 Downstairs, ca. 1944 | |
 | |
| Location | Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 36°10.105′N86°48.946′W / 36.168417°N 86.815767°W |
| Type | Nightclub Music venue |
| Opened | 1935 |
| Closed | 1967 |
Del Morocco was a nightclub and music venue on Jefferson Street, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., active in the period 1935-1967.
The history of Nashville, Tennessee, music goes back to the early settlers in America. By the 19th century, Nashville was a publishing hub of various music genres. In the 1870s, a group of Fisk University students formed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African-American acappella ensemble and began to tour and raise funds for the college, with a repertoire of mostly traditional spirituals. [1]
Locally born and raised Theodore Acklen, known to most people as "Uncle Teddy" and described as a "self-made young man who scrambled up from the streets," engaged in various schemes such as running numbers. [2] In 1935, he launched the club Del Morocco on 2417 Jefferson Street. After buying the building from a Pullman porter, he turned the upstairs into a "swanky" dining space, which he named the Blue Room restaurant. Behind it, he opened a gambling room, reserved for select clients, while downstairs he erected, after a time, a bandstand, turning the space into a music venue. [3] With the help of his wife, former dancer Ehrai "Muffy" Walker, he started booking well known acts, making the venue famous. Soon, students from Fisk, Tennessee State, and Meharry began frequenting the place. [4] Acklen hired over renown chefs from the "distinguished," 1853-built Belle Meade mansion to work in the Blue Room, by then sitting some one hundred people, and offered piano music; the place started attracting patrons from the black community's middle class, as well as celebrities such as Joe Louis. [5] : 23 [6]
From pre-World War II jazz, blues, and gospel in Nashville, emerged, in the 1950s, soul music and modern rhythm and blues, with artists such as Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix playing in Del Morocco and elsewhere in North Nashville. [7] Billy Cox and Hendrix were actually performing in Del Morocco's house band for a period of time. [8] : 69–75 They called themselves the King Kasuals, and their members were for a time Hendrix and Alphonso "Baby Boo" Young on guitar, Cox on bass, Buford Majors on saxophone, and an unidentified drummer. [3] Hendrix and Cox came to Nashville after serving in the 101st Airborne and once sat in a "Whites Only" section of a Nashville diner, in 1962, both under 20 years old. They were arrested and Del Morocco's owner had to bail them out. [8] : 71 [n 1]
The period until 1965 is considered the golden age of Jefferson Street, with stars, such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald, performing there almost every night. Recording artists, such as Ruth Brown, Nat King Cole, and Ray Charles, could be seen on stage at Del Morocco. [9] [10]
The club, along with the New Era Club and Maceo's, collectively, made Jefferson Street known as Nashville's original Music Row. [11]
In 1960, Nashville became the South's first desegregated city in 1960. On November 2, 1967, construction began on Interstate 40 that would cut through the area once known as "Black Wall Street." The interstate highway, completed by 1968, separated black people from commerce activities, forcing the closure of almost all black-owned businesses in the area, including Del Morocco. [11]
In 2011, the Jefferson Street Sound museum, recording studio, and rehearsal space opened, housed in a small, white house on the block between Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard and the I-40 overpass. Its curator, Lorenzo Washington, aims at preserving there the legacy of Music City's famed "hotbed" of blues and R&B, once found in clubs like Del Morocco. [12] Blues singer and songwriter Marion James, who had often appeared in Del Morocco and had been impressed by young Hendrix there, [13] was a major contributor of memorabilia to the museum. [12]