Big and Small
- Music on the Southern Circuit returned to the grittier roots of the blues with eclectic new styles like boogie-woogie and rhythm & blues in the 1950s. African American popular musicians in the 1950s expressed a new, aggressive stance in keeping with the renewed struggle for civil rights after World War II. Rock ‘n’ Roll emerged from these new genres in the mid-fifties. Soul eclipsed Rock ‘n’ Roll on the Circuit in the mid-1960s. This 1982 recording of Florida native Sammy Lee Williams highlights the rough, aggressive sound common on the circuit in the early 1950s.
- The Red Bird Café was situated at the center of the historic Frenchtown neighborhood in Tallahassee throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A popular dance club and bar, the Red Bird Café hosted both local acts and groups touring the Circuit. Activists held at least one political rally on the Red Bird Café’s sidewalk in the early 1970s. Like a larger club in Jacksonville, the Red Bird Café was housed inside an old Knights of Pythias meeting hall. The Knights of Pythias was an important fraternal society and mutual aid organization that resisted Jim Crow discrimination in the 1920s.
- Though much of the Circuit remained “underground” throughout the 1960s and 1970s, national and international artists often toured the larger stops in Florida. This promotional billboard advertised an Aretha Franklin performance in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood in the early 1960s. Miami promoter Clyde Killens produced a number of similar promotional billboards between 1940 and 1960 for a stellar cast of touring artists including Count Basie, B.B. King, Redd Foxx, and Bo Diddley. National recording artists often deviated from their “pop” image on the Circuit, however. Sam Cooke recorded a raucous live album before a rowdy Overtown audience at the Harlem Square Club in 1963. RCA Records chose to archive the raw recording instead of releasing it out of fear that it would damage Cooke’s career. Sam Cooke’s Live at the Harlem Sqaure Club, 1963 was not released until 1985.