LOCAL Houston | The City Guide MARCH 2015 | Page 38

Local March 2015FINAL.qxp_002houston 2/21/15 3:42 PM Page 38

RECORDING

JEWEL BROWN

Most would consider JEWEL BROWN’S peak to be the time she spent singing with LOUIS ARMSTRONG in the ’60s. That’s fair. But while the films
Louis Armstrong and All Stars and Solo do stand as the most visible of her endeavors, they fall short of highlighting a deep pedigree earned
in the nightclubs and juke joints of Third Ward in the years prior. Brown started at a young age. Her first professional appearance was at
Galveston’s Manhattan Club, along an area of the Seawall once reserved for blacks known as Brown Beach (where Menard Park now stands).

That club would become but one destination for the hardworking singer, who would go on to work for JACK RUBY in Dallas and then tour the
world with Armstrong before retiring from life on the road in the early ’70s to take care of her ailing mother. Over the last couple of decades,
Brown started making appearances again, and in recent years has come around to a bona fide second act in her career. This month, Brown
has a new album coming out with Japanese horn ensemble Bloodest Saxophone and she’ll be on tour once again, turning 78 this year and
showing no signs of stopping. I spoke to Jewel about the Third Ward scene that molded her as a singer.
There was so much music in Houston in the ’50s that people always wanted to
come through and play, right?
You darn tootin’. There were quite a bit of them. As a matter of fact, the first night
I went out, when I was nine years old, I got a chance to do a thing with Nat
King Cole at Club Matinee in the Anchor Room. I was nine years old! And then
I started doin’ the talent shows, and that’s one thing as far as gettin’ a little… you
know, start gettin’ a little notoriety and stuff. In Houston back in the day, the
Dowling Theatre was what The Apollo Theater is today. That’s what we had. We
had the Park Theater and the Dowling Theatre — those were the two theaters in
the Third Ward. But it was the Dowling Theatre that had the shows between the

38

L O C A L

| march 15

movies. The movie would be on, and as soon as the movie would go off, the
show would start again. They did shows like three or four times a day, like they
did at The Apollo Theater. And man, we had shows at the Emancipation Park –
on the backside there? They would play movies on the big screen – you know,
they had a big screen there, a film screen. And then they would have the shows
on that back stage back there. I don’t know if it still exists, but that’s what they
did. And that was our recreation on the weekend! Everything went on at the
Emancipation Park. Across the street from there was the El Dorado. So it was a
lot goin’ on just right there in that one block! It was most fantastic.