reached the number one position on the Rhythm n’ Beach Top 40 chart.

He died on November 23, 2001.  In 1996, Smith was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.  For more on O.C. Smith and other inductees into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.