BY A.B. Spellman

Denver Ferguson outside the Ferguson Building, Senate Avenue, Indianapolis, 1931. BY A.B. Spellman 36 November / December 2011 resenters who think that they that issued from the musicians as the times work under rotten conditions in changed. The Memphis writer Preston Pless than ideal facilities, dragging Lauter bach has written a breezy and infor- cash-strapped audiences to performances mative history of the circuit. Though less by temperamental artists, should read than definitive, and certainly not a study or Preston Lauterbach’s The Chitlin’ Circuit. survey, the stories that he knits together The chitlin’ circuit was a roadmap of dance make for an enjoyable biopsy of an under- halls, auditoriums, nightclubs, and ad hoc examined aspect of popular music at the sites where African American popular pivot point of mid-century American culture. musicians appeared from the late ’30s to the According to Lauterbach’s sources, the early ’50s. It replaced the Theatre Owners’ chitlin’ circuit was started by one Denver Booking Association, or TOBA—bitterly called Ferguson, one of several million African Tough on Black Artists or Tough on Black Americans who left the lynch-mad south Ass by the vaudevillians who toured it. The after World War I in what is now called the TOBA expired in 1930, killed off by the Great Migration. Denver settled in Indian- THE CHITLIN’ CIRCUIT AND Great Depression. apolis. Indiana was no paragon of racial THE ROAD TO ROCK ’N’ ROLL The chitlin’ circuit was a different kind harmony, however. Ku Klux Klan (if they PRESTON LAUTERBACH of beast altogether; organized by African weren’t so grotesque, you’d laugh at the W. W. Norton & Company Americans, it was intimately set in their primitive stupidity of that name) member- 338 pp. communities and open to the innovations ship was rising in the state; some counts ISBN: 978-0-393-07652-3 37 hold that 25 percent of the white male They gave generously to charitable causes clubs. Barnes thought Capone “a regular population belonged. In Indiana, the Kluxers and invested in the projects of entrepreneurs guy” for good reason: once, when Barnes had a label, KKK Records, which claimed to from the community. Their breakthrough approached a Chicago station about a produce “the best in Klan music.” Among initiative occurred in 1931, when they weekly broadcast like Duke Ellington’s, the its titles were “The Bright Fiery Cross” and bought the Odd Fellows Hall from white manager replied, “We don’t air colored.” “Daddy Stole Our Last Clean Bed Sheet and people who were abandoning the area. On When told of this, Capone commanded the Joined the Ku Klux Klan.” the ground floor, Sea operated the brothers’ manager, “You do now.” He did. Ferguson opened a profitable print shop real estate office and the Cotton Club. On But in 1931 Capone was imprisoned for and soon began producing the baseball the third floor, Denver opened the elegant tax evasion, and Barnes was dumped by his tickets that were the tools of his numbers Trianon Ballroom. The two operations were booking agency, the syndicate-sponsored business. He employed 200 or so runners, the pride of local black nightlife. Music Corporation of America. He needed the who surveyed a twenty-block square around A parallel development involved Chicago’s Southern market. Barnes mentioned in his Indiana Avenue, the commercial and enter- Walter Barnes. When the variety shows column that he was open for bookings. He tainment strip for African Americans. The that had toured with the TOBA were nearly filled dancehalls across the South, and the runners dropped in at barbershops and beauty dead, artists, without fully booked tours, Royal Creolians become the most functional parlors, social clubs, bars and restaurants, were left stranded all over the South. of the regional bands. One gig set him at homes—any place where customers might Barnes, who wrote a column in the Denver Ferguson’s Trianon Ballroom. Lauter- be enrolled. The thing about the numbers Chicago Defender, the greatest bach does not tell us of any tutorials on tour game, even though it was rigged, was that organization that Ferguson might have you could get a piece of the action for as received from Barnes; but it is a neat spec- ulation, as Ferguson clearly reproduced the Barnes model when he organized his tours. Walter Barnes died at 34 in 1939 in a dancehall fire outside Natchez, Mississippi. The ballroom was one of those wooden structures with one working exit (to keep people from sneaking in) that touring bands dreaded so much. Seeing the fleeing patrons trample one another at the door, Barnes tried to calm them by commanding the band to continue playing, like the famous musicians on the Titanic. Two hundred nine Sax section of International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a band on Ferguson’s roster people were killed in this conflagration. Barnes was eulogized in numerous songs. little as a dime. The same organizing and of the African American newspapers, would Richard Wright described the fire in his financial principles underlay the chitlin’ cir- receive and publish such notices as: “Little 1958 novel, The Long Dream. Howlin’ Wolf cuit, as Denver Ferguson superintended it. Skinny Robinson, ivory tickler, is ready to and John Lee Hooker sang of it in the ’50s Promoters needed agents in the communities hit the road again. Replies should be sent and ’60s. to recruit audiences, and though dollars were to 212 S. Fourth St., Memphis.” In the post- In December 1941, the aftermath of a extremely precious among black people TOBA vacuum, Barnes’s column functioned fatal shooting at a nightclub that was owned during the Depression, their nickels and as a clearinghouse of supply and demand by rivals of the Ferguson brothers resulted dimes added up. for entertainment across the South. in unapologetic racists imposing their Denver brought in his brother, Sea, to help Barnes also was a reed player who led a authority on a neighborhood scene they with his expanding businesses. The Fergusons successful regional band called Walter had previously ignored. As black business were good race men, that is, they believed Barnes and his Royal Creolians. He was well in Indianapolis constricted, Denver founded in the advancement of African American established in Chicago, for his was a the Ferguson Brothers’ Booking Agency. He people through education and achievement. favored house band for Al Capone’s night- hooked up with the Chicago-based Bluebird 38 January / February 2012 A Walter Barnes promotional flier. A Chicago journalist and bandleader, Barnes led an ensemble that played dancehalls across the South just before Denver Ferguson founded his booking agency. Records, a syndicate As black hotels were intermission to count the money. First operation. The mutual benefits rare in the segregated money went to the band and the agent; the of such relationships were clear: the agents South, band members promoter then kept an amount equal to needed to get the records on the jukeboxes stayed with families. (My family once housed the band’s guarantee. If profits were greater to promote their events, and the labels some of Lucky Millinder’s musicians.) Where than “the nut,” as that sum was called, the needed the events to promote their artists. traditional venues were lacking, Denver’s artists and promoters split the balance. Denver signed several bluesy swing bands: agents used alternatives, such as tobacco The agent wired his share to Denver. The the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, barns, warehouses and fraternal lodges. In margin of error on tour was thin; a single an all-female band that called itself my town, Millinder played a dance at the cancellation would strand a band. “International” because it had Hawaiian and gym of the local black college. Another dance The war changed everything. Factories Chinese members, and ensembles led by was held at the high school gym. These were hiring black men and women, and King Kolax, whom he advertised as the equal, gymnasium events were considered to be many bought their first houses and cars. if not the superior, of Louis Armstrong; better than most by the musicians. Eighty- Denver’s business thrived; he opened an drummer Tiny Bradshaw; and pianist Jay six-year-old Sax Kari (born Isaac Saxton office in Los Angeles to handle an expanded McShann, who would make music history Kari Toombs), a guitarist and bandleader on custom. For a time, the agent replaced the by giving Charlie Parker his first recorded the circuit back in the day, told Lauterbach: record producer as the power in the industry, solo. He also toured several blues shouters, “When you got into a place that had running just as the record company had replaced like Roosevelt Sykes and Big Maybelle. water inside, why you were fortunate.” The the publisher a generation earlier. Shellac Denver laid these bands on Walter Barnes’s band played for two and a half hours, took a was diverted from vinyl for records to martial network, and the chitlin’ circuit was founded. half-hour intermission, and played another purposes, and the companies changed over Mimicking the system that he had created hour and a half. in 1942 to military production. Most impor- on Indiana Avenue, Ferguson recruited agents The average chitlin’ circuit band com- tant, gasoline rationing greatly reduced the who tracked the local social establishments manded a fee of $350. Kari: “The circuit number of buses that were availed to bands, and brewed anticipation for the coming was never about making big which meant that they had to travel by car, shows. His print shop provided the promo- money, it was about making which meant that they became smaller.

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