Gaslight Square | Living St. Louis

for about a decade Gaslight square offered st. Louis ins a unique and magical entertainment destination but the success of Gaslight square was too good to be true it may have been crime the fear of crime or just changing tastes that sealed Gaslight Squares fate the last ember died in 1972 when O'Connell's pub closed its doors and for 30 years Gaslight square sat vacant decaying and without a plan some people talked about saving the buildings and trying to revive Gaslight square as an entertainment district but those plans didn't go anywhere meanwhile Gaslight square sat in uncertainty bricks falling from its the sides in the early 1960s a local television program looked at the problems facing st. Louis there in the distance is downtown st. Louis here where we stand is the heart of the city all around is destruction half crumble buildings the shells of yesterday's long gone in many of the once fashionable areas of old st. Louis the creeping blight is making itself felt these neighborhoods are teetering on the brink signs for sleeping rooms and furnished rooms advertise the fact but amidst all this decay and urban blight the program showcased one shining example of revitalization keystone of the Renaissance at the West End is Gaslight square at Boyle and Olive the streets beginning to take on the look of the fashionable 90s crowds are so thick on weekends it's almost impossible to find a parking place in the immediate area things of interest are the sidewalk artists making sketches to order and exhibits of oil paintings st. Louis ins are flocking to this new mecca of nightlife in ever-increasing numbers st. Louis has been called the Dowager city and perhaps with good reason but the old lady seems to have lifted her skirts and is proving that you can still tap out a pretty good tune at the age of nearly 300 years [Music] [Applause] little did they know that this success story in Gaslight square would last only a few more years Gaslight square was a meteor that rose in the mid 1950s and burned brightly for about 10 years but by the late 60s this shining star had lost its glow the area sat idle and decaying for decades it was just the environment itself it was such a casual friendly warm environment you can park your car and just walk all over the place and there were so many different types of venues you could hear great Dixieland music go out the door two doors down and hear show tunes are two doors the other way in here a folk singer [Music] gasps right square what was it like it was like if you were at the corner of Pendleton and olives and you were going east to Van Deventer it would take you 45 minutes to drive two blocks because people were like this in the street you just you just couldn't come it was just creeping along I started out basically Gaslight at the Black Horse which is I had the Old English motif inside and it was frequented by not only lots of college students but people from all walks of life it was eclectic virtually whatever somebody wanted was there on guests I swear [Music] you have that variety you didn't have to just go to a jazz club or just a blues club there were fine dining restaurants you know and it was just it was marvelous I think the magic was how the people came together how the musicians were more closer together it's interesting over the last you know 30 odd years since I'm the only public place that's still connected to it the question of what happened or what it was like believe me I have been asked this question hundreds of times festive is a great word people were happy streets were crowded especially in the summertime the music the food everything about the street was was a very healthy party on a Saturday evening you lose when you saw a person walk into the area that they came out to have fun to be entertained there was no doubt there were 10,000 people 20,000 people I'm a two-block stretch it was amazing we had livable nights down there and I tell you one thing I remember particularly I sang Calypso song hey that was a he liked Cavani one will hole that's what that kind of thing I remember going there in college I guess it would have been 1964 65 and going down there and on up on a warm autumn or or the spring evening it was absolutely packed with people I think of O'Connell's and on any given Friday night and O'Connell's there might be business guns students professors there was a this weird Hells Angels guy who hung out there that had this helmet with hair on it and it was very menacing looking but really was sort of you know tended toward the poetic when we first opened up the red carpet I have an uncle who at that time had a Rolls Royce and he decided we were going to open the red carpet and drive up in a Rolls Royce turns out the Rolls Royce was like a 1933 or whatever it was and we had to push it up the street and here my grandmother was sitting in back like a Dowager and one of my uncle's was sitting in the driver's seat with a cap on and here were six of us pushing the Rolls Royce up the street so I mean there were great experience I worked there at my parents nightclub 14 15 16 years old I can remember Saturday nights working bussing tables are hosting and then in the evening staying my brother's apartment upstairs I look out the window and the clubs are just closing down so you see all the club goers that people dress for clubbing and they dress beautiful walking up and down the street and at night gasps I swear was like a fairyland of lights and colors and music I've told friends it was a little difficult making the transition Beach all you're working on guests I swear Friday and Saturday night as a busboy and then going to high school on Monday morning I was talking about things that the other kids didn't talk about my mother used to say when people say how can you let him work in a nightclub she'd say he's getting a good liberal education I think it was a cultural life of Asus in a city that was otherwise sort of devoid of acceptance of the creative acceptance of the different there was a sense of tribalism a sense of togetherness which I think still exists today with the people who lived there and uh not there yet and again it was people who live there who had a vested interest in the area that really gave it its character freedom and that's what gaslights carats foyer represented different types of ways of living it was an acceptance of individuality unity but variety although it was a lot of fun there was some sort of civic purpose beyond just having fun it was a place where all sorts of people came together it drew from from the county and from the center from the West County in the South County and the Central West End and it was just this great convergence of people and ahead meaning beyond just just dancing and drinking and and playing at night there were conversations there that I think couldn't have been beat anywhere just brilliant people and it was magnetic it was just simply magnetic for all sorts of all sorts of smart hip interesting folks smart hip and interesting these are words you hear from many of the people who frequented Gaslight square there are also words that describe a few people who played a large role in making the magic of Gaslight square happen Jay and Fran Landis men owned the Crystal Palace a cabaret and theater that was the center of culture in gaslights where I was a reflection of the incredible spirit of Jay and Fran Landis Minh and their daring in presenting things that were a bone guard not only plays and dramas and stuff like that but performers jail and Esmond was a writer and publisher in the late 1940s he published a New York literary magazine that offered avant-garde perspectives and early missives from Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg his wife Fran was a singer and songwriter who would go on to create many jazz standards Jay and his brother Fred opened the Crystal Palace because as they said there was nowhere to get a decent drink in this town but the Crystal Palace offered much more than just a good drink jaelyn Desmond had an uncanny ability to identify emerging talent he booked performers like Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen Phyllis Diller The Smothers Brothers while some of them were still virtual unknowns George Carlin and his partner at the time Jack Byrnes acts like that that were just on their way to becoming huge and that's what Jay and Fran did they were willing to take the risks to to present them it was just a matter of having those cultural antennae I out all the time and and listening for things and and being one step ahead you know spotting that this young woman Barbra Streisand was going to be a great star and and bringing her into some others brothers and then I think everybody looks back on that time and understands it's something very unusual and very magical was happening in st. Louis people came from all over to see what the fuss was all about and the locals will tell you if you weren't there there's no way to understand what it was like you can you could talk to jeanne Trevor and you can talk to peanut Suellen and it's undo any good yet just had to be there you aren't really able to explain what happened because I think it's ineffable and almost accidental it and we know that you cannot plan something like this to happen for example you see some of these casino builders trying their best to simulate something like Gaslight square by having the Gaslight and you know the the cobblestone street effect and all that's Eartha and it just comes off as bogus this was this in every way was authentic until it got unauthentic until the go-go places came in until the greedy people came in and and and destroyed it and I would put the greedy people at the top of the list of the thrill of the vandals of guest:i square there was other stuff certainly that was going on there was the perception of crime anything that happened in Gaslight square got publicity and if there was crime in Gaslight square it was going it was going to get publicity and it got maybe over publicized and I think most of it was perception I mean there was you know the break-ins of cars things of that sort I mean that kind of minor street stuff did take place but it wasn't really rampant but I think that the the conception of crime and that started to have its effect on people driving through the neighborhood rumors just sort of flying rapidly and I honestly don't I was just startled as the rest of them maybe it was just the end of a era personality-wise maybe someone else that no I was just but my Camelot had ended and I I was hurt and I was flabbergasted by the whole thing crime became you know quite prevalent there you know during that time and just I think I think maybe the city fathers were ready to just close that down yeah the people haven't been paying their dues to the gas-tight square association so my job is really to go and knock on doors and to help collect the dues and to work out some problems like the lack Uppal times on my watch the the gas lights were turned off by the Queen gas and we had to go down to the Clea gas and negotiate to get them turned back on there is a certain fickleness among a st. Louis night club it's a really dumb gas I'd Square and there are a few clubs left in the late 1960s but they're even a couple of go-go joints they were there so you could see it had really transitioned in it was a Gaslight square as a product that was well beyond its mature stage it was really in its death stage I sold out in September 65 at 64 I turned down 60 $60,000 and in September 65 I sold it for five people are getting much frightened they didn't want to travel downtown even traveling from West County to the guest LightSquared Olive and Boyle became pretty much of a problem for a lot of people a lot of antique dealers either died off or they closed her shop and when I was there most of them had iron bars in front of their shops and even at 10 or 12 in them not 10:00 11:00 in the morning I'd have to knock on the door and say hey I'm Bob rube right I want to talk to you about this or that the end was so at the end was like somebody with some sort of horrible cancer that sort of went into remission and never really went into remission but it kind of just hung on and hung on it hung on him and Jack Parker hung on forever and and you know maintained this loyal following and people still went down there but it eventually he was obliged to move and everybody understood [Music] music was the heartbeat of Gaslight square all kinds of music from Dixieland to jazz to show tunes to folk and while many people think that the music of Gaslight square is a mere memory a whole new generation is about to be able to enjoy it Dan Warner owns Webster Records in Webster Groves a few years back Dan started a new label designed to give a home to the music that has shaped st. Louis's history you know it's so important to not forget where we come from as we go forward and Gaslight Records is formed with that principle in mind that mission that we have to be able to appreciate these high points and music that have come from seamless seamless has been a very important contributor to music in the world [Music] until recently Gaslight Records was missing only one important ingredient the music of Gaslight square but that's about to change Dan Warner is continuing the legacy of Norman wine store who's Norman Records label recorded many of the Gaslight greats lemon was a big-time recording company executive he came back to st. Louis he and his wife Pat who was a delightful lady and he started a company called Norman distributing which was a record distributor anyway when the square blossom Norman whose always had great affection for local entertainers and musicians but decided that he would set aside an amount of money and kind of showcase them on recordings fortunately for Gaslight Records and for all of us the master tapes from those sessions survived decades of storage we tracked down Norma his daughter and his son Bob and his other daughter Mary and we started putting together assembling the masters from his record company and I think these masters kind of got spread around and it took us several years to pull the pieces together in fact just the other day someone Marty Bronson came up with a few more masters that were in his garage Warner has been sorting through those tracks to put together a collection of music that captures the spirit of Gaslight square the collection includes tracks by singleton Palmer whose roots go back to the riverboat day [Music] Russ David one of the most respected pianists and band leaders in st. Louis [Music] goes seal plate a mainstay at mr. D's and the merry-go-round [Music] the sultry Clea Bradford who regularly played in the dark side [Music] Muggsy Sprecher the Dixieland jazz man who liven up the crowd at buses and boats Davey bold popular comedian and entertainer at the Georgian and one of the original performers on the square quartet tre bien the adventuresome and creative mainstay of the dark side Marty Bronson who owned the wildly popular Marty's [Music] and the inimitable genie Trevor Gaslight squares first lady of jazz [Music] it wasn't easy to find them all but for Dan Warner it was a labor of love to me the value is to maybe introduce somebody that didn't know what it was like to walk down Gaslight square and hear this music coming out of these clubs maybe we're gonna hopefully give somebody a chance to revisit that music of course the revival of Gaslight square music isn't limited to recordings here at Fran's Cafe in the new city loop you can hear guests like grapes like Janey Trevor and Mae wheeler they're being booked regularly by owner Jay Brandt that's right the kid who used to bus tables at the red carpet in Gaslight square it started about a year ago we did a Gaslight square remember night May wheeler showed up and Geney Trevor and peanuts Waylon and Prentiss minner and Denise ties and Mae wheeler put it best a couple days later I was talking to her and she said honey what happened was magic it may never happen again the energy from those musicians well since then may we learn now comes in twice a month she need Trevor comes in once a month peanuts comes in every now and a youngsters are bringing that about thank god they're listening a lot of youngsters are listening to Frank Sinatra and Bobby down they are [Applause] it's been a remarkable journey for gas lights where from entertainment Mecca to blighted and decaying to gloriously reborn it's a testament to the city's ability to rebuild itself and a very good omen for a city that has seen its share of challenges in recent decades [Music]

Channel: Nine PBS

Views: 67,427

Keywords: KETC, LivingStLouis, StLouis, GaslightSquare, MargieNewman

Id: MAUA7st75ds

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2008