Eldorado Ballroom coming back to life

The Eldorado, which for three decades was one of the city's premier showcases for African-American musical talent, is a landmark of the heart.

Since the early 1970s, the nightclub that once pulsed with the music of Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Arnette Cobb, Ray Charles and B.B. King has been still. But soon, as early as this fall, the club will return to life as a community music hall operated by Project Row Houses, a Third Ward nonprofit public art center.

The building's restoration -- sponsored by Chevron and other corporate and private benefactors -- is to begin in the next few weeks. A preview, inaugural concert, including performances by musicians who entertained at the Eldorado in its early years, is planned for April 7.

"I'm just amazed at what this building means for past generations," said Row Houses founding director Rick Lowe. "You can mention this building to any older AfricanAmerican in this neighborhood, and they all have something, some memory, some thought about this place. That places a tremendous responsibility on us in its restoration."

Lowe said the project, which will rely on in-kind services and some volunteer labor, will cost from $100,000 to $125,000.

Project architect William Williams said renovation will take place in stages, beginning with basic flooring, heating, air conditioning, plumbing and electrical work. That work should be finished by April 7. Next is restoration of the windows that once lined the structure's second-story front wall and miscellaneous exterior work.

"We have some old photos of the interior," Williams said. "It's amazing. It changed a lot. Different people had different interpretations. You almost wonder if you're in the same space. In a sense, we are building a myth -- rebuilding a collective memory as opposed to an actual structure. We're rebuilding the collective consciousness of a neighborhood."

So varied were patrons' recollections of the old club that Lowe and Williams admitted they are uncertain of where the bandstand was located. "One will say it was over here," Lowe said. "Someone else will say, no, it was over there." Renovators concluded the bandstand may have been in a number of spots during the club's history.

In its heyday, the nightclub featured neon strips along its roof line. But even then, the building was essentially nondescript. Lowe and Williams noted that one recent visitor repeatedly drove by the club, befuddled that the legendary nightspot hadn't been housed in a more grandiose building. Upon visiting the club, Lowe said, a local art museum official flatly recommended razing the structure and building something new.

Lowe, whose Project Row Houses is headquartered in a series of restored shotgun houses on Holman just southeast of downtown, said restoration of the club represents a bold expansion for the public art center, which opened in 1992.

"We're going to try to fill a niche as a venue for artists who are musicians," Lowe said. "There's really not a good place for a lot of musicians to perform."

The hall -- smaller and more informal than the city's major concert halls -- might be ideal for musicians performing under the auspices of Da Camera, the Diverse Works gallery or the Houston Blues Society, Lowe suggested.

Da Camera Executive Director Mary Lou Aleskie noted that the club might be particularly valuable in providing exposure for young jazz players.

"We're looking at programming jazz and blues performances, and we'd like to expand into gospel, hip-hop and other forms of African-American music," Lowe said. "We anticipate staging at least two performances a week."

The club, at the corner of Elgin and Dowling, also would feature a gallery exhibiting the work of black photographers and would serve as the center of a block-and-a-half complex featuring a sculpture garden and, ultimately, a museum dedicated to African-American artistic expression.

Lowe said the Eldorado and its surrounding property were a gift from a white oil-industry executive, who asked to remain anonymous. As a youth in the 1950s, he listened to black performers while sitting in his car parked outside at the curb.

"He apparently didn't feel comfortable going inside, but he'd sit outside and listen," Lowe said. "There wasn't air conditioning, so the windows would have been open and he could hear the music well. He was a music enthusiast, and he had a soft spot in his heart for the place."

Lowe admitted that when the property was donated to Project Row Houses in November 1999, he knew virtually nothing of the club's history and significance to the community.

"I found out it had a wonderful, colorful history," he said.

The club -- locally renowned as "The Home of Happy Feet" -- was opened in the 1930s by Charles and Anna Dupree, business leaders in the African-American community. Lowe said Charles Dupree, a bilingual Louisiana native, reportedly had returned from World War I France with a sizable sum earned as an interpreter.

His wife was the proprietor of a successful beauty salon.

"They built the place as a ballroom, a classy ballroom, for African-Americans during an era of segregation," Lowe said. "It was really a big deal from the social side. From the musical side, it drew all the top musicians. In the '40s, it was a venue for Ray Charles and B.B. King, people like that. ...

"For the Duprees, the Eldorado was an opportunity to add to their business ventures, but it also was a way for them to do something for their community."

"The Eldorado definitely was a venue of some style and substance," said Roger Wood, a Houston Community College English instructor whose book Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues is now being reviewed for publication by a university press. "It was a place where people could dress up and be treated well. It stood in contrast to the common juke joints that were found in the Third Ward."

Wood said the Eldorado fit well in its neighborhood. "Right across the street was Emancipation Park -- the first city park where African-Americans could go without being chased out," he said.

"In the early 20th century, that park was a music center. They had a dance pavilion, and it was the site of the grand Juneteenth celebrations. There were outdoor picnics. That was the place to hear music."

Houston saxophonist Conrad Johnson, whose 20-piece band was among early Eldorado performers and who will be featured at the April 7 concert, recalled that the club was an immediate success.

"We really needed a nice place to go," he said. "It was just plain fun. You know, the bands that played here were local bands. But, sometimes, they'd bring in a celebrity."

Now in his 80s, Johnson still recalls hearing Jimmy "Mr. Five by Five" Rushing, the rotund blues shouter featured with Basie's early band, at the club. "I saw Bullmoose Jackson there, too," he said. "Ah, jeez. I saw numerous people at the Eldorado who were known all over the world."

Radio personality Skipper Lee Frazier recalled staging teen-age talent shows at the club and noted that the Eldorado transcended its role as a nightclub.

"There was a men's club organized around it," he said. "They called themselves the Eldorados, and I think they may still exist. All the black fraternities and sororities held their galas at the club."

Wood cited Frazier's talent shows in contrasting the Eldorado to the Bronze Peacock, a Fifth Ward nightclub founded in the 1940s by Houston music entrepreneur Don Robey.

While the clubs were analogous in their respective neighborhoods, Wood said, the Bronze Peacock, with its chef-created dinners, positioned itself at the elite end of the city's nightlife. The Eldorado, Wood said, was more of a community institution.

"In the afternoons, you'd have teen-age kids competing in talent competition on the same stage Ray Charles would occupy that night," Wood said of the Eldorado. "You had club meetings. ... The Eldorado never served dinner. For a while, it was a brown-bag place where you brought your own liquor, and they served set-ups.

"It was ritzy, but it wasn't totally exclusive."

Though the reborn Eldorado will differ greatly from the nightclub of 60 years ago, its guiding spirit -- a willingness to present a wide variety of black musical expression -- will be the same.

The lineup for the planned inaugural concert is illustrative.

"The way we've been talking," Lowe said, "we want to start with musical mentors, then follow with their disciples. We'd have Conrad Johnson start, then introduce Calvin Owens, who would then introduce Grady Gaines.

"The hard-core blues. Before the night is out, we'll move on to hip-hop. We're bringing in D.J. Spooky from New York to finish the show."

"Bringing the Eldorado back to life is a beautiful idea," Johnson said. "You talk to a lot of people, and they're negative. They say you never can bring back the Eldorado the way it was in the old days.

"But, you know, maybe we can bring back something that's just as important for today's times. I'm a firm believer it will work. I truly believe it will be successful. The Eldorado will become the `Home of Happy Feet' again."

Free tours of the club will be offered 4 p.m.-7 p.m. April 7. The first concert will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets, at $30 each, are available at the Project Row Houses office.