Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project
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GIBB, INTERVIEW Cass Corridor Documentation Project Oral History Project Interviewee: Russ Gibb Relationship to Cass Corridor: The Grande Ballroom (owner), Radio DJ (WKNR-FM- Detroit), Concert Promoter, Teacher (Dearborn High School), Entrepreneur. Interviewer: Timothy J. Fritz Date of Interview: March 25, 2011 Location: Dearborn, MI. (Gibb’s Residence) Editor’s note: Included in this interview transcript are comments made by Mr. Gibb’s secretary, Jenny Estrada, and director and photographer, Zeke Anders. The latter filmed the event for possible future publication. [Prior to starting the interview there are a few comments concerning Mr. Gibb’s do.] FRITZ: It's March 25th. This interview is with Russ Gibb at Mr. Gibb’s residence in Dearborn, Michigan. Mr. Gibb, please tell me about where you were born and grew up. GIBB: Well, I was born, I just recently looked, I think I was born in Children’s Hospital in Detroit, if there was such a thing back then. I lived my first couple years in—I’m laughing at the 1 GIBB, INTERVIEW dog. He’s performing some natural activities over there. I grew up in Detroit on Willette Street. My parents were both immigrants. My dad was a factory worker and my mom was a maid. And you know, it was during the Depression and being poor is being poor. We lived in an upstairs flat. I remember, because my mother and father both worked, that the little girl next door—there were two daughters with an old Russian family and Beenie was probably a senior in high school or just a graduate of high school—she would take care of me while mother was working. My mother worked for some rich Jewish family up around Six Mile. I think Six Mile and Woodward. There was a great Jewish community there at one time. I think I even saw the place where she worked years later. I was associated with Joey Nelander of the Nelander Theatre family and his mother, Apple Nelander, lived in one of those old apartments over there. Beautiful apartments as I recall. That’s where my mother worked. That was my first memory that I could ever think of growing up was the fact that I saw — [Gibb begins to speak to the dog who has taken the interviewer’s glasses from the table and is preparing to chew them up.] Anyway, the first memory I ever had as a child was sitting on an upstairs porch with an awning. I don’t know if they still make awnings anymore, but years ago everybody had an awning on the porch. And of course, my parents rented the house at Willette and Livernois Avenue. I remember sitting up there and all of a sudden I looked up and I saw stars. [Dog interrupts again] 2 GIBB, INTERVIEW Yeah, just put him outside. This is ridiculous. He’s showing off for everybody. What are you going to do? How you going to talk about that? Unless I was Bill Maher. And then I could be insulting to everybody. He [Maher] likes to go after that Sarah Palin lady. He called her a cunt the other night. That’s a little bit far. Insulting. He’s the comic? I’m laughing at him because he’s so stupid. Anyway, I remember looking up underneath the awning, sort of peeking my head out over the porch as a little baby, and seeing the stars for the first time and it was amazing. I remember Bernie, Bernice Havankovich I think her name was. And [to] Bernie I said, what are those things, those lights in the sky? Somehow I said that. And she told me they were stars and that that was where God lived, out there in the stars. And years later, I was listening to a recording of a play called “Knickerbocker Holiday.” There was a song and one of the lines in the thing was “Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night. And we’re lost out here, in the stars.” That sort of stayed with me. That was one of my first memories growing up in Detroit. Detroit was a great city at one time. It has fallen upon hard times. Will it come back? Of course it will come back. To what it was? No. But it’ll come back. Can’t keep a good man down. Can’t keep a good woman down and you can’t keep a good city down. Anyway, that’s where I grew up. That was my early times. The other memory growing up was her [Bernice] father was a Russian with an accent. He had a great big crock down in his cellar that he made kapusta [in]. You know what kapusta is? FRITZ: I think I’ve heard of it, yes. 3 GIBB, INTERVIEW GIBB: It’s sort of a cabbage soup I guess, or sauerkraut or something. I had never had coffee and he made his own coffee. He had beans and they would grind them and put them in this contraption and then put hot water in it. I remember I was sitting down there, she would plop me at the table with her father, and he said, “You want some coffee?” I tried it and it was great. Then he gave some of the bread that I think his wife made. It was black bread with butter. So, those were some of the best memories I have of Detroit. My first job was in Detroit. There was a big market right next to us. Two houses over [or] one house over. There was this big sort of semi-open market on Livernois and Michigan Avenue, which was kitty-corner to the Lincoln plant. Ford had built this great big factory down there making Lincolns. It was kitty-corner to this big outdoor market. It was semi-outdoor, semi- indoor, sort of like Eastern Market is today, but it was down there. I got my first job and I don’t know how old I was. I was pretty young, maybe five, six. I shelled peas. In those days, the farmers would bring in the food. Of course everybody had a garden in their own house. We all had gardens, that was part of the game in Detroit. During the Second World War they called them victory gardens, but before those times it was food gardens, gardens that we could eat something out of during the Depression. I shelled peas and I got fifteen cents an hour. That wasn’t very much. We didn’t have a union back then. But it was a job and we were quite happy having that particular job. But I did get even with that market one time. They were having a drawing for a turkey at Thanksgiving and if you bought some vegetables from some of these stands they would each give you a little number. Then they would put it in a big barrel and then on a certain day, we were to go in and they were going to draw out a winning number and you would get a free turkey. I was selected to pull out the number and I remember this was my first 4 GIBB, INTERVIEW appearance live on stage in Detroit, at the market pulling out a piece of paper with a number on it. Guess whose name I pulled out? Go on Guess. Mine. I pulled my own name out. So, I won the turkey and everybody thought it was rigged. And of course it was. Life goes on. Then we moved. We moved to Dearborn and the rest of my time was spent in Dearborn, Michigan, growing up and finding out what that was all about. Dearborn was out in the sticks back then. Remember, Outer Drive in Michigan at one time was Outer Drive! You went to the other side of Outer Drive and you were in the country. [The] first horseback experience I ever had, or horseback ride, was on Joy Road and Telegraph Road. There was great big riding academy, not academy that was too fancy a word. [A] stable and you could rent a horse. That’s the first time I ever rode a horse. We were out in the sticks! We were on Wyoming Avenue. I grew up on Kentucky Street. They were so original back there. The street before Kentucky Street in Dearborn was Indiana. And before that was Wisconsin. And then you got the waterworks. Of course the waterworks were always an amazing thing to me in Dearborn. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Detroit waterworks, which gives water to Dearborn too, by the way, even today. There was a great huge building that looks something like Hoover Dam to me. My buddy and I Butch Hainburg, he was a crippled boy. Oh yeah, we didn’t call him handicapped, he was crippled! Butch was a gimp! He was my best friend in grade school in Dearborn. We would go hunting rabbits with BB guns. We never caught any rabbits but I’m sure we gave a few of them a pain in the you- know-what. If rabbits can feel pain in their fannies. We never killed them but we went hunting them, actually at the waterworks. It was always a great mystery of what went on in this huge mammoth plant with concrete. That’s why it always reminded me of Hoover Dam. That’s still down there today. Kitty-corner to that was the, not the DeSoto plant that was up on 5 GIBB, INTERVIEW Wyoming and.