Iconic Restaurants of Butler County, Ohio by Teri Horsley

Author:Teri Horsley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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THE EATON MANOR AND SHADY NOOK

THE EATON MANOR

Tragedy struck Hamilton’s nightclub—and America’s music world—on June 6, 1936, when famed singer Johnny Black died in the parking lot of Club Dardenella, his Dixie Highway speakeasy that would eventually become Hamilton’s popular Eaton Manor supper club. Witnesses said that the forty-one-year-old Black got into a fight with a twenty-year-old customer over a quarter left on the bar, and the argument became so heated that the two moved outside. There’s disagreement about what happened next, with some saying Black was pushed by the customer and others saying he fell on the step. However it happened, Black fell and hit his head, knocking him unconscious, but he awoke after he was carried back into the club. The next day, however, Black again lost consciousness, and after being rushed to Hamilton’s Mercy Hospital, he died two days later from a cerebral hemorrhage.

JOHNNY BLACK

Though Johnny Black’s music became even more popular after the dramatic circumstances surrounding his death, his life was equally as dramatic, with Black being recognized as both a musician and an inventor. After reaching his late teens in Hamilton, Black opened a music store and eventually travelled the vaudeville circuit—first with his dad, then as a one-man band. It was during these years that Black wrote his popular 1919 song, “Dardenella,” which he later used as the name of his club. (Before taking over, Black worked as a piano player for Bill Huey, the manager of the club that was first known as Shadowland.) Black was a master of several instruments, and as a teenager, on his own, he sold the rights to “Dardenella” for only twenty-five dollars because he needed the money. The song eventually earned over $12 million, which is comparable to $180 million today. Though Black sued those who purchased his song, he only received around $20,000 in damages. Though Black lost out financially, his song continued to grow in popularity, and eventually, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby included it in their joint album known as Bing & Satchmo. Black also wrote the popular 1915 song “Paper Doll,” which never became a hit until the 1940s, when it was recorded by the Mills Brothers. Just like with “Dardenella,” the question of the ownership of the rights to “Paper Doll” ended up in court, and Black’s first wife won her case after he died, claiming that Black used her song “My Doll” to pen his hit. With all of his troubles, Black began to drink heavily as he played vaudeville, often showing up drunk on stage. By the 1930s, the down-and-out Black had returned to the Hamilton/Fairfield area, where he began playing at various clubs before he rented the building that housed the speakeasy where he would later receive the injuries that led to his death. During this time, Black also began to invent products, as he had when he was a teen, and he was the first to come up with a mail-order product that would get rid of bedbugs;

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