Bill’s Place, Speakeasies and Billie Holiday on Swing Street

Jazz Rooted on Swing Street at Bill’s Place

In Harlem, sandwiched between the noisy clatter of the number 2 and 3 and C trains, is a place those in the know call “Swing Street.” This narrow block of 133rd Street occupies the fertile soil where the pulse of America’s Jazz Era is rooted in both an historic past as much as its future.

Bill’s Place is a jazz speakeasy that stands nonchalantly at the center of Swing Street, located at 148 West 133 street, directly across from what is now called the Swing Street Garden. More than monuments of the block’s legacy, both the garden and this musical venue play an active and prominent role in the continuity of this art form. Ghosts of jazz icons past, many former tenants of this New York City street, still rustle noisily through the leaves of the trees that line the block. They whisper distant melodies of old standards, classics from back in the jazz age of Harlem. Then they come to linger outside of number 148 where the party has started up once more with Bill Saxton front and center.

Stepping Back In Time

Walking into Bill’s Place is to step a bit back in time. You hang up your coat as the first step of leaving the outside world, and any preconceptions, behind. Lining the walls as you slide past the small concession bar are images of some of the jazz greats of yesterday. Subtle architectural details, the cornice molding, a unique archway, all harken back to the old Railroad flat of New York apartment dwellings of the time. Visitors are immediately taken aback by the intimacy and informality of the place. It is as if they are being welcomed into someone’s first floor home for a rent party perhaps. They take their seats as Bill and his musicians take the stage.

A Harlem icon himself, William Edward Saxton is a renowed jazz saxophonist. His music career spans from the late 1960’s to the present. He has appeared with and/or recorded with jazz giants, such as Roy Haynes, Jackie McLean, Clark Terry, Nancy Wilson, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, The Count Basie Orchestra, Frank Foster, Carmen McRae, Mongo Santa Maria, Roy Ayers, Barry Harris, Tito Puente, and Charles Tolliver, to name only a few. Bill Saxton’s Harlem All Stars hold court on the small stage and in playing both classic and original compositions they speak to the illustrious past of this speakeasy, as much to the history of jazz itself. 

The cultural phenomenon known as the Speakeasy is synonymous with jazz music. Both were born out of the 1920’s Prohibition Era, which began just fifty-five years after the abolition of slavery. These two very new radical changes in America clashed violently against each other, with little or no preparation. The Prohibition Era is one of the most notorious periods of blood-filled gangster violence and racists attacks within American history. Consequently, African-Americans suffered more than any other racial or ethnic group, because most were direct descendants of recently freed enslaved Africans. They were therefore disenfranchised from the start.

By 1916, this fragile population of newly freed human beings, was again forced to figure a way to survive and usually within the big cities of their newly adopted northern states. Although poor, they possessed their indigenous array of magnificent talents that provided joy in the face of blatant disrespect. The community had its own swagger in harmony with its unique and deep-rooted drumbeat from which music forms were  being born.

To Everything There Is A Season

On February 17, 1919, a huge parade to celebrate the end of World War I was held in New York City. For the first time, “The New Negro” marched proudly up Fifth Avenue, while playing the music of African-American Bandleader and composer, James Reese Europe. The New Negro was forever changed by fighting with a weapon in combat and mingling with European culture. The French offered a vivacious response to their liberators, inclusive of African-American soliders. Mr. Europe marched into Europe as the leader of the Harlem Hellfighters , as the 369th Infantry band was called, and they served a style of music that was unprecedented. A fresh, new attitude and spirit was born within the soul of the returning African-American soldiers. 

The Outlawed Drum Was Back

Jazz unconsciously emerged as free music laced with communication tools that enveloped the pain of ‘field hollers,’ (a historical type of vocal music sung by field slaves in the United States). It encompassed the heartaches of Blues. It offered the promise of spirituals. And, it wove it all into a compact improvisational tapestry of raw feelings. Jazz, the new music, encompassed all of the history of life in America. It was the new drum for the forced migrated population of Africans as well as for those born African-American. It offered a way to hold on to their ancestral rhythms while birthing a new music of their womb in America.

Times were hard and jobs were few but live music, dancing  and religion became the main ingredients within the small Black communities to joyfully embrace. The beginning of Prohibition would bring the next evolution for both Jazz and the business opportunities surrounding the music. It would unknowingly bring a fluid money source into the African-American population. Though alcohol sales and consumption became illegal in 1920, society’s thirst was insatiable. Speakeasies started to spring up to feed the voracious appetite for gin, cigarettes and this new music called jazz. Black jazz musicians and dancers were now being handsomely rewarded, and from White money. 

Although African-American musicians were popular and made money in clubs like the Cotton Club, Smalls Paradise, Connie’s Inn and the Apollo as performers, they were not allowed to eat, drink, or even sit inside these “Whites Only” venues in Harlem. The upside to this quasi segregation was that they brought their money back to their community and spent it at the joints up and down Swing Street. The sublime irony was that after-hours White patrons, performers and club owners moved the party uptown to 133rd Street. 

Interracial affairs

Swing Street venues represented a freedom for the jazz musicians in other ways, too. It afforded them the opportunity to present themselves and their music as they pleased. Here each musician would be in the presence of other highly-skilled musical artists. The best of the best were forced together and the fierce competition continually raised the bar of the quality of their musicianship.

Finally, they had ownership of a place in NYC on a Harlem block where their “Blackness” was the pass needed to belong. Back then, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Andy Razof, Duke Ellington were very young men living and hanging out on the block perfecting their craft during that time. The Prohibition’s segregated era was experienced by the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Eubie Blake, Lena Horne, Fletcher Henderson, Art Tatum, Cab Calloway and a stream of others who became the architects of the New York City jazz movement.

Making Good Situation Out of Bad Experience

In 1923, Tillie Fripp, an overworked African-American cook, left her roadhouse job in Philadelphia with $3 in her purse. Along with a few skillets, pans and plates, she eventually settled into 148 West 133rd Street to start a small restaurant. She recognized a gold brick. The block was densely populated with illegal speakeasies, plenty of rooms rented to jazz musicians, and traffic from Whites almost all night in and out of the speakeasies. While a menu of gin, fried chicken and fish, eggs and ham became a staple for hungry patrons, it served up a healthy paycheck for Tillie’s Chicken Shack. She prospered along with the growing reputation of the street as a hotbed for night life activity that spiraled upward.

The paradox of Tillie Fripp’s huge success at The Chicken Shack juxtaposed to that of two other local residents named Eleanora and Sarah Julia Fagan, was profound. Being from Philadelphia was the only thing Tillie Fripp and the Fagans had in common. A teenage Eleanora wandered up and down the sidewalks of Swing Street in the early 1930’s desperately looking for work. Meanwhile, Tillie’s success caused her to move to larger restaurants downtown in Manhattan. As luck would have it, a singer named Monet Moore took over 148 West 133rd Street. By 1933, Tillie’s old establishment was now to be known as Monet’s Super Club.  

Timing Is The Thing

John Hammond was a White producer of what were then called “Race Records,” 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to African-Americans between the 1920s and 1940s. They featured African-American musical artists of jazz, the blues and gospel. He was on the hunt for another female singer. At the request of Monette Moore, (See  “Lose That Long Face”, the complete original version with Judy Garland and Monette Moore.) Hammond agreed to attend a social at her supper club to hear Monette sing. In an effort to spend more time socializing with her guests, Monette asked young Eleanora to entertain. At some point during the evening, Eleanora’s unique, strangely thin sounding voice caught the attention of Hammond. Instead of signing up Moore, John requested that Elenora consider him as her record producer for the future. Monette was incensed, left New York, and moved to Los Angeles to continue her career as a singer.

Eleanora continued spending time on Swing Street at number 168 at a place called The Log Cabin. Two years later she signed a contract with John Hammond and renamed herself Billie Holiday, using her father’s last name. The young girl went from Eleanora Fagan to Billie Holiday on Swing Street with a recording contract with Hammond. Surely, the jazz drumbeat went wild up and down Swing Street with juicy gossip of Billie Holiday’s unusual career launching. 

It would seem that with its deep roots within jazz history and within Harlem itself, this joint would have a long life. Yet, in the ‘Big Apple’ (as jazz musicians coined New York), nothing is guaranteed. With the end of Prohibition in 1933, the original Swing Street would begin a slow migration downtown to 52nd Street. The blocks between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue became renowned for its jazz clubs and nightlife. The Uptown Harlem jazz scene continued at some of the bigger clubs, but Tillie’s old place would eventually fall into disarray, much like the block. But before allowing Swing Street to fade into the history books, jazz saxophonist Bill Saxton and I became owners of this famed brownstone sixteen years ago. We had a vision and a plan.

The Music Continues…

Hanging on the wall at Bill’s place is an illustrated street map of the immediate area that shows where each of these former hotspots once stood. There is but one that is still a functioning jazz joint. As co-owner with Bill himself, our vision was to create a Harlem Jazz Speakeasy. Here we can pay tribute to the lingering ghosts of Tillie, Elenora and others. Over the years, we have witnessed an audience of mostly foreign tourists (95% White) come to our Harlem club to hear real jazz music — it is usually after they having visited downtown popular high end clubs at some point during their stay. However, it is only here where they can experience a joyous yet understated authenticity.

They squeeze into our salon setting to have an intimate jazz experience. For many it starts with the thrill of coming uptown to an authentic Harlem venue where the Jazz Era began. But it is here, too, that they can still feel the “holy ghost” emanating from the old walls. A place where once Fats and James P. Johnson battled on the keyboard and now the sweat and tears still lives there through Bill Saxton and his incredibly talented band members.

Bill unapologetically delivers jazz music seamlessly in his impeccably well crafted delivery. His setlist mixes both classic reinterpreted and his own remarkable compositions that educate as much as entertain. He fully carries the personal “Black burden” of straight ahead African-American’s jazz as he unpacks it from within his horn case every Friday and Saturday evening with two shows each night. Young musicians from all over the world come “to sit in” to play along with Bill Saxton’s Harlem All Stars. They are here to test themselves out with the recognized jazz icon. Parents bring their musical children to hear and see what the real world requires — a true American classical music genre.

The popularity and support we have seen from people of all ages from around the world speaks volumes to the lasting power and ingenuity of world class musicians. More than mere ghosts, the contemporary masters of Swing Street turn out and play late into the night with Bill and his band. As our guests depart out of building number 148, they know they have experienced an authentic celebration of Harlem’s jazz legacy. They in turn carry forth both the melodies and an essence of the heyday of Harlem and an African-American music called jazz.

There exists a simple question? Why not add Swing Street to the existing 113 New York City National Historic Landmarks? It belongs in the family of historic landmarks Stonewall, Statue of Liberty National Monument, African Burial Ground, Carnegie Hall, James Weldon Johnson Residence, New York Cotton Exchange, to name a few.

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Theda Palmer Saxton PhD

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