Exhibition Review
The Apollo, Uptown’s Showbiz Incubator
“Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” an exhibition about the Apollo Theater, is at the Museum of the City of New York.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: February 7, 2011
The exhibition “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” which opens on Tuesday at the Museum of the City of New York, really ain’t anything like the real thing, but that is not really its fault. The “real thing” in this case is almost beyond the reach of a museum show. It is to be found not in Louis Armstrong’s trumpet or Miles Davis’s flugelhorn, or James Brown’s black jumpsuit studded with rhinestones spelling “Sex,” or Ella Fitzgerald’s orange dress or Michael Jackson’s fedora (all of which are on display here), but in the music those performers made while wearing these clothes and playing these instruments.
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Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
Rudy Bishop, the director of the Chronicle Atlantic Symphony, with performers at amateur night at the Apollo theater in Harlem.
The real thing is suggested in the exhibition’s subtitle — “How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment” — because the music that was made at that relatively nondescript 1,500-seat theater on 125th Street in Harlem really did transform American popular-music culture in the 20th century. A habitat and an incubator, the Apollo has also been one of the few institutions in which black American musical culture was consistently nurtured over the course of 75 years.
Carnegie Hall achieved its stature through architectural beauty; its warm, revealing acoustics; and a growing heritage of magnificent performances. The Apollo achieved its stature because of where it is — on the edge of one of America’s great black urban neighborhoods — and because of who appeared there during an era that went from vaudeville to hip-hop, from racial segregation to economic gentrification.
The Apollo heritage is evident even in simple lists, one of which appears at this exhibition: the stars who began their careers as winners of Amateur Night, one of the Apollo’s traditions that continues to this day. They include Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, the Chantels, the Isley Brothers, Leslie Uggams, Jimi Hendrix, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, and Stephanie Mills.
It is also evident in the roster of performers who appeared at the Apollo, which, apart from those already mentioned, includes Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Pearl Bailey, Dizzy Gillespie, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, the Supremes and comedians like Richard Pryor, all of whom are celebrated in a rich pictorial catalog published in conjunction with the show.
Or perhaps too in a list of musical styles associated with Apollo performances that appears on the walls of the gallery: swing, jazz, bebop, salsa, gospel, rock ’n’ roll, Motown, funk, soul, reggae, rap ... and on.
No wonder that the Smithsonian’s nascent National Museum of African American History and Culture chose this subject for this show, one of its first traveling exhibitions, offering, in cooperation with the Apollo, an anticipatory prelude to the kind of material the museum itself will incorporate after the exhibition’s scheduled opening in Washington in 2015. This show — its curators are Tuliza Fleming of the new museum’s staff, and Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., a professor at the University of Pennsylvania — walks us through the history of Harlem, the Apollo and these entertainments.
The artifacts — mostly the outer trappings of stars — are at the exhibition’s center, while wall panels tell the story. It begins during the Harlem Renaissance, continues through the theater’s glory years when it was owned and managed by members of the Schiffman family and extends to the present when the theater is run by a nonprofit foundation.
So much is encompassed, though, that you can easily feel that the real thing is slipping away. One problem is that concerts at the Apollo were not systematically recorded, and while the exhibition offers a decade-by-decade film survey of performers, each contains just a few examples that are neither long enough nor deep enough to communicate much.
It can be enticing to read descriptions of the variety shows of the 1930s. (“Milton Berle came so often,” Ralph Cooper, one of the theater’s mainstays, is quoted as saying, “he started to bring his secretary along to take notes on what we were doing.”) And the catalog cites Lionel Hampton in the 1940s: “If you were a black entertainer of any kind — musician, singer, comedian — being a headliner at the Apollo was your proudest achievement.” But the media offerings don’t give us enough of a sense of those achievements.
There are particular objects that do bring home aspects of the Apollo heritage. We see black-face minstrel makeup and a tight-fitting wig of nappy hair used not only in vaudeville but also by black performers into the 1950s — a sad indication of how long and deep the traditions of racial caricature ran. Seeing the tap shoes Sammy Davis Jr. wore as a child or Pearl Bailey’s travel trunk also gives us a sense of the physical life of these performers during the years when black culture was gradually merging into the American mainstream.
There is a sampling of index cards on which the theater’s owner, Frank Schiffman, tersely kept records of artist fees along with comments on the acts. (The cards are part of the Smithsonian American History collection.) He writes about Fats Domino in 1958 (the fee was $10,000): “Business poor. He is undoubtedly one of the great figures in R&B.” Two years later the fee being the same: “Well received. Overpaid.” Or on a card for Bailey in 1965 (fee of $15,000): “Has audience in her hands from start to finish. Excellent!!!”
Schiffman’s management and, later, that of his sons, Bobby and Jack, preserved a delicate balance, keeping fees low so ticket prices could be low and the Apollo could thrive as a neighborhood theater. Racial divisions on one side of the theater doors may have encouraged a sense of pride and interdependence on the other, leading to excellent performances. The Apollo’s long tradition of Amateur Nights in which the crowd cheered or jeered various aspirants may have even led to a sense of audience proprietorship.
There is surprisingly little notice taken of a crisis in the Apollo tradition beginning in the late 1960s, but the catalog is clearer. Race riots hobbled 125th Street’s night life; black artists began to be booked in larger mainstream theaters; costs and fees rose; a catalog essay by Amiri Baraka recalls objections raised to a “white-owned theater in Harlem.” By the mid-’70s the theater could not continue. In the ’80s, after Percy Sutton, the former Manhattan Borough president, had taken it over, along with other investors, the theater was losing about $2 million a year.
Run by a nonprofit foundation since 1991, the Apollo remains a neighborhood symbol. After Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, a spontaneous tribute to him developed outside the theater. After James Brown’s death in 2006 his body lay in state on the Apollo stage.
So where is the real thing?
Try this: After seeing the exhibition, go to Amateur Night one Wednesday at the Apollo. The audience is part of the show. “You have the power,” the sound system proclaims, urging listeners to cheer and boo each performance. “Be good or be gone!” is the message the audience is told to give. Booing can call forth the Executioner — a theater jester who dances the awful act offstage — while cheering ultimately chooses the winners.
In some ways the evening has to be a shadow of earlier eras’ competitions. The amplification is so exaggerated it would have blown half the performers from the theater’s golden age off the stage (and overshadowed any of the nuances familiar on recordings). On the night I went the claques were so fervent that verdicts were distorted. A woman who managed a decent invocation of Aretha Franklin justifiably won, but an oddly interesting ventriloquist was nearly howled off, and a few talentless performers won ecstatic plaudits.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Populism is the dominant force here, and for decades it went hand in hand with excellence. Racial prejudice and insularity combined with genius to shape an unusually powerful tradition of musical and theatrical innovation. That tradition has weakened, but the spirit is still infectious. (And a small-scale Apollo Music Café is to open Friday in the theater’s building.) So while I wanted more from the exhibition, I’ll be returning to the Apollo, hoping next time to hear the real thing.
Apollo Theater History at Museum of City of New York - NYTimes.com
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