August 9, 2017 The Skanner Page 7
Arts & Entertainment
Albina Jazz Festival Pays Tribute to Portland’s Music History
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
S
tephen Hanks’ father, Zane,
moved to Oregon in 1952. He was
in the Navy and was stationed in
Astoria. But on the weekends he
would come to Portland and visit the
jazz clubs.
In the 1940s and 1950s Portland’s
North Williams Avenue was known as
“Jumptown” or “Black Broadway.” The
neighborhood was dotted with jazz
“
heard Herbie Hancock and the Head
Hunters and George Benson — that’s
what really made me get interested in
jazz,” Hanks said.
Hanks also runs the Portland Pio-
neers of Color Walking Tours, which
takes regular walking tours through
Albina and downtown Portland. About
a year ago, he had the idea to combine
his love of music and his interest in his-
tory, and start a jazz festival that would
pay tribute to jazz clubs in Albina.
The Albina Jazz Festival takes place
The jazz that came in during the World War
II era, it was what we call now modern jazz.
At that time it was called bop, or bebop, and
it was just the hottest thing going on. And so
that’s what came out of Albina
clubs that attracted the hottest jazz per-
formers from all over the country, and
acted as an incubator for local talent.
Due to his parents’ love of music –
Hanks’ mother was also a jazz fan, and
his parents owned a club in downtown
Portland in the 1970s and 1980s called
the Jazz Nest. Hanks grew up listening
to jazz and learning about it. He admits,
though, that he was late in connecting
with the music itself.
“I didn’t really get into jazz too much
until I heard the jazz fusion. When I
this Saturday and Sunday at the Sting-
ray Café in the Left Bank Building on
North Broadway — a venue Hanks spe-
cifically chose because of its connec-
tion to Portland Jazz History.
Jump Town
In 1945 the building now known as
the Left Bank Building housed the Dude
Ranch, which was open for less than a
year, but which historians consider the
birthplace of the Portland jazz scene.
“There never was and there never
will be anything quite like the Dude
Brooks
Brooks’ literary achieve-
ments have made her
an enduring figure in
American
culture—
Black and White. While
much has been said
about her work, her hard
life growing up in segre-
gated Chicago has made
her success all the more
extraordinary.
Some 36 years after
capturing the Pulitzer,
Brooks gave a sit-down
interview in 1986 with
the Library of Congress.
The interview came as
Brooks served as the
29th Consultant in Poet-
ry for the world’s largest
library. Alan Jabbour, the
director of the Library
of Congress’ American
Folklore division, and
E. Ethelbert Miller, poet
and director of the Afri-
can American Resource
Center at Howard Uni-
versity, interviewed her.
The interview is posted
on YouTube.
During the interview,
Brooks was asked how
she learned that she had
won the Pulitzer Prize.
She said: “I was in a
house at 9134 S. Went-
worth and the lights
were out. We hadn’t paid
the electric bill so there
was no electricity and it
was dusk. It was dark in
the house. My son [Hen-
ry Blakely Jr.] was nine
at the time. Jack Starr, a
reporter from the Chica-
go Sun-Times called. He
said ‘do you know that
ERICK JOHNSON/CHICAGO CRUSADER
cont’d from pg 6
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks lived in Chicago’s Ivy Park Homes, formerly
known as the Princeton Park housing project, when she won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1950.
you have won the Pu-
litzer Prize?’ I said ‘no’
and screamed over the
telephone. I couldn’t be-
lieve it. So, he said well,
it was true and it would
be announced the next
day. The next day, report-
“
we would go out to the
movies to celebrate. I
don’t know what movie it
was, before you ask.”
Before
moving
to
Princeton Park Homes,
hard times and finan-
cial challenges forced
My son and I danced around
in the dusk and decided we
would go out to the movies
to celebrate
ers came, photographers
came with cameras and I
was absolutely petrified.
I wasn’t going to say any-
thing about the electrici-
ty. Well, when they tried
to plug their cameras
in—nothing was going to
happen.”
Brooks
continued:
“Well,
miraculously,
somebody had turned the
electricity back on that
fast. I never knew exact-
ly what happened. So my
son and I danced around
in the dusk and decided
Brooks and her husband
to move about six times
on the South Side. Brooks
used the profits of a sale
of a house in Kalama-
zoo, Michigan to buy the
house at 7428 S. Evans
in the Chicago’s Greater
Grand Crossing neigh-
borhood. According to
author George Kent’s
1990 book, “A Life of
Gwendolyn Brooks,” she
lived in that house from
1953 to 1994. Today, the
home is a Chicago land-
mark.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LEFT BANK PROJECT
Veteran musicians, newcomers play in historic building on N. Broadway
This weekend’s Albina Jazz Festival, which celebrates the history of jazz in Portland, will take place in the
Stingray Café on N. Broadway, which in 1945 housed the Dude Ranch, one of the city’s first jazz venues.
Pictured here is Louis Armstrong with Dude Ranch owners Pat Patterson and Sherman Pickett.
Ranch,” writes historian Robert Diet-
sche in the 2005 book, “Jump Town: the
Golden Years of Portland Jazz, 1942-
1957.” “It was the Cotton Club, the Apol-
lo Theater, Las Vegas, the Wild West
rolled into one. It was the shooting star
in the history of Portland jazz, a meteor
bursting with an array of the best Black
and Tan entertainment this town has
ever seen: strippers, then called shake
dancers, ventriloquists, comics, jug-
glers, torch singers, world-renowned
tap dancers like Teddy Hale, and of
course the very best of jazz.”
“The jazz that came in during the
World War II era, it was what we call
now modern jazz,” Hanks said. “At that
time it was called bop, or bebop, and it
was just the hottest thing going on. And
so that’s what came out of Albina.”
All the neighborhood’s other night
clubs were casualties of a series of
urban renewal projects that also de-
stroyed hundreds of homes and the
rest of Albina’s business district, which
thrived well into the 1970s.
In addition to boasting several thriv-
ing venues, the Albina jazz scene was
See JAZZ on page 8
