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Imagine a local scene booming loudly with hundreds of people grooving to music, while more than a dozen live jazz and blues bands vibrate stages. And it's not on Sixth Street or even downtown, but in East Austin.
This might seem like a dream, but five decades ago it was reality for the community east of Interstate 35. Several factors caused the once thriving music scene to dissolve into history during the late 1960s and early '70s.
Before its downfall, East Austin was packed with venues such as Charlie's Playhouse, The Victory Grill and the Sheryl Ann Club. The city's large black community and black out-of-towners, especially post-World War II military servicemen from nearby army bases, depended on this area for their entertainment. And because the east side was the only place in the city that played jazz and blues music at the time, white patrons also frequented East Austin hot spots, a majority of whom were University of Texas students.
"The east side was really it, especially that section over there around 11th and 12th streets, that's what you would call 'the strip,'" said Mark "Pat" Patterson in an interview for the documentary "Austin Texas: East Side Blues." Patterson, an active Austin musician during the 1960s, said five to six thousand people would go out over the course of a weekend, with at least 15 bands playing.
"Austin Texas: East Side Blues" is part of the Austin Blues Family Tree, an oral history project founded and produced by Harold McMillan, which documents the lives of black blues, jazz and gospel musicians in Austin. The project's archive includes 500 pages of transcripts from interviews with local musicians.
Many of those interviewed were important to the music scene, which was so popular that clubs featured local legends such as W.C. Clark, T-Bone Walker and Joe Tex and also jammed national stars such as BB King and James Brown.
But when taking a stroll down the East Austin streets today, it's easy to see that this musical splendor didn't last. So what forces caused this music Mecca to fade away and never return?
Integration of the black and white communities played a crucial role in the music scene's disappearance. Take it from Donald "Duck" Jennings, an East Austin trumpeter who has played blues and jazz since the 1950s.
"I tell you, the east side is, like I said, integration … it killed it," he said in an interview with McMillan.
It's no doubt that the whole city experienced major changes throughout the civil rights movement during the 1950s and through the '70s. Though much of the transformation was positive, such as the desegregation of the University of Texas and the Austin Independent School District, integration's negative effects were not absent.
East Austin encountered a major loss in business when many blacks tried to participate in other communities. When this happened, east side clubs and bars could not keep their doors open, because the crowds of black community members that once supported these businesses now went to elsewhere for entertainment.
"When integration did happen … the focus kind of shifted and moved away from the black community to other areas. Black people had the chance to go to other night clubs, other places that they had not previously been able to go in," James Polk said in the documentary.
Polk was a key musician in the East Austin music scene from the late 1950s through the 1970s. He also performed with Ray Charles and His Orchestra and formed his own band, James Polk and the Brothers.
Many blacks also moved out of the core of East Austin altogether to areas such as North and West Austin and also to nearby towns such as Pflugerville. In 1960, blacks made up about 12 percent of Austin's population, compared with 8.9 percent of the population in 2005, according to census data. Another important factor contributing to the decline of the music scene was whites' desire to play jazz and blues. After whites heard this music on the east side, many enjoyed it and wanted to learn how to play.
During the 1950s and '60s, black bands would often play for whites, especially UT students at fraternity parties, recalled T.D. Bell, an East Austin guitarist and singer. But when whites learned how to play, it caused a loss in jobs for the black bands, he said.
What makes this even more detrimental to black musicians is that they taught whites how to play blues and jazz, but it was and is often the white musicians who are recognized. A prime example is Stevie Ray Vaughan, a world-renowned electric guitarist who learned to play from east side musicians every week.
"Yeah you feel a certain amount of anger," Polk said in the documentary. "You feel a certain amount of hurt that something you've given somebody else and they get all the attention for it."
In McMillan's documentary notes, he observed Polk's reiterations of how West Austin's excitement for blues and jazz proved detrimental to black musicians. When whites accepted this music as popular, the commercial West Austin blues scene was born, but did not lead to more playing opportunities for black musicians, McMillan said.
Gil Jenkins, founding member of Austin band The Blues Crawlers, still sees the effect happening in Austin today. Because white musicians get most of the jobs and recognition, black musicians depend on working with white bands, which is discouraging, said Jenkins, who is also a voting member of the Grammys.
"The only jobs black musicians get now are the ones white musicians give them," he said.
An additional contribution to the fall of the east side's musical heyday was its reputation for being dangerous and filled with violence, drugs and prostitution.
City authorities wanted to shut down East 11th and 12th streets, because they thought it was full of crime, so they forced the business owners off their property by issuing an excess of citations for minor violations, Jenkins said.
"Authorities said they wanted to clean the east side up, but what they were really trying to do was move people out and off their property," he said.
Polk remembered that when the East Austin community died after integration, it led to "buzzards, winos and thugs" hanging around the streets, and this made people afraid to go out in the community.
All of these forces combined together have made the East Austin music scene what it is today: nonexistent.
"It's become a dry place now," Jenkins said.
The happening scene that had dozens of venues and hundreds of customers has been reduced to only a few clubs. The Victory Grill is still open and occasionally features live music. T.C.'s Lounge, which entered the picture after East Austin's prime, has live music most days of the week. Most of the former clubs are now vacant lots and different businesses.
Though many East Austinites, including McMillan, hope the black music scene will make a comeback, the ongoing gentrification and resulting displacement of original community members and businesses make the possibility of a musical revival seem dim.
"This community will never be that way any more," McMillan said.
Jenkins believes that history has a way of sneaking up on people and that the future of East Austin depends on the community members, especially the baby boomers, who can teach the youth about its musical past.
For Polk, who lives in East Austin and recently retired from his teaching position at Texas State University, there is hope that current situation can be changed through the powerful messages in music.
"Don't let the ball drop here, don't let the ball stop here," Polk said in the documentary. "The type of music that black people have created over the years, don't let it stop, don't let it die."
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