Apollo Theater in the nineties – Blogging Sole

On Wednesday nights, Harlem’s Apollo Theater is one of the hottest tickets in town. But there is no celebrity address. It’s amateur night! The audience is there to choose the next rising star.

“I know how strong the crowd is,” said Kyle Parks, a 23-year-old singer from Yonkers, N.Y. “I know that’s what makes this place legendary, what goes into it.”

Parks won over the audience with his performance of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Others…were not so lucky. “They’re brutally honest,” said Marion Caffey, producer of the popular Apollo Amateur Night show. “Sometimes it’s brutal, not necessarily honest!”

Kavi says it is the longest singing competition in history. “Well, ‘The Voice,’ ‘America’s Got Talent,’ ‘American Idol,’ ‘Star Search,’ we’re the granddaddy of all of that,” he said. “That was the plan.”

The theater’s motto is “Where stars are born and legends are made”… and it has launched many of them, from James Brown and Ella Fitzgerald, to Stevie Wonder, Lauryn Hill and Herr.

And if you’re wondering why every performer rubs the tree trunk, according to Caffey, “This trunk used to be a whole tree. And it was standing outside the Lafayette Theater. And they would pull the leaves off the tree for good luck. Now everyone comes here and rubs the Tree of Hope for good luck.”

Does it work? “Well, I guess it’s good luck if you win, not good luck if you lose,” Caffey said.

But it worked for award-winning singer Dionne Warwick, whose career has soared since she and her gospel group won amateur night in 1958.

What did the win prove to her? “Well, we were good enough, first of all,” Warwick said. “And we won $50!”

Warwick said going to the 1,500-seat theater was like going to school and getting a crash course in performance: ‘The old saying is true, quite true: ‘If you can make it at the Apollo, you can make it anywhere.’ “They brought out the best in you. Every time I played Apollo, it got better and better and better and I mean it felt like home.”

But it wasn’t always welcome. Before it was the Apollo, it was a whites-only sitcom. In 1934, under new ownership and a new name, it opened its doors to everyone. “It was one of the first ways that black and white patrons could enjoy music together,” said music historian Guthrie Ramsey. “After all, it’s New York City, and the black community was growing. So letting black citizens in was a typical business decision.”

The story of Apollo and the story of America are intertwined, Ramsey says. “He was representative of whatever was going on in America, and you can see the Apollo Theater reflecting that,” he said. “It’s all our history. We all have a stake in it.”

During the Civil Rights Movement, the Apollo became more than just a performance space. Motown great Smokey Robinson said, “We’d sit and walk and do all this, go to restaurants and they wouldn’t serve us, and all that, we couldn’t stay in any hotel — it was a tough time, you know?”

But Apollo was a beacon. “It was the “Beacon,” Robinson said. “It was essential black music. It was where black acts came from. I can’t play anywhere else!”

The first time he and The Miracles performed here, Robinson says, he was a nervous wreck. They were bombed! “I was scared to death to be at the Apollo Theater,” he said. “If we hadn’t had a record and we were supposed to be ‘professional’ at that point, the guy with the hook would have come and run us off the stage, because we were terrible!” He laughed. “We were just amateurs, we were pretty terrible, until Mr. Schiffman, the guy who owned the Apollo at the time, called Berry Gordy, who was our manager and stuff at that point, and told him he wanted his money back!”

In the decades that followed, as more venues integrated, Apollo struggled financially, closing its doors more than once. “We could have lost Apollo, but we’re still here,” said actress and singer Melba Moore. She says she grew up watching shows at the theater, then had the opportunity to perform here — and later became a guest on “It’s Showtime at the Apollo,” the TV version of Amateur Night.

Moore says this theater is something to be appreciated.

Tonight, the Apollo Theater will be presented with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor Award in a ceremony we’ll see later this month on CBS.

Michelle Ebanks, the theater’s president and CEO, says it’s the first time an institution (rather than a person) has received such recognition. “The idea of ​​Apollo opened up this whole universe, so everyone could see this American culture, too,” Ebanks said. “This is the magic of art, the power of art.”

This is also the year the theater begins its 90th season. And for Smokey Robinson, Apollo is still a force to be reckoned with. “You know, it’s the beginning. It’s the proving ground. It’s Apollo!”

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The story was produced by Robin McFadden. Editor: Remington Koerber.