New York Club In 1970's

[Roburt]

This is probably a question that only the likes of Ian Dewhirst or similar (guys who were regular visitors to NY in the 70's) can answer ...

I'm after info on Lloyd Price's club that was located at 1674 Broadway (Between 52nd Street and 53rd Street). The place has a long history of being a night club. From 1949 to 1965 it was the famous jazz club, Birdland (owned by Morris & Irving Levy & named after Charlie Parker). As a jazz venue it struggled from late 63 and by 64 had started booking soul singers (the Lloyd Price Revue doing very good business there in April 64).

After a while in limbo, the club was refurbished & opened as Lloyd Price's Turntable Club, live acts being the main draw (though Lloyd advertised the club as 'the Home of WWRL DJ's'). During this period, Lloyd's business partner, Harold Logan, was shot dead in the office above the club (May 69) in mysterious circumstances. The Ed Sullivan Band (leader Ray Block) used the club to rehearse for their slot on the TV show most Saturday & Sundays, so the place was kept busy. As the 60's drew to a close and into the early 70's, the club still managed reasonable business. But by mid 71 it was struggling, so Lloyd renamed it the Crawdaddy Club and undertook a week long engagement himself to try to boost business. Live acts still appeared at the club and in 1974, Rudy Gay (a 22 year old from Farmville, NC) was spotted performing at the club and recommended to the other members of Ace Spectrum. He auditioned for the group & was taken on as a member.

The place was still going as the Crawdaddy Club in 1975 but by then, records were mainly keeping the punters entertained (Lloyd afterwards claimed it was one of the 1st disco's in NY). In the summer of 75, Lloyd (who by then was running a big youth development project) was using it as a recording studio to teach some kids about the biz. In the early 70's, Lloyd had become friends with Don King (about to become a big boxing promoter) and the pair promoted some big fights together. By the mid 70's, Don King was also trying to establish his own record label and he would get the groups he'd signed to play gigs at the club to help learn their trade, gauge their popularity with the NY crowd. But by 1976, Lloyd had sold the place & it had been re-badged as the disco, Boombamakaoo. It quickly became one of the top discos in Manhattan, with current DJ Bobby Morales being a punter there in its early days.

By November 1976 it was one of the places to be seen, mainly due to the work of DJ Jorge Wheeler.

A typical playlist at the club was documented at that time ..................

..... DJ Jorge Wheeler's Picks

ANOTHER STAR - StevieWonder (Tamla)

DON'T WALK AWAY - General Johnson (Arista)

DOWN TO LOVE TOWN - Originals (Motown)

GOIN' UP IN SMOKE / THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES / MUSIC MAN - Eddie Kendricks (Tamla)

I BELIEVE IN LOVE - Rock Gazers (Sixth Avenue)

LIKE HER! - Gentlemen & Their Lady (Roulette)

MESSAGE IN OUR MUSIC - O'Jays (Phila. Intl.)

SPRING AFFAIR / SUMMER FEVER - Donna Summer (Casablanca)

WHEN LOVE IS NEW - Arthur Prysock (OldTown)

YOU'RE MY DRIVING WHEEL - Supremes (Motown)

An earlier one of his top spins had been Crown Heights Affair's "Dreamin A Dream" (back in 1975).

I have no idea when Boombamakaoo went under, but for one night in 1979, it was turned back into the Birdland Club.

The place is still a night club, now its Flashdancers Gentlemen's Club (a strip joint).

Did anyone here visit the club in any of its Turntable / Crawdaddy / Boobamakaoo periods. If so, can you pass along anything you can recall about the place. CHEERS.

[Roburt]

The musical director at the Turntable Club was Charles Davis, a famed jazz sax player. This probably explains why the club still put on jazz nights each week, even in 1969 & 1970.

Monday & Tuesday were jazz nights, with a live act.

Wednesday was talent show night with acts just turning up & performing. No doubt, if a really impressive act turned up one week, they would be considered for a record deal with Lloyd's Turntable Records.

Thursday through Sunday was when the headline act (Howard Tate, Jean Wells, Jean DuShon, Brenda 'Lee' Jones, the Buckeye Politicians, the Coasters or Lloyd himself) would perform.

If you had made it along to the club in April 70, you would have been given a free copy of Howard Tate's 'Reaction' LP.

[Ian Dewhirst]

I only visited New York in really quick bursts in the 70's, so I was never there long enough to explore different clubs. Of course, that all changed from the early 80's but in the mid 70's I was living in Los Angeles and visiting San Franciso occasionally. I pretty much visited most of the clubs on the West Coast however, as a relatively young-looking 21 year old back then, you had to make sure you were visiting the right KIND of clubs otherwise it could be a pain in the arse - I had a nerve wracking couple of hours @ San Francisco's "Dance Your Ass Off" and still feel I was lucky to get out in one piece LOL.....

I usually went to the Music Biz hangouts in L.A. in '76 - Chez Nous and the Candy Box and another one which I think was called Sergios. All pretty good at the time I must say............

I know Ian Levine used to go to some of the more notorious clubs downtown and I'm pretty sure Kev went to a couple of uptown clubs at that time so maybe they'd be better to answer this......

Ian D

Edited March 13, 2012 by Ian Dewhirst

[Roburt]

Cheers, Ian. Pity you weren't around in NY during the time period I'm interested in.

I have done some more research & it turns out that Lloyd Price bought 'the Birdland' , refurbished the club & opened it as the Turntable Club in March 1967. In the early months (through to early 68) the club didn't book name artists.

When it did start to book top singers on a regular basis, Lloyd obviously used his contacts from down the years (he had been gigging up & down the east coast circuit since the early 50's) to secure acts to perform in the club. So acts such as the Coasters, Chubby Checker & Chuck Jackson played the venue (Chuck Jackson followed on from Chubby Checker in May 70).

[Roburt]

I make mention of Howard Tate's Turntable Records album above, so here's a bit more on how it came about .....

The story of how records get made is often more interesting than the music itself. Such is the case with Tate's LP 'Reaction', which came out in 1969 on Lloyd Price's Turntable label. Price's career as a no-holds-barred mover and shaker in the black music world truly sets him apart. Befitting the man who schooled the young Cassius Clay in self-promotion, Price's handsome photo appeared as part of the Turntable logo, even on the 45s. "Everyone said, 'Lloyd will get you your money,' so he decided to sign with Price, who was then fronting the Lloyd Price Turntable Club on Broadway near 52nd Street. The 'Reaction' album was made in conjunction with two other long time Price associates, singer Johnny Nash and the legendarily promoter/executive Danny Sims. Among the first Stateside music biz pros to recognize the burgeoning potential of reggae, Sims and Nash were already seeking to corner the market. The pair had hooked up with Bob Marley and never blind to a potential next-big-thing, Price gave Tate some of Bob Marley's ska-era songs to record. Marley tunes like "You Think I Have No Feelings" were first cut by Howard Tate.

What could have been an influential footnote in the history of pop crossover (the Wailers served as Tate's uncredited backup band) became a blip when' Reaction' sold almost no copies. It was another event, however, that would end Tate's association with Lloyd Price's Turntable Records. This occurred in 1969 at the Turntable Club, when Price's partner, the aspiring songwriter turned bookkeeper Harold Logan (together the two had formed L and L Records in Detroit and put out Wilson Pickett's first hits), was shot dead in the club office. We have to rely on the possibly not totally reliable account of one Frank Lucas, an infamous drug-dealing American Gangster who stated that Turntable was actually owned by Harlem dope pushers like himself and Zack Robinson. Lucas spent many nights kicking back with some ladies at the Turntable Club enjoying Howard Tate's act. Logan came to a sticky end, getting two bullets in the same place smack between his eyes, whilst he was in the office above the club (May 69). By all accounts, Logan had upset Zack Robinson over some 'business deal' and the shooting was the result of his actions. Tate more or less confirmed Lucas's version of the Turntable incident, Tate shivered when the name Harold Logan came up. He stated that he had bad dreams about Logan for years, lying there dead like that. It's thought that Logan stole some money but back then, Tate wasn't world wise enough to know who was a hoodlum and who wasn't. He was just a green kid and all he cared about was whether the audience liked how he sang and that he got paid. But after Logan was killed at the club, he got out of the place and never went back. The incident scared him so much that it was the beginning of him leaving the business and everything that happened after that.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Roburt

[Mike]

had the below recently posted to us

HEY, ABOUT BOOMBAMAKAOO'S PLACE 1674 BROADWAY, I WAS ONE OF THE OWNERS, YOU ARE SOME WAY CORRECT. WE TOOK OVER ABOUT THE END OF 1975 THE PLACE WAS CLOSE FOR A WHILE AND IN TERRIBLE SHAPE. WE DID EVERYTHING, WE EVEN FOUND A DANCING FLOOR UNDER THE CONCRETE STAGE THAT WAS EXACTLY THE ONE OS SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER AND I THINK THEY COPY IT,  I'M SURE THE. THEY COME AND TALK WITH US ABOUT LOCATION BUT BECAUSE OF MANHATTAN THE CHANGED THEY MIND. WHEN WE FINISH THE CLUB IT WAS VERY HARD TO GET THE CABARET LICENSE BECAUSE OF THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THE PAST AND JORGE WAS OUR DG FROM THE BEGINNING AND WAS THE BEST DJ AT THAT TIME AND MY NAME JOAO DE MATOS AND HAD T2 PARTNERS SAL AND JAMIL BUT IT WAS A STRANGE PARTNERSHIP. BUT I DID EVERYTHING FROM CONSTRUCTION TO RUNNING THE PLACE!!!

 

[Jorge Wheeler]

Hello , My Name is Jorge Wheeler. I was the DJ for the Boombamakaoo from 1975 to 1979. The CasaBlanca brought the establishment in 1979. In the period that I was there. DJ Bobby Morales NEVER participated in the club.  I don't know what punter meant when reading the previous article. I assured you that I and only myself was the music engineer and the DJ of that club.

During those four years , the Boombamakaoo was one of the Top clubs in New York Area. We were open 7 nights a week Monday nights was Blue Monday, Tuesday was Salsa, Wednesday thru Friday was Disco and Saturday was the Main night to Draw the crowd, Sunday was fashion Night.

I Was a Member the Famous Record Pool and also associated with Legend of Vynle. This past year I was awarded a plaque from Legend of Vynle for the DJ Hall of Fame. Look it up. 

On another note, Was extremely close to Salvador Sorrentino and Jamil. I would like to contact Joao De Matos if that is possible.

Thank you