The Chitlin' Circuit by Preston Lauterbach

Author:Preston Lauterbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

Houston

We last saw Don Robey armed like an outlaw, hauling bags of money into the bank. This scene repeated dozens of times in the years since the Bronze Peacock opened. Repetition bored Robey, however—we should be so unfortunate—and 1949 found him after new kicks. While Denver’s fuses fizzled, Robey’s fired.

Gatemouth Brown moved steadily across Robey’s chitlin’ circuit territory, zigzagging through Texas’s black nightclubs, and borderhopping to Louisiana rarely with a day off.* “A fine station wagon, newly bought and lettered with all his latest hits, sure hits yokels in the eye when he arrives in their town,” the Houston Informer noted.9 But Robey had hoped to impress more than the yokels by now. Two years after sending Gatemouth on the road, Robey had realized Gatemouth wasn’t Louis Jordan. Robey felt that Houston star Amos Milburn’s success came at a cost to Gatemouth. Both artists recorded for Aladdin Records, but there the comparison ended. Amos’s tunes sold fabulously, and the company focused its promotional efforts on him, while releasing only two Gatemouth couplings during their two-year contract. Robey knew he couldn’t get Gatemouth out of the territory and into the national scene without more records and broader marketing. And Robey knew he wouldn’t be able to do it alone.

Not long before Gatemouth materialized at the Bronze Peacock back in early 1947, a dreaded event had brought Robey unexpected, pleasant results. Six months after the Peacock opened, the IRS scheduled a visit. Perhaps an agent had witnessed Robey’s dramatic bank deposits. Robey’s business manager panicked. She called a coolheaded, smart friend, Evelyn Johnson. “I have a problem,” the business manager told Evelyn. “I need to get these books straight so we can beat this tax audit.” So Evelyn took her first trip to the Bronze Peacock. In her patent leather heels, she stood nearly a head taller than Robey. Evelyn’s confident air, azure eyes, and sculpted physique made Robey’s heart palpitate. He found Evelyn’s book-cooking as appealing as her looks—she aced the revenuers—and he wanted to keep her around. Evelyn happened to have been between jobs after overabsorption of radiation ended her career as an X-ray nurse. Robey hired her as secretary of the Bronze Peacock nightclub, but she quickly assumed leadership of day-to-day operations. She was at the Bronze Peacock during its finest hours—T-Bone Walker’s panty parties and Gatemouth Brown’s debut.10 And as Robey and Johnson realized that Aladdin had abandoned their prodigy, an idea for all Robey’s free time and extra money dawned on them.

“Don Robey was a very enterprising person,” Johnson recalled. “He welcomed any challenge. His whole attitude was that we didn’t need Aladdin to put out records on Gatemouth Brown.

“I said ‘well how do you make a record?’

“He said ‘Hell, I don’t know, that’s for you to find out.’”11

Robey helped more than Evelyn let on. He came up with the company’s name: Peacock Records. He developed a strategy for growing the Peacock brand, based on the old model that he and Morris Merritt had used to promote dances in the 1930s.

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