The Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture is looking for Club Harlem (Atlantic City) artifacts for a planned permanent exhibit.
This is from a 1961 Club Harlem program booklet.
ATLANTIC CITY — On Tuesday, Feb. 22, groundbreaking will commence on the newest Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian’s 19th museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, will occupy a five-acre site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th streets N.W., between the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Although the museum isn’t slated to open until Fall 2015, intensive planning, collecting and architectural work has been ongoing for several years.
Designed to “illustrate the major periods of African American history, beginning with the origins in Africa and continuing through slavery, reconstruction, the Civil Rights era, the Harlem Renaissance and into the 21st century,” according to the Smithsonian, the new museum will also place “special emphasis” on pop culture and “the full spectrum of the arts.”
That’s where Dwandalyn R. Reece, PH.D. — and Atlantic City — come into the picture.
Reece, the curator of the music and performing arts permanent exhibit for the new museum, has a vision that is slowly but surely coming to fruition. “I am building the museum’s collection [of] the music and the performing arts,” Reece tells Atlantic City Weekly. “My most immediate priority task is to develop the permanent exhibition on music.”
That permanent exhibition is slated to include Atlantic City’s former Club Harlem in a big way. “I had the benefit in the early 1990s to work at the New Jersey State Museum,” says Reece, who has been traveling the country far and wide collecting objects and securing acquisitions for the permanent exhibit. “The State Museum and the New Jersey Historical Commission were doing a collaborative project, looking at African American history in New Jersey. So I was brought in to work on that project ... to help research and locate objects on New Jersey. The focus of that exhibition was going to look at institutional life — organizations, clubs and businesses in the light that explores New Jersey’s African American history through that lens. I was working with [a variety] of people [and] spent two years really traveling the state, following up on leads, and looking and meeting people — and Club Harlem was one of the places that was brought to my attention.”
At that point, Reece recalls, “I think the building was still standing [and] there were some objects still existing. I remember seeing photographs of the sign and some other things, so that was definitely going to be a focal point of this exhibition. When I had come and visited Atlantic City, and done some other research [I] met with a variety of people. So that’s where I got familiar with Atlantic City.
“When I got this job about two years ago, and I was tasked to do this exhibition, I was thinking about what I wanted to do and I wanted to really look at [several] parts of African American music history. We look just not at music and musicians, but really the social and cultural context, which would be performance venues, and working in the industry and all of that. Club Harlem popped back into my mind. And then I became re-acquainted with [Atlantic City historian and author] Vicki Gold-Levi. We started talking about it, and I always wanted to feature a real venue such as the Club Harlem to tell the story about, not only music, but the role that a venue that promotes African American performance plays in a community. So, Vicki and I became re-acquainted and started talking, and I did find out that it had been torn down. I was heartbroken to hear that.”
Reece, however, did not give up on her idea to re-create the Club Harlem for the museum, one of Atlantic City’s and the world’s most incredible music venues, which was in operation for a better part of the 20th century.
View: History of Atlantic City Nightlife
Reece has made several trips to Atlantic City over the past few years — among other music history hot spots through the country — doing research at the Atlantic City Free Public Library, meeting with local historians such as Ralph Hunter of the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey, Henrietta Shelton, of the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation, and several others. Yet, she still has a lot of calls to make.
“I’ve gotten a sense there are materials out there [and] people who are very passionate about the story,” says Reece. “As a museum person I’m all for preserving the history, but as I work towards developing this exhibition, we need objects to help tell the story. So that’s where I am right now. This is still a placeholder for me, but I am hoping that I have enough that I can do a small segment. I mean, this is a large story that we’re doing on African American music and with a finite amount of space. I envisioned telling the story of Club Harlem as — and telling the story of African American Atlantic City — a venue that promoted African American performers and the community that came from it. And also I’d love to try and get more details about what the club was like — the Breakfast Show, and the performers — and trying to get more pictures of the interior.”
For the designers of this permanent exhibition, Reece needs to help them with “trying to get a sense of what [Club Harlem] looked like,” so that the builders can re-create a version of it.
“We have had some donations,” says Reece, “and I’ve got more names. I am hoping people will share what they have. I need the three-dimensional objects to tell the story. We really are building a collection and I really see this as an opportunity to recognize an important story on a national and international level. I know how collectors are and it’s hard to let go of things. And I also think it’s important that you have things in the community to help tell that story, but I am hoping that people will understand the opportunity here, and getting Atlantic City out there, and its uniqueness as a community, and its whole contribution to the entertainment scene.”
PICTURED: Lonnie Smith's Blue Note recording Move Your Hand was recorded live at the Club Harlem.
Although Reece has been dedicating as much time as possible to making the Club Harlem a permanent part of the new museum’s exhibit on African American music, she is also tasked with telling the story of African American music and performing arts as a whole.
Some objects she has recently obtained from across the country include a Cadillac from Chuck Berry, Lena Horne’s dress from the 1943 film Stormy Weather, Michael Jackson’s shirt and jacket, Harriet Tubman’s Gospel hymnal, and an early recital card for a Nina Simone performance — when she was still known by her birth name, Eunice Waymon; she changed her name in Atlantic City, in fact — in Philadelphia.
“I was just out in Las Vegas, and the discussion, while I was meeting with musicians, they were also talking about the history of Las Vegas, and how difficult it was to be black and get an opportunity to be on the Strip, and be a performer. It’s funny how Frank Sinatra kind of factors into several of these stories, helping to open doors and make opportunities for people. Through a little of his own subterfuge, you know, it’s interesting some of the parallels there.”
The one person Reece has yet to make contact with is the son of the late Atlantic City historian and drummer at the Club Harlem, Sid Trusty.
Trusty had a massive collection of memorabilia, posters, photos and items from the Club Harlem, carefully organized in his garage museum in Atlantic City prior to his death in August 2004. His son is rumored to have possession of the collection in Connecticut.
Now, more than ever, Reece needs help as she searches for objects for the new Smithsonian museum in Washington.
The six-piece band took the stage at the HofBrau Hotel in Wildwood in the summer of 1954 and threw a fashion changeup at the crowd. ....
Kelsey and Kim Jackson, with help from fellow local Allen Thomas, have been drawing crowds to Atlantic City’s Kentucky Avenue with jazz, soul and R&B.
Aretha Franklin stops at the Taj Mahal Oct. 6. She chats with Atlantic City Weekly on her biopic, the upcoming presidential election, her favorite singers and a getaway long ago with Bob Dylan.
Right around the corner from my house and just a few blocks away, 10-20 women have been meeting and working on their quilts for more than 10 years.
Every Friday and Saturday night, BB’s Beer and Burgers hosts a rotating list of four blues artists who have toured and/or recorded with many of the biggest names in the business. On Sunday from 6-9pm, jazz artists perform at Ono Chinese Bistro, which also offers some of the most stunning views around.
“As a matter of fact, before I moved to New York, I saw Coltrane at his mother’s house one day and was talking to him about how I was thinking about going to New York and he wished me luck.”
Movies can offer a window on the past, a look at the way we were. That’s the case of The Money, later renamed Atlantic City Jackpot, a 1976 independent film partially shot in the city and Atlantic County four years before the first casino opened.
Mrs. Elaine Milan is the perfect match for her husband, clearly intelligent, thoughtful and attractive. She had already graduated from Hampton University when she arrived in A.C. in 1964 to work at Indiana Avenue School, and later, she earned her master’s degree at Glassboro.
Each Friday acweekly.com presents a new episode in the "Atlantic City History: Conversations & Storytelling" web video series, inspired by HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" series, and featuring the conversations on six selected topics between Atlantic City historians Vicki Gold Levi, All "Boo" Pergament, Pinky Kravitz, Ralph Hunter, Jim Waltzer and Israel Posner.
Unlike most people, Dan Fogel had already found his life's calling by the time he was 10 years old. Routinely sneaking out of the second-floor bedroom window of his parent's colonial house in Margate...
With the new TV series based on early Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire, coming this fall to HBO, I was glad when I received Turiya Raheem’s book Growing Up In the Other Atlantic City: Wash’s and the Northside. Finally there is a book that researches and documents the sights and sounds of A.C. from the African-American/Kentucky Avenue perspective. In other books and TV specials, places like Chicken Bone Beach, Club Harlem and the Wonder Gardens are footnotes to stories about places like the 500 Club and/or the Steele Pier. In Raheem’s book these places are more than just background. The long-gone...
FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK Atlantic City lost a treasure. I still carry around the late Sid Trusty’s faded yellow business card in my wallet. I got the opportunity to meet the man on a few occasions before he passed away on Aug. 16, 2004.
In a cozy purple sweater and gray sweatpants, the orange Mohawk was expertly coiffed as usual. I remembered attending her 75th birthday party a few years ago and knew then I wanted to hear her story from her own mouth, but she is one hard lady to catch up with.
For one day — Sunday, Sept. 18 — the Asbury United Methodist Church in Atlantic City, home of the South Jersey Jazz Vespers, will be transformed into the bygone Club Harlem as a tribute to a name nearly as legendary as the club itself. Chris Columbo (1902-2002) was a jazz drummer who led the Club Harlem orchestra for 34 years, right up until the club closed its Kentucky Avenue doors forever in 1978
As the late Atlantic City historian and former Club Harlem house band drummer Sid Trusty once said, "Every night was our party. And we invited the world." The party may be starting up again soon.
A banner with the name Slappy White on it hung across Kentucky Avenue all summer. The late comedian and actor (who died in Brigantine in 1995) was booked for the entire season at Atlantic City’s famed Club Harlem. On this particular summer night, however — July 24, 1964, to be precise — hanging above the banner was yet another banner. It read: “Sam Cooke.”
So often the nostalgia associated with Atlantic City’s past is spoken of with a special brand of sincerity — particularly a section of Kentucky Avenue between Arctic and Atlantic avenues, where the jazz clubs once ruled the day (and nights)...
Summertime, and the groovin’ is easy. Tourists fatten the regular jazz crowd cramming Kentucky Avenue, where the night never dies. Inside Club Harlem, they press against the bar and each other, as the organist and his quartet tune up on the bandstand. The music comes fast and the band is tight and the organ looses a torrent of sound. And there’s an added bonus for posterity: the live session is being recorded for an album, a rare occurrence in Atlantic City. This was the scene on the Saturday night of Aug. 9, 1969, when master jazz organist Lonnie Smith and company cut Move Your Hand, an exemplar of ’60s soul jazz, for the legendary Blue Note label. The title song, which became a hit, borrowed its lyric from a joke that Smith’s drummer told about a substitute preacher who couldn’t deliver the sermon because someone else’s hand was covering the text. (The joke is less than hysterical, but the number’s a grabber.) “One night, I was playing a little lick and just happened to say [“move your hand”] to the fellows in the band,” says Smith, now 67 and as busy as ever. “People loved it and always requested it.” It became...
At a fraction the size of the Showboat House of Blues' main music hall, one might assume that the Club Harlem Ballroom is reserved for lesser-known acts, or those that don't have the drawing power to...
THE ADDRESS WAS 32 North Kentucky Avenue, and it was a place where the music -- and the night -- never died. If the entire block, including the likes of Grace's Little Belmont and the Wonder Garden b...
Article:
A.C. Library, Stockton College Celebrate Black History Month
Article:
Atlantic City's Casino Era
Article:
The Steel Pier — A Memory of Change
Article:
Houdini, Sir Doyle Do AC
Article:
The Lilt and Labor of Atlantic City’s Irish
Article:
Absecon Lighthouse Presents: 'Lighthouse Empire - The Rum Runners'
Article:
Vince Giordano on 'Boardwalk Empire' Soundtrack Grammy Win
Article:
United Nations, Modern Economy Has Roots in Atlantic City
1. Harrison said... on Feb 15, 2012 at 06:11PM
“i can't believe this - how cool!”
2. Gina Michael said... on Jun 27, 2012 at 11:58PM
“my uncle Martin ( Jack Martin ) Michael was one of the partners. As a little girl I saw Sam Cookes last performance ...please call me ..i will try and locate a photo of him in a white suit with a big cigar !!!! 6464152208”
3. Anonymous said... on May 19, 2013 at 04:07PM
“There is memorabilia that is being held by families, such as my stuff from the world famous paradise club on Ilinois ave. but I believe that so much of our city's historical background has been torn down, that these thing should remain with the city, we don't have anything now, I will donate my things to the Black Museum in Atlantic City, as well as the black baseball team, the johnson all stars, for which my dad played, they were owned by Nucky Johnson and I have the original picture of him and the team.”