A legendary neighborhood in Nashville works to revive musical glory

By Jennifer Brooks, The Tennessean
One Nashville neighborhood is working to bring music back to a part of Music City that's been silent too long. In its heyday, Jefferson Street was the commercial hub, music row and beating heart of Nashville's black community. Nightclubs lined the street, pounding out rhythm and blues, jazz and soul. For 30 years, the greatest artists of the day came there to perform. Ella Fitzgerald. Duke Ellington. Marvin Gaye. It's the street that taught Jimi Hendrix how to play.

And then the city decided to run an interstate across Jefferson Street. Nearly 40 years later, the neighborhood is still struggling to re-create the vibrant spirit of that lost street. Live music, local merchants hope, will help lure the music lovers and shoppers back. The Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership, Belmont University student musicians and local merchants are working to rebuild the street's musical reputation. "Jefferson Street's going to be a huge tourist destination again," said Andrew Bishop, a freshman majoring in social entrepreneurship at Belmont University. Bishop was part of a group of Belmont volunteers who are trying to bring student musicians together with any shop on the street with enough space for a live performance, be it a coffee shop or a hot wings shop.

The student musicians, he said, "are always looking for venues to play, and when they heard there was a possibility of playing on Jefferson Street, they got really excited."

A prime musical stop
For a musician, playing on Jefferson Street means stepping into the footprints of giants. During segregation, black musicians toured the South on the so-called Chitlin' Circuit - a tour of sites where it was safe for them to perform. Jefferson Street was a prime stop. Name a black artist and they've probably played on Jefferson. Duke Ellington. Ray Charles. Cab Calloway. Count Basie. Little Richard. "At one point in time, there were 17 nightclubs on Jefferson Street," said Sharon Hurt, executive director of the Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership. "Once the interstate came through, half of them were gone, just like that. It has taken us this long to recover."

But after almost four decades of silence and slow decline, live music is making its way back to Jefferson Street. Every weekday, the lunch rush at Germantown's Stillwaters Café comes with live music - jazz, blues, bluegrass or Cajun zydeco, depending on which musician is in the rotation that day. The performers range from professional musicians to students from Belmont and Tennessee State University. "We like to think of ourselves as the cultural oasis of Jefferson Street," said David Shaw, a partner in the restaurant. "We have lots of music, lots of local artists and great food."
Shaw grew up in the neighborhood, listening to his parents' and grandparents' stories of a vanished wonderland where people dressed in their best to catch a movie, watch a show or eat a good meal someplace without "Whites Only" signs on the front door. "I always pictured Jefferson Street as a beacon," Shaw said. "When you were on Jefferson Street, segregation didn't exist because everyplace you'd go was just as good as any other place you could have gone in Nashville."
Street's slow decline
The end of segregation was the beginning of the end for Jefferson Street. Suddenly the performers didn't need the Chitlin' Circuit and the audiences didn't need Jefferson Street. When the interstate cut the street in half and obliterated some of the most popular clubs, the decline began in earnest. In decline, Jefferson Street was a beaten-down strip, lined by abandoned buildings and run-down properties. Now up-and-coming businesses are trying to re-create some of the earlier energy and excitement of the place, from Stillwaters in Germantown to places like the Garden Brunch Café, which hosts poetry readings.
"There's more to Jefferson Street than barbershops and beauty shops," said Belmont freshman Laralee Huguley, another volunteer, who has worked to encourage her old high school, Martin Luther King, to order its homecoming flowers and catering from Jefferson Street, rather than elsewhere in the city. "Nashville needs to know there's lots of heritage in Jefferson Street."

It's music to the ears of those who remember Jefferson Street in its glory.
"Jefferson Street was not only a thoroughfare, it was one long community," said Billy Cox, bassist, Musicians Hall of Fame inductee and former bandmate of Jimi Hendrix, who got his start on the street. "I couldn't wait to get there." Cox grew up listening to the distant signal of Nashville's WLAC rhythm-and-blues radio station on his hand-built crystal radio set. He knew all the big acts of the day came through Nashville to play on Jefferson Street, so when the Army posted him to Fort Campbell, that's where he headed the first chance he got - along with his buddy Hendrix.

Most of the clubs where he and Hendrix once played are long gone - Club Del Morocco, the New Era, the Silver Streak, the Wigwam, Maceo's, the Steal Away, Bijou's. The only one where music is still played in any form is Club Baron - now an Elks Lodge that sometimes hosts DJ nights.
Can Jefferson Street bring the music back?
"I think it can," Cox said. "Everything comes around. Change is inevitable."
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