This Traveling Suitcase was created by:
King Studios Experiential Learning Center
King Records, an innovative independent recording company, was located in Evanston
from 1943 to 1971. King Records made Cincinnati the birthplace of doo-wop and funk,
King recording artists were key to the creation of the American art-form called rock
and roll, and legendary artists such as James Brown recorded here. The King Studios
Experiential Learning Center in the heart of Evanston will be a living breathing tribute to
the legacy of the King story. It will be dedicated to arts and music education for the
youth of Cincinnati while also raising much-needed awareness in the public at large
about the great historical significance of King Records and the Evanston community.
The King Experiential Center will be a continuation of the King legacy, acting as a
driving force of positive change in our community. You can learn more by visiting
www.kingstudios.org.
We are grateful for the generous assistance of
Shake It Records
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We call our traveling exhibits and lesson plans “King Studios
Traveling Suitcases” in recognition of the importance to King
musicians of performing in theaters and clubs around the
country. For African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s
interstate travel, especially in the Jim Crow South, was both
difficult and dangerous. We are grateful to Philip and Juanita
Paul and to Otis Williams for sharing their stories, and of
course for their wonderful music.
Background Information about King Records:
King Records was started by entrepreneur Syd Nathan in 1943. Until Nathan’s death in
1968, King produced an eclectic variety of music including “hillbilly,” later more politely
dubbed country music; “race” or “sepia” music, later called rhythm and blues; and black
and white gospel music. The novel creative, social, and financial structures devised by
Syd Nathan fostered collaborations among musicians in these genres that led King to
make key contributions to emerging popular styles, especially rock-n-roll.
Rock-n-roll is a specifically American musical style celebrating youth, romance, and
pleasure. Rock-n-roll often challenged existing musical and social boundaries. It developed
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after World War II when African Americans and white Appalachians moved to industrial
cities, like Cincinnati, where they worked in defense industries and were able to share their
music. King Records fostered the musical exchange that created rock-n-roll.1
At King, Syd Nathan challenged local race relations by hiring a diverse work
force, asking potential employees whether they would have difficulty
working with someone of another color. Former King drummer Philip
Paul recalls that black and white musicians collaborated in the studio,
but, he says, he could not leave the building to buy a cup of coffee.
Such rigid segregation of races was typical of both North and South,
and made the integration of King Records unusual for its time.
Syd Nathan was unique among the independent record labels at midcentury: he adopted a
business strategy of vertical integration that allowed him to compete with relative success
with larger companies until the 1960s. He built a recording studio in an old ice warehouse
he leased in Evanston, did all steps in record production including pressing and printing
covers, and established a national distribution network that allowed him to ship new
releases, sometimes overnight, throughout the country. King Records included several
labels for different genres; through a subsidiary, Lois Music, Nathan maintained rights to
music written at King.
King Records Shipping Department
King Records Press
King Musicians were Traveling Performers
To supplement their income and to promote their records, musicians on King and its
subsidiary labels were often on the road for weeks at a time. They drove hours every day,
before cars had air conditioners, and performed at a different venue every night.
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According to Jon Hartley Fox, the first rock-n-roll song was “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” recorded at King by Wynonie
Harris in 1954. King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). On
roots of rock-n-roll in urban defense centers see, George.Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American
Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
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Traveling was especially important for African American
musicians; in fact, their itinerary was called the
“chitlin circuit” (a reference to a dish made of pigs’
intestines that was a familiar dish among southern African
Americans). According to historian Frederick Douglass Opie,
“The chitlin circuit was crucial to black artists like James Brown
. . . because it offered the only way for them to perform for their
fans during a period when the white media did not cover and
mainstream venues did not book black artists.”
On the chitlin' circuit, people "made the best they could out of the opportunities they had,
whether it'd be spaces to play their music, places to eat food or places to perform when
nobody else would have them," says Opie. "It's this whole idea of surviving with dignity
amidst a very precarious situation." 2
The Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the South meant that African American
musicians, like James Brown, Otis Williams, and Philip Paul, could not perform for mixed
white and black audiences. The taverns, theaters and clubs where these artists headlined
were often black-owned businesses. Nevertheless, R & B shows featuring black bands
drew many white fans who attended separate shows or were separated from blacks in
different sections. In much the same way that R & B precursors to Rock & Roll recorded at
King defied racist definitions of white cultural superiority by the 1960s, African Americans
redefined inexpensive survival foods like chitlins. African and African American culture and
culinary traditions were transformed into “soul food,” a term of black pride related to the
“soul music” performed by James Brown, Bootsy Collins, and many other King Records
musicians.
Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2010), 121-122; and quoted on Splendid Table, http://www.splendidtable.org/story/gimme-a-pig-footand-a-bottle-of-beer-food-and-music-on-the-chitlin-circuit .
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Jim Crow: Segration Laws in the American South
After emancipation, southern states passed a series of laws requiring racial segregation in
all public spaces. In its famous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court ruled
that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. Today, the most well known aspects
of segregation were separate schools, drinking fountains, and buses. But segregation
extended to separate bibles for black and white witnesses when swearing to tell the truth in
court, separate areas in state prisons, and separation in theaters, restaurants and rock-nroll performances. In fact, the racial segregation mandatd by state laws in the South rarely
included equal accomodations for African Americans, and sometimes blacks were simply
excluded from places accessible to whites.
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Systematic segregation in the South was often called “Jim Crow,” a reference to an
insulting stereotype of African Americans based on a minstrel character named Jim Crow.
The system was not only enforced by laws but also by violence, including lynching. African
Americans found traveling in the South difficult, and sometimes dangerous. One way they
dealt with the absence of hotels, restaurants, and stores serving black customers was
through The Negro Motorists Green Book,4 a travel guide that listed businesses open to
African Americans.
The Civil Rights Movement confronted intimidation and violence to protest unequal
opportunities in the South; as a result formal legal segregation was ended by the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. While the political activism of Civil Rights workers in the South were
central to ending Jim Crow, increasing popularity of African American artists and music
among whites as well as black also played a role in in challenging racism.
3
“The Woman in a Jim Crow Photo.” Lens Blog. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/the-woman-in-the-picture/ .
Accessed August 9, 2014.
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For a digital copy of the Green Book see, http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/greenbook/id/88
.
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