Greg
Feb 28, 2003, 03:53 AM
Sorry for the late notice, but there’s only two days left to take in the Hogan’s Alley exhibit at the Roundhouse. It ends Saturday, March 1st.
This is a small show that consists mostly of text, newspaper clippings, roughly 15 photos and some spoken word focussing on Vancouver’s black community up to the 1960s. The exhibit touches only peripherally on music, but there are a few jazz-worthy items nevertheless.
One example is a 1959 photo of Phineas Newborn playing a now-defunct Vancouver club. A 1952 Vancouver Sun clipping, Negroes Live Next Door To Us, mentions that Vancouver-born tenor man Lionel Mitchell “played with the late Jimmy Lunceford’s band.” Mitch figures strongly in Mark Miller’s Such Melodious Racket, and I’d like to add a separate thread about him.
Again, I should emphasize that the exhibit isn’t primarily about jazz. Its main fault might be that it often gives the impression that Hogan’s Alley was exclusively black. But it does offer some perspective on the life many jazz musicians and aficionados used to live.
If you read this too late, not to worry. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more about Hogan’s Alley, as this aspect of Vancouver history gains more awareness. And you can read about it in, among other sources, Such Melodious Racket; Vancouver: The Way It Was, by Michael Kluckner; Strathcona: Vancouver’s First Neighbourhood by John Atkin; and especially Opening Doors, a collection of oral histories compiled by Carole Itter and Daphne Marlatt.
This is a small show that consists mostly of text, newspaper clippings, roughly 15 photos and some spoken word focussing on Vancouver’s black community up to the 1960s. The exhibit touches only peripherally on music, but there are a few jazz-worthy items nevertheless.
One example is a 1959 photo of Phineas Newborn playing a now-defunct Vancouver club. A 1952 Vancouver Sun clipping, Negroes Live Next Door To Us, mentions that Vancouver-born tenor man Lionel Mitchell “played with the late Jimmy Lunceford’s band.” Mitch figures strongly in Mark Miller’s Such Melodious Racket, and I’d like to add a separate thread about him.
Again, I should emphasize that the exhibit isn’t primarily about jazz. Its main fault might be that it often gives the impression that Hogan’s Alley was exclusively black. But it does offer some perspective on the life many jazz musicians and aficionados used to live.
If you read this too late, not to worry. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more about Hogan’s Alley, as this aspect of Vancouver history gains more awareness. And you can read about it in, among other sources, Such Melodious Racket; Vancouver: The Way It Was, by Michael Kluckner; Strathcona: Vancouver’s First Neighbourhood by John Atkin; and especially Opening Doors, a collection of oral histories compiled by Carole Itter and Daphne Marlatt.