Performance Traditions and Urban Transformations
Three Views of Pennsylvania Avenue
For many people in Baltimore, Pennsylvania Avenue in its heyday represented the heart of black culture. Listen to Clarence “Shad” Brown, James “Biddy” Wood and “Tiny Tim” Harris talk about Pennsylvania Avenue from their own perspectives.
Born in 1915, just off the Avenue, Shad Brown was a bail bondsman, a travel agent and an entrepreneur. He remembers West Baltimore as far back as Prohibition and the Runyonesque times that followed.
This was a time when denizens of the area, abetted by police corruption, were often a law unto themselves. In this audio clip, he talks about the happenings on the lower part of Pennsylvania Avenue during the first half of the 20th century.
Biddy Wood was a journalist (a former editor of the
Afro-American Newspaper), a club owner, promoter and talent manager. His family moved to Baltimore in 1925 when he was just one year old. Biddy talks about unfulfilled potential and a less than romantic view of the Avenue.
Born in 1941, Tiny Tim Harris is a veteran musician and community icon who grew up in and around West Baltimore. Tim has performed all over the United States and the world and has the distinction of being undefeated in a series of appearances at the Apollo Theater in New York. Tim’s honors include being asked to perform for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. Tiny Tim’s view of the Avenue is positive - it was a place where African Americans could celebrate their culture and where working musicians could ply their trade and develop their craft. See a slide show of historic music locations along Edmonson and Pennsylvania Avenues and listen to Tiny Tim’s commentary.
Social Clubs and Performance Venues
Social Clubs like the Arch Social Club and the Sphinx Club are an important part of West Baltimore’s music tradition. These clubs were formed to allow members to congregate in comfort and safety to enjoy the company of their peers and to listen to the great music of the day. Today, venues like the Arch Social Club and Maceo’s continue to operate and regularly host great local and sometimes national performers.
West Baltimore individuals and organizations like PARC (the Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Collaborative) and Alvin Brunson’s Center for Cultural Education and others also host regular festivals held in parks and other venues around the neighborhood. The Enoch Pratt Free Library is also involved in festivals and events celebrating the area’s cultural traditions.
Arabbers: Entrepreneurship as a Moveable Feast
West Baltimore’s Arabbers have become an icon of local culture. For more than a century, they have plied the streets of Baltimore selling goods from their horse-drawn carts. At one time they sold everything from vegetables and fruit to fish, oysters and coal in winter.
These days arabbers mostly sell fruit and vegetables. While some contemporary arabbers sell their wares from pickup trucks, there are still about 13 men and women who regularly work the streets with horse-drawn carts.
Charm City Dancers
Since the 1990s, Shirley Duncan has been leading a revival of Hand Dancing in Baltimore. She
teaches classes and rehearses with the Charm City Dancers who also perform at events around the city. She talks about the history of black dance in the United States and tells us just what Hand Dancing is.
Stepping and Marching Band Traditions
Westsiders Steppers
The Baltimore Westsiders were formed by Jeff and Dorothy Pitts in 1963 making them the oldest stepping group in Baltimore. The Westsiders are a family- oriented group and at their rehearsals and events you see generations of families participating in various capacities. Jeff’s daughter, Corlis Greene is the current director of the group. Corlis blends various dance styles into the group’s choreography, taking inspiration fron jazz and modern, as well as hip-hop and other tastes of the young people she works with.
The Harlem Park Steppers
The Harlem Middle School Park Steppers are lead by Lorrie Parfait, a language arts instructor at the school. Ms. Parfait started the step team at Harlem Park. She describes stepping tradition as originating in Africa. She says that Americans have taken stepping and made it their own. She also spoke about the connection between the stepping as it is practiced in urban environments and the tradition as found in sororities and fraternities at traditionally black colleges.
Going Home — The Cadillac Parade
The Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Collaboration has been instrumental in maintaining traditional activities on the Avenue. Among those activities is the annual Cadillac Parade, where current residents and people who have roots in West Baltimore come back to celebrate this special place.
The parade, like the regular concerts held on the site of the former Royal Theater and the Sunday Arabber Market, is a vastly popular and inclusive event. These events are currently attended primarily by local people, but anyone is welcome. These activities comprise one of the best-kept secrets in Baltimore — that Baltimore’s African American cultural heritage and the performative practices that are deeply embedded in the community are a national treasure that should be shared with the world.
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