USPS Publication Number 16300
T h i s C om mu n it y Ne w s p a p e r i s a p u bl i c a t ion of E s c a m b i a-S a nt a Ro s a B a r A s s o c i a t ion
Se r v i ng t he Fi r st Jud icia l Ci rcu it Section A, Page 1
Vol. 21, No. 9
V isit T he S ummation W eekly O nline : SummationWeekly.com
March 3, 2021
1 Section, 8 Pages
M USIC IS T HE HE A L ING FO R C E O F T H E U NIVE R S E: P E N SACO L A A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N S S E T TO N E F O R JAZ Z & BL U E S by Gina Castro
The Belmont DeVillers District “The Blocks” is the heart of jazz and blues in Pensacola. At the era’s prime, Gussie Records Shop was the heartbeat— pumping the smooth sultry beat through the streets of Pensacola in 45s and LPs. Gussie Streeter, in her twenties at the time, opened a dry cleaners near Blue Dot in 1962. A young man, noticing that she had a turntable in her store, asked her to sell some of his records. As this side hustle began rolling in more money than the actual dry cleaning, Gussie followed the lead of her customers. Gussie Records took form in 1965 in the building Five Sisters Blues Cafe now stands. The reason black-owned record stores like Gussie Records were so essential to the success of jazz and blues is that music from black artists couldn’t be purchased in the South. Since the South was heavily segregated, white business owners in southern cities like Pensacola had no interest in selling records by black artists. Gussie networked with record companies in larger multiracial cities like Mobile, Nashville and Atlanta to bring the music of black artists to Pensacola. Pensacola Magazine (PM) interviewed Gussie’s eldest son Alvin Streeter Jr. in her stead, but Gussie is well and recently celebrated her 86th birthday. “When you bought music back then, first of all, you couldn’t get anything by black artists in the South. That included the Pensacola area. You couldn’t buy it in the South because of the times,” Alvin explained. “Basically, if Sam Cooke recorded a song, the only version you could get is a cover version by white artists. In the South, you could get Ray Charles, you could possibly get Little Richard, but you could just get very few black artists. So African Americans, unless they lived in Atlanta, Memphis or New Orleans at the time in the South, they really had no avenue to black artists. So, she [Gussie] was the bridge.” Blues and R&B were Gussie
Records bread and butter. Jazz was a hit at the record shop, too. But Alvin recalls blues being a major seller at the store. Gussie developed a personal relationship with Malaco Records in Jackson, Mississippi, which kept her store up to date with the hottest blues records. “Me and my family, we give her a hard time. We tell her she was like the original DJ because at the time she started in the 60s, she was playing music for customers, which was a little bit different from other music stores back then. She had a turntable, and she would play one record for you, and while she’s talking to you, she’d put another one on, you know, anything off the top 10. Then the next thing you know, you walk out with 10, 45s,” Alvin said with a chuckle. “She had a really good flair for it.” Business was so good at Gussie Records that Alvin remembers not coming home until past midnight some nights. WBOP, the first black operated radio station in Pensacola, was just a floor above the record shop. Every Sunday night, Gussie would host a jazz show on WBOP with DJ Joey Brewer. She would select the album of the weekend. Gussie often got the newest records before the radio did. Since Pensacola played an integral role in the Chitlin Circuit, the most popular jazz and blues musicians always passed through Pensacola on tour. “The Chitlin Circuit was the top level of African-American entertainment,” Jim O’Neal, founding editor of Living Blues Magazine, said. “The top blues, soul and jazz artists went to places like the
Gussie Records Shop Minor, Streeter and Mayor Grover Robinson celebrating the installment of the Mississippi Blues Trail Marker in the Belmont DeVillers District. Opposite: Henry “Chick” Minor, 93, is a Pensacola self taught pianist who played in Abe’s 506 house band during the 60s.
Apollo Theater in New York and many others all across the country. There were places in Pensacola, too, like Abe’s 506, The Savoy and some others in the Belmont Devillers District.” When performers like Ike and Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, and B.B. King would perform at the Blocks, they would also do a show on air with WBOP and drop off records at Gussie Records. Alvin remembers Tina Turner coming in and out of his family’s record store. Gussie Records was also a news source for customers. The store had a whole wall covered in flyers for upcoming concerts. One of Alvin’s favorite memories was when his father picked up Joe Simon from the bus station in 1969. Simon is a soul and R&B singer with more than a dozen albums. His music has been sampled by recent popular artists such as Outkast and Lil’ Kim. “We picked up the artist Joe Simon. He just had his first big hit that went nationwide. It was called ‘Moon Walking,’” Alvin recalled. “He actually made it right around the time we first landed on the moon, and I was a little kid. When artists came into town, my father would go pick them up and show them around, or another guy from one of the clubs would. They would pick up the artists because a lot of them were leery about traveling with anybody else around here because it was still funky in the South, so they had to be careful.” Pensacola wasn’t just a stage Gussie Streeter for national music talent. It’s
also the birthplace of many talented jazz and blues artists. R&B singer, James Purify and Bobby Purify reached fame in the 1960s for their hit single “I’m Your Puppet.” The single reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966 and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1967. Unfortunately, James died in Pensacola from COVID complications Jan. 22. Jazz pianist and composer Don Shirley was born in Pensacola to Jamaican immigrant parents. Shirley made his debut at Carnegie Hall with Duke Ellington and the Symphony of the Air Orchestra. The 2018 film Green Book, which received the best picture Oscar, follows Shirley’s tour in the South. Local pianist and organist, Henry “Chick” Minor, 93, recalls witnessing Shirley perform in Pensacola when Minor was 10 years old. Minor recently suffered from a stroke, so his statements are from a document he wrote and shared with Pensacola Magazine: “I had no intention of being a musician. My parents had a piano in the home. I used to bang on it at the age of around 10 years old. My father’s baby sister came to live to finish high school. She took me to the Saenger Theatre to see a child named Donald Shirley in concert. He was about seven or eight years old. He was a gifted musician. He could listen to a song one time, and he could almost play it note for note… He went on to be a professor of music. I kept on banging.” After serving in the military, Minor was offered the opportunity to play piano profession-
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ally in Pensacola. “During this time men just didn’t play piano. I was married and couldn’t go to school, so I bought [piano] books and practiced. Through the years, I was able to advance my music ability. In 1961, I became the house band pianist at the new Abe’s 506 Club.” Minor later moved to Jacksonville where he played with several bands, but he came back to Pensacola in 1965 and continued to play in the city. The origins of blues and jazz is still hotly debated. O’Neal explained that Mississippi tends to get the most credit for the blues. However, since times were so racist then, black history let alone black music wasn’t well documented or documented at all. “Nobody really knows where it started. It wasn’t documented at the start. Mississippi gets the most credit for it because the most famous blues singers came from the Mississippi Delta, where there were a lot of cotton plantations,” O’Neal continued. “At the same time, there was an established performing circuit all along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans through Biloxi, Mobile and Pensacola. Some people think that blues may have originated in New Orleans and then made its way up. Other people think it was even further north on the Mississippi River and came south on the river boats and the vaudeville shows.” Although the origins of blues aren’t quite known, it is known that in the Gulf Coast, blues and jazz roots run deep. Mother of the Blues, Ma RainContinued on Page 3 ›
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