"Cleveland, Ohio and Cuyahoga County are my home. If events come together that take me and my family to another location, it will be as a result of opportunities presented as a result of what we have learned and gained from our lives here.
"My work has given me a greater appreciation for my hometown, and made me look closer at every person, every building, every public space. Cleveland has suffered greatly through the second half of the 20th Century and I do not have the answers as how to make it a thriving metropolis again. Even during the depths of the Depression, Cleveland was a thriving, throbbing place where things were happening. I can be part of that -- indeed, I have spent all of my creative energies striving to be exactly that. The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture have invested in me as an artist, and I promise to make a strong return on that investment."
Creative Workforce Fellowship Final Report Filed at 5:59 AM, January 31, 2011
Yes, the 50s. In Cleveland. The birthplace of Rock n' Roll, where a riot where no music was played, certainly none anyone could hear, and was broken up during the first song, has been declared the first rock concert. That was in 1952.
None of the characters in These Are The Times would have listened to "rock and roll" during the 1950s, not even the younger ones. That was strictly for teenagers. However, it happened. And there is history.
Elvis Presley was 19 years old in mid-1954 when he recorded That's All Right in Memphis, Tennessee. And that is a dynamite freaking record. At that time they called what he was doing "rockabilly" and one of his nicknames was "The Hillbilly Cat." For the time being, he was strictly a Southern phenomenon ... until October 20, 1955 when he played his first gig above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Autographs for Cleveland girls
Brooklyn High School (that's Brooklyn, Ohio) held a rock n' roll concert that night, crafted by DJ Bill Randle, and starring Bill Haley & The Comets, The Four Lads and Pat Boone. Elvis was an unknown addition to the bill.
Randle had been playing their records in Cleveland since January and still thinking he had spotted a winner, he plugged the "sensational young singer" in his Oct. 1, 1955, newspaper column, "Randle on Record," as the singer "whose style is a combination of hillbilly nasalties, rock ’n’ roll, Johnnie Ray and a peculiar sound all his own. The new phenomenon looks like Tony Curtis and drives a pink and black Cadillac. Watch him roar." - scottymoore.net
Elvis was wearing an orange suit. His set included Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Good Rockin' Tonight and I Forgot to Remember to Forget.
Cleveland is the best legitimate theatre town west of New York. Last season saw 82 professional and semi-professional productions, 23 of which were musicals ... The Play House had the highest record of productions with 19 shows, the Hanna had 16 touring attractions, Karamu 13 shpws, Chagrin Falls Summer Theatre 12 plays, Musicarnival 9 musicals, Rabbit Run 9 plays, and Cain Park 4 musicals. - Omar Ranney, The Cleveland Press
The Cleveland Play House
1954-1955 Season
Point of No Return (Osborn)
The Fourposter (De Hartog)
The Crucible (Miller)
The Girl on the Via Flamina (Hayes)
My Three Angels (Spewack)
The Winner (Rice)
Material Witness (Kantor)
Best Foot Forward (Holm, Martin & Blane)
Sabrina Fair (Taylor)
The Emperor Jones (O'Neill)
Mrs. McThing (Chase)
Burning Bright (Steinbeck)
Dail M For Murder (Knott)
Time Out For Ginger (Alexander)
A Bear In The Attic (Kanzell-Riley - World Premiere)
Hamlet (Shakespeare)
King of Hearts (Kerr-Brooke)
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (Wouk)
Night Must Fall (E. Williams)
"He was a pale, round-faced, little man, with a skyscraper forehead, small hands, thin fingers, and an unexercised body, who kept puffing cigars as if he were laying down a barrage. But he had a cherub's bright smile, eyes bright as searchlights, and a giant's courage." - John Mason Brown, New York Evening Post critic
McDermott retired from the Plain Dealer in 1957, as he approached his 67th birthday. He was ill for most of the 1950s, once famously treated to a private performance of Katherine Cornell's production of Captain Carvello in his Bratenahl apartment in 1951 when he was too sickly to make the trip downtown.
William F. McDermott died in 1958.
Sources: Leaps of faith (Chloe Warner Oldenberg) Showtime in Cleveland
"Jazz at Oberlin" was an extremely popular record for Brubeck’s quartet and a smashing success in the Oberlin community. The concert and album presented an audience largely uneducated in jazz with some of the genres finest players, all performing at the top of their game. And while a successful jazz concert at Oberlin these days is a regular occurrence, such was not the case in 1953, when the concert halls at Oberlin were filled with Bach, Beethoven, Brahms — and occasionally Bartök — but not with Basie or Baker.
On March 2, 1953 The Dave Brubeck Quartet played Oberlin. And my father was there. The quartet was Dave (never David) Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Ron Crotty on the bass and Lloyd Davis on drums.
The concert had all the ingredients of a major disaster. Aside from Oberlin’s indifference toward jazz, Brubeck and his outstanding saxophonist, Paul Desmond, had just had an argument, bass player Ron Crotty had just been given his notice, and drummer Lloyd Davis was ill with the flu and had a 103-degree fever.
My father was seventeen, in his senior year at Lakewood High School. The night in question was a Monday night, otherwise he is sure he could have gotten someone to go with him. But as it was a school night he could not, so he drove to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on his own, and experienced was he still calls “one of the greatest musical experiences I ever had.”
Brubeck also later called that night's gig, "the best thing we’ve ever done."
Tracks included on the original LP include These Foolish Things (Reminds Me Of You), Perdido, Stardust, The Way You Look Tonight and How High The Moon.
Back in 1953 any form of on-location recording was by no means a commonplace event. So much of the technology that is taken for granted today had not even been imagined: to record during ‘live’ performance meant setting up a portable machine for one-track (monaural) taping, using relatively insensitive microphones and no monitoring systems, with little or no physical or acoustic control over the surroundings.
- Orrin Keepnews in the liner notes for a 1986 CD release
My father was turned onto jazz by a guy whose name he cannot remember who worked at Lamp’s Melody Lane on Detroit, just around the corner from his home on Mars. This fellow (in his 20s? 30s? Dad’s not sure) “inculcated” my father with jazz -- and lots of other music, too. In fact, when I was speaking with him about it tonight, he was remembering how the piece he heard the Cleveland Orchestra play this weekend, Bartök’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, was first played for him by this guy at Melody Lane.
When my father went to college he found the opportunity to go with friends to other jazz clubs, though most were pretty strict about not letting people under 21 in. He found most of them to be integrated -- mostly black clientele -- but from his perspective no one really cared.
My senior year in high school I saw Maynard Ferguson at Rocky River High School. Not the same thing.
