LOCAL Houston | The City Guide MARCH 2015 | Page 39

Local March 2015FINAL.qxp_002houston 2/21/15 3:42 PM Page 39

was Louis Armstrong’s singer. So what happened was they was on a
And you had the same sort of thing going on in Fifth Ward, too. Were a lot of people
search for a singer, and they didn’t exactly know what to do because they
going back and forth between there? Did it feel like a circuit between those two
knew that Louis and Velma had a very friendly bond. And they didn’t
neighborhoods?
know if putting another singer in would hurt Louis’s feelings or something.
Well, at that time, there wasn’t as many cars as there are today. But a lot of the people
They didn’t know how to handle it. But when Mr. Glaser came down and
who could afford it were coming out of Fifth Ward into the Third Ward, and of course
heard me, I understand he heard one show – I was doin’ two shows a
in the Fifth Ward, we had the Peacock, and we had the Club Matinee’s Anchor Room.
night – and I heard that he heard one show and then he went straight on
And right to the side of there, they had what was called The Whispering Pine. Joe
Brown. Joe Brown just died here about three or four
“AT FIVE YEARS OLD I WAS SINGING IN MY CHURCH IN
years ago – the man who owned The Whispering
Pine. And then we had like The Double Bar Ranch,
THE JUNIOR CHOIR. AT FIVE YEARS OLD, YES.”
where a lot of things came there. We had quite a bit,
back to New York that same night. He just came down to hear me so he’d
you know, that was going on. Even down Dowling Street, we had clubs. The G&A
know what Mr. Tony Papa was talkin’ about. So I had been… my first husCafé, and entertainers and all used to come off in those places. But I learned most of
band was Eddie Curtis, who’s my son’s father, and [Glaser] called him in
what I started out doing at the Club Matinee. Before then, I was in mostly the juke
to come and talk to him, because you know, that was a strong investigajoints.
tion on whoever they were gonna put with Louis, you know what I mean?
You had to be a person that was kinda on the up and up! He didn’t use
There were a lot of those!
anybody who was on drugs or alcoholics or anything of that sort. You
Oh yeah. The most famous one at the time was called Shady’s Playhouse. An