Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era

by Elizabeth Pepin, Lewis Watts

Billie Holiday singing at the New Orleans Swing Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane all swinging through town for gigs. Sound like a nostalgic snapshot from the New York jazz scene, or perhaps New Orleans? Nope. This particular sentimental journey describes San Francisco's Fillmore District in its heyday. The Fillmore in the 1940s and 1950s was an eclectic, integrated, and hopping neighborhood dotted with restaurants, pool halls, theaters, and shopsmany minority-ownedand boasting two dozen active nightclubs and music joints within its one square mile. Although it has been commemorated in songs, poems, and in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , few people today know of the rich history of the Fillmore and its musical legacy because it vanished abruptly and so thoroughly due to redevelopment in the 1960s. Through dozens of archival photographs and oral accounts from the neighborhood residents and musicians who experienced it at its height, Harlem of the West celebrates this unique and rediscovered chapter in jazz history and the African-American experience on the West Coast.

Genres: History, Music, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2005

Reviews

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was seven when my stepfather brought me and my pregnant mom from New Orleans to the Fillmore District of San Francisco--what Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts calls the Harlem of the West. It's all gone now, its worn Victorians nearly all bulldozed, but this book has brought it all back to me, and to my stepfather I sent him a copy. He spent his teenage years in San Francisco among his uncles and aunts who left the South for jobs in war industries in the West during the 1940s. They settled in areas newly-vacated by Japanese Americans who were sent to concentration camps, and where Jews, first-generation immigrants, Latinos, and other Asians congregated in what was later termed a 'mini-United Nations.'

Many blacks who moved to San Francisco also formed their own businesses to serve the black community, as San Francisco was still strictly segregated. This included not only barbershops and dry cleaning establishments, pool halls, theatres and stores, but jazz clubs, bars and restaurants where you could see "Billie Holiday at the Champagne Supper Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Chet Baker and John Coltrane all dropping in for jam sessions." Whites were inevitably drawn into the community to take in the atmosphere. It was a swinging, joyous, integrated place to be, whether in the clubs my parents frequented, or in the schoolyards where I saw that there were other little people of different races like me.

Some two decades in the making, Pepin and Watts were able to interview the surviving witnesses--both residents and musicians--of that era. Some were also minority photographers who provided pictures never seen before. Few people remain who knew the Fillmore before it was destroyed--even those of the Sixties generation who can more readily recognize the Fillmore Auditorium which was owned by a black businessman before Bill Graham took it over. But Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era cracks open a door on what was indeed "a unique...chapter in jazz history and the African American experience on the West Coast."

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful history of SF jazz of the 1940s to late 50s and early 60s, filled with photos of clubs like the Texas Playhouse and Bop City and the musicians who played in them. The Fillmore District was filled with such clubs, all lost when Geary Street was widened and a misguided Urban Development plan remade the area.

[K.D. McQuain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting photographs of the Fillmore neighborhood in San Francisco before urban renewal.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting summary of the history of the Fillmore District and how and why it "changed". Well worth reading.

[Rockin*cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history of SF!
And great tons photos!!