Tag: Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Finding Otto

How stalwarts of justice became stewards of style

By Billy Ingram

For 30 years, beginning in 1950, Otto Zenke was one of the nation’s most respected interior designers. Based in Greensboro with offices in Palm Beach and London, he created spectacular environments for the finest homes along the East Coast including the mansion of the late Julian Price in Irving Park and Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. A year from now, however, a major portion of Zenke’s legacy will be erased forever when his former home and showroom is demolished for a parking lot.

Bridging the lifestyle gap between the old and new South, Zenke lent his 18th-century-influenced stateliness to residences surrounding golf courses in Pinehurst; country manors in Virginia and South Carolina; seaside abodes in Palm Beach; estates in Newport and Los Angeles; and homes appearing on covers and in photo spreads for House Beautiful and Architectural Digest. “Elegance and beauty were his trademark,” declared Connoisseur magazine.

Georgian fireplaces, cut-glass chandeliers hung from high ceilings, gabled archways and boldly carved pilasters were just a few of Zenke’s signature touches. For select clients, lavishly illustrated, hand-painted murals of pastoral splendor or sprawling foxhunting scenes and delicately rendered chinoiserie panels adorned dining and living room walls. It’s doubtful most of those murals survive today but I’d heard rumors that one was extant, oddly enough, in the Guilford County Sheriff’s office.

In 1968, Zenke constructed a 3,000-square-foot home and showroom on the corner of Washington and Eugene Streets after the city had appropriated — by eminent domain — his extraordinarily beautiful residence and workspace across Eugene for use as the Governmental Center. The L-shaped English Regency-style complex he developed in ’68 was joined to, and fronted by, a two-story, New Orleans-inspired dwelling built in the late-1800s, one of the oldest houses still standing in downtown Greensboro.

After Zenke’s death in 1984, the county purchased the property and, today, within those hallowed walls, Guilford County Sheriff Danny H. Rogers presides over one of the largest sheriff’s offices in the state with 557 employees split between operations and detention bureaus.

Elected in 2018, Rogers is Guilford County’s first Black sheriff. Growing up in High Point in the 1960s, the few African American law enforcement officers that existed locally were an inspiration to the very young Rogers, who learned by observing them — both how to interact with people and to “be who I am.”

In 1985 Sheriff Jim Proffitt allowed Rogers to work as a non-sworn detention officer. “The county had frozen the positions for sworn officers. Well, on my first day as a non-sworn detention officer, there were two of my white counterparts and they were sworn. I asked, ‘How long have you guys been here?’ Turns out their hire dates were the same as mine. I questioned it. I worked with the sheriff’s office for a little over a year and a half, then I went to the High Point Police Department, where they gave me an opportunity to be sworn and paid me to go to school. I was there for a little over three and a half years before coming back to the sheriff’s office.” After another three years or so, he was released from the department; it wasn’t until roughly 25 years later that he ran for and became sheriff for Guilford County.

During his time away from the sheriff’s office, Rogers earned a master’s degree in criminal justice and a theology degree. An open Bible sits on a shelf behind his desk. “I had a chance to understand the community from a different perspective,” Rogers says about his well-spent time away. “Getting out there, meeting the people and walking the streets was key when I first started.”

Whenever a new administrator takes over an organization, pushback inevitably follows. “There’s always a lot of behind the scenes conversation,” Rogers says about the transition after becoming sheriff. Those who want to stay will stay. Those who want to leave will leave.

“A positive change began within myself,” Rogers says. “But the real positive change began in the mindset of the men and women who work here, so they can go out in the community and help bring about that positive change. And it’s working. It’s not working like a grand slam or the perfect engine, but it’s working at the pace that it needs to.”

Naturally, I was curious to have a look around Zenke’s former showroom, imaging what you might see on modern TV police dramas, when detectives paste photos of hapless victims on the walls with a cat’s cradle of string tying them to some unknown serial killer. I could not have been more mistaken.

Rogers’ office, once the designer’s living room, is enshrined in 130-year old wood paneling embedded with 15-foot high, built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases framed in intricately carved crown molding. The bathroom is equipped with an unused sunken marble tub.

Zenke’s stylistic fingerprints are everywhere throughout this palatial domain: entranceways topped with half-moon transom windows; individually painted tiles in the kitchen; a restroom swathed in emboldened Asian-flavored floral wallpaper — all in pristine condition after more than half a century. Touring these offices a few years ago, one former North Carolina chief executive remarked that it was nicer than the governor’s mansion.

Surrounding the largest open space, to my delight and surprise, unscathed and perfectly preserved, was a panoramic hand-painted mural replicating the verdant patio of an Italian villa opening to the unspoiled countryside with realistically rendered black urns perched on either side. Nearly hidden in one corner, a peasant boy is relieving himself in the bushes, a naughty detail Zenke no doubt delighted clients with privately.

Atop another room’s mahogany bookcase is a marble inlay centered by a nobleman’s face. It has an unintended design element — a pronounced bullet hole piercing an interior glass door, shattered three years ago after gunfire erupted across the street. Soon after, all exterior windows were made bulletproof.

After visiting Zenke’s former digs, photographer Lynn Donovan and I were chatting as she packed cameras into the trunk of her car. A female detention center deputy stopped to question what a couple of suspicious-looking customers like us were doing meandering in the parking lot. “Oh, we’re here to shoot the sheriff,” I replied. That wasn’t a smile crossing the deputy’s lips as one hand inched closer to her baton. Donovan explained that we just wrapped up a photoshoot with the county’s top lawman. While we had, in fact, shot the sheriff, after the jailer moved on Donovan noted, “we did not shoot the deputy.”

After completion of the new Guilford County Sheriff’s Law Enforcement Administration Building in 2025, Otto Zenke’s former home/showroom next door will be demolished for a parking lot — naughty peasant boy and all.

Wandering Billy

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

How I learned to always give credit where credit is contractually obligated

By Billy Ingram

For reasons I’ll never understand, from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, I found myself working as an artist for Seiniger Advertising in Beverly Hills, a movie poster design team that became known as “The New York Yankees of Motion Picture Advertising.” During the last century, when movies were enjoying the industry’s most lucrative period, a lean, mean design team of about 30 of us found ourselves creating one-sheets — the movie posters you see in theaters — and trailers for the biggest blockbusters ever.

We cranked out hundreds of posters for movies such as Pretty Woman, Hook, Ghost, and Field of Dreams, and worked on films that became franchises, including James Bond, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Indiana Jones, Beverly Hills Cop, Star Trek and Rocky. And that’s not even mentioning every Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner and John Hughes release. They all came out of the Seiniger studio. Here are a few meaningless yet entertaining anecdotes from a time when I was Hollywood swingin’…

The Prince of Tides: Barbra Streisand was/is famous for micromanaging her projects, all the way down to creative control over all advertising and publicity, including movie posters. For a couple of weeks after shooting wrapped, Streisand would send over suggestions for the Prince of Tides poster and I would work them up — usually consisting of a photo for the background, another for the foreground. They would arrive, about half a dozen at a time, promptly at 6 p.m. and she needed to see completed comps by 9 a.m. If at first glance I thought her choices odd, inevitably they turned out to be very attractive and astute. However, there was one particular on-set photo she liked a lot of her and co-star Nick Nolte in bed, Barbra in a nurturing position. Trouble was, she kept wanting to see her head larger, which naturally meant Nolte’s noggin got bigger. Eventually, the context was lost. That became obvious when someone passed by my desk, saw this mockup and remarked, “That looks like Barbra Streisand with her pet head!”

Boomerang: We were toiling away on a typical campaign for a romantic comedy starring Paramount Picture’s biggest star until one afternoon, when we were instructed to stop and switch directions. Seems the star decided he wanted to be the next James Bond. And, as it happened, that franchise was in limbo after License to Kill bombed at the box office. From that point on, every poster design for that Paramount romcom had to make the star look as “007” as possible. Bond being another studio’s property, what could have been an unusual casting choice (to say the least) was ultimately nixed — but, if Ian Fleming’s creation had belonged to Paramount, there’s no doubt the next entry in that franchise would have starred . . . Eddie Murphy as James Bond.

Moonstruck: The image of Cher on the Moonstruck poster (from a location shoot in Central Park by Annie Leibovitz) is one that almost everyone remembers. In fact, it won what is now the Academy Award for Best Movie Poster that year, another home run for the Tony Seiniger shop. That image is actually composed from three different photos — the head, the torso and arms, and the skirt with legs all came from separate frames.

This also-ran for Moonstruck (shown) has some of the same elements as the final poster, but . . . why is Cher up in the night sky lashing out at the logo? What’s even more puzzling is why is the moon moving so dangerously close to the Earth? File this one away for Cher’s sci-fi sequel: Moonstruck the Earth!

Star Trek VI: This particular comp, I had very little — if anything — to do with, but, whenever I drifted into a new project, I would pull the actors’ publicity contracts that we kept on file just in case. While this design by Bob Peak, a highly-acclaimed artist who rendered the illustration for the first Star Trek motion picture one-sheet, is striking and effective, I warned the art director that it would never fly. William Shatner’s contract stipulated that only Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and Shatner himself could appear on the movie poster, so this was a nonstarter.

Bugsy: One day, I noticed an older gentleman meandering around our bullpen, observing with interest how we were manipulating images, so I struck up a conversation. He was none other than George Hurrell, the photographic genius who captured indelible portraits of 1930s/1940s Tinsel Town immortals such as Garland, Harlow, Crawford, Bogart, Gable and Garbo. I was fascinated as he explained his technique of touching up those picture-perfect images directly on 8-by-10-inch negatives. This was 1991; he still had his studio, but confessed he felt his work had been forgotten in the business, and was grateful Warren Beatty had requested a photo shoot with him for the Bugsy poster. Hurrell passed away the next year.

With all the different directions and rush-order variations requested over several months, primarily by Warren Beatty, the one-sheet for Bugsy somehow became the most expensive of all time (a record I doubt will ever be broken) — around one million dollars just for the movie poster alone. And yet, as gorgeous as George Hurrell’s stark depiction of Beatty was on the final design that both star and studio agreed on (shown fronted by Annette Bening, photographed by Bruce Weber), Bugsy’s director, Barry Levinson, was so miffed at having been left out of the process, he rejected it and demanded input. As a result, the final poster was merely a generic tango pose of the two stars lensed by a more au currant Hollywood photographer, Herb Ritts. They could have photographed it at Glamour shots in the mall.

Before working at Seiniger Advertising (a company so exclusive the phone number was unlisted), I never gave one thought to how movie posters came into being. I just fell into it. During this almost 10-year period, I actually provided the illustration for The Hunt For Red October poster and generated graphics for award-winning trailers and main titles including The Fugitive and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Glamorous? Hardly. Almost every night, we had no clue when we might be able to go home; relentless deadlines resulting in 14-, 16-, even 26-hour days were expected. Working under the most stressful conditions one can imagine for long periods of time, we formed familial bonds that extend to this day, friendships and harsh relationships that I look back fondly on — and paydays I wouldn’t mind becoming reacquainted with.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Down to a Fine Art

How Sam Fribush, Calvin Napper and Charlie Hunter came together to create new grooves with familiar sounds

By Billy Ingram

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was covering a shift in a comic book store one sunny Saturday when musician-songwriter Sam Fribush strolled over from his nearby home to discuss the latest steps he’s taken on his remarkable mellifluous journey. He, together with Grammy-winners guitarist-bassist Charley Hunter and drummer Calvin Napper, formed the Sam Fribush Organ Trio to create an album released in March of this year. People Please is a swingingly soulful suture of melodies reminiscent of a time, many decades ago, when rhythmic instrumental riffs ruled the Billboard Hot 100.

Raised in Sunset Hills, Fribush reflects on his musical undertones. “My parents are both self-taught, old-time folk musicians, so I grew up with music in the house. Folk Appalachian music is maybe the first line in my DNA.” While attending Weaver Academy from 2009 to 2013, Fribush began seriously focusing on piano under the instruction of Mark Freundt. “They had a block schedule, so I just sat at the keyboard for an hour-and-a-half every day and practiced. That was a big part of getting my technical facility together.”

From there, he studied music as an undergrad at the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston, simultaneously picking up local gigs. “That’s when I started playing the Hammond organ, in a Black Baptist church in the south part of Massachusetts,” Fribush says. “A really tough learning environment, got my ass kicked in all the best ways.”

A move to New Orleans led to the musician pounding keys in dimly lit clubs on Bourbon and Frenchmen Streets. “The school of hard knocks,” is how Fribush describes that experience. “Without rehearsed material, having to know tons and tons of songs, just using my ears, that’s when I really got my ass kicked!”

After the pandemic hit, like a surprising number of other talented individuals (a blessing in disguise it turns out), he returned to Greensboro. “I love being back here,” Fribush says. “It’s a great home base of operation. I moved to College Hill and joined the band Hiss Golden Messenger from Durham.” Relocating proved fortuitous. “I also met Charlie Hunter, who randomly moved to Greensboro when I did. We happened to be into the same type of music and started playing together.”

When Fribush and I spoke that afternoon, he had just returned from laying down tracks for his next album in Richmond. “I’m on a little bit of marathon recording new stuff right now,” he explains. “I’ve been really going down a deep rabbit hole of writing. It’s been rewarding, having all these demos.” In the Richmond recording studio, he connected with some of the guys from Butcher Brown, a jazz quintet from the area. “We were just pulling songs off my demo list. It was really fun to have these original sparks, and then see what they turn into.” The week following our convo, he was jetting off to Denver to record with producer and drummer Adam Deitch from the funktastic ensemble Lettuce.

Currently, Fribush is especially looking forward to jamming once again with his People Please collaborators at the N.C. Folk Festival. When he was first approached about performing, he says, “I was like, well, I would really like to get those guys in on it, too.” The only other live performance this trio has played as a unit was an album release party at Flat Iron, but, he notes, “Whenever the three of us get together, it’s always awesome.”

Taking a break from touring with TMF (The Music Forever), formerly of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly Winston-Salem resident Calvin Napper is renowned for beating out percussive blasts for gospel greats Kirk Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and CeCe Winans, to name a few. He was awarded a Grammy for his contribution to Donnie McClurkin’s Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. “Calvin Napper is a natural born drummer,” Smooth Jazz Daily opines. “Although addicted to gospel music, he pursues his musical destination in smooth jazz or, more precisely, funk.”

Cruising into Latin and Caribbean inspired grooves on recordings with D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, Mos Def, and John Mayer, world-renowned Jazz and R&B guitarist-bassist Charlie Hunter’s signature Novax seven- and eight-string instruments allow him to play both bass and guitar simultaneously. “I’ve been a fan of Charlie Hunter for a really long time,” John Mayer once said about after having the chance to record “In Repair” with him. “One of the values that he’s kind of instilled in me, just from my being a fan of his, is his willingness to want to get into other musical situations than what he’s familiar with.”

On The Charlie Hunter Quartet’s highly-acclaimed 2001 Blue Note album Songs of the Analog Playground, it was Hunter’s transcendent interpretations of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and Nick Drake’s hauntingly sensual “Day Is Done,” both featuring then unknown vocalist, Norah Jones, that introduced the future nine-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter to the world. A year later, Jones’ debut album became one of the best-selling platters of all time. Intertwined on People Please, these three virtuosos have created an extraordinary sonic playground reminiscent of those ubiquitous, highly infectious instrumentals of old. Think “Soul Bossa Nova” (the theme from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) by Quincy Jones; Oscar Peterson’s jaunty, unparalleled ivory-tinkling wizardry across musical genres; Memphis ’60s Southern grooves typified by “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s; in addition to that sweet Philly soul sound of the ’70s. “Philly is where most of the Hammond players were from,” Fribush notes about the keyboard that funked up the 1970s before soulless synthesizers desensitized our ears. “Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, yeah, that’s the sound. Those are my idols.”

People Please may be Sam Fribush’s first assemblage of all original material, but even the cover tunes on his two previous records are, for the most part, practically undetectable as such, owing to his singularly preternatural approach. “That was the point,” Fribush says. “Finding deep cuts then arranging them in interesting ways.”

This musical artist has somehow managed to make that instantly recognizable Hammond B-3 Tonewheel’s harmonic resonance fresh again. One reason that sound is relatively uncommon today? The manufacturer stopped making them a half-century ago. “Most of my Hammonds are from late-’50s, early-’60s,” which means that, out of necessity, Fribush has to repair and refurbish those organs and antiquated amps himself. “They are 100 percent analog, no chipboard. It’s all tubes, pretty straightforward. In the jazz and funk organ idiom, it’s a hard sound to replicate because of the warmth of the Hammond.”

Are the Sam Fribush Organ Trio’s electronic earworms burrowing us back to a post-synth future, 21st-century beachmusic style? They may be the closest thing to a so-called “supergroup” the Folk Fest proffers this year.

Fun Fact: in order for a band that he once managed to get paid, Billy Ingram was forced to confront Eddie Nash, one of LA’s most notorious mass murderers (Wonderland), who was crying poor behind a wall of at least $200,000 in bundled bills. Best believe band got paid!

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Down to a Fine Art

For 125 years, The Art Shop has decorated Gate City walls – and beyond

By Billy Ingram

“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
— Edward Hopper

Residents in “The City of Flowers” (as Greensboro was known at the time) must have thought the big city had come to town when, in 1899, Andy Andrews opened Andrews Art Store on the 100 block of West Market, an emporium stocked with custom-made framing materials to accommodate the aesthetic needs of our more refined citizens.

Just up the block was the borough’s newly implemented, earliest attempt at a public transit system, consisting of a horse-drawn streetcar traveling north up Elm Street all the way to Judge Dick’s Dunleath house. With its limited horsepower, an old mule, passengers were required to disembark and push from behind at any incline that was encountered.

Rechristened The Art Shop, ready-made frames, prints and etchings were added to the store’s inventory before famed local commercial photographer Charles Farrell purchased the whole kit-and-caboodle in 1923. Farrell expanded the business to include the latest Kodak folding cameras and a state-of-the-art developing plant for photo finishing and enlarging. As this area’s first photographic center, the shop began hosting a camera club in 1933, attracting enthusiastic practitioners all across North Carolina.

“With increased interest in architecture, interior decoration, and amateur photography, The Art Shop has shared widely in those cultural developments in Greensboro and the state,” wrote Ethel Stephens Arnett in her exhaustive historical tome, Greensboro, North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 1955).

Farrell focused his lens on this corner of the world for The Greensboro Daily News, snapping pics depicting everything from the mundane to the extraordinary, like his exclusive aerial image of the crime scene on the day R. J. Reynolds’ scion was murdered.

Farrell, as a young man in 1913, assisted his father in creating one of the most iconic images in modern commerce, the original image of a circus camel named “Old Joe” that became the trademarked mascot seen on every pack of Camel cigarettes. In 1939, Farrell staged photographs illustrating everyday Black life in the South for Tobe, the very first children’s book produced for an African American audience.

At that time, The Art Shop’s familiar green canopied entrance was on West Market, right where the front steps to Lincoln Financial Group are today. In 1964, after Farrell fell ill, the family sold The Art Shop to Stanley Dolin, who, a decade later moved the shop to a nondescript, stand-alone storefront at 3912 West Market — where I purchased art supplies as a teenager in the 1970s.

Art supplies had long ago been swept aside when current co-owner Andy McAfee began collaborating with proprietor Stanley Dolin in 1997. “My degree was in art marketing and I had worked for five years with Bill Mangum,” McAfee recalls. “Stanley was more into framing so he brought me on to get more involved in the fine art market.” Launching a website soon after, The Art Shop began selling paintings and sculptures internationally. “That really opened a lot of doors. My first big sale was three Oleg [Zhivetin] originals to [a buyer in] Japan.” Dolin constructed a sprawling, cathedral-like gallery on the site in 2000. Then, in 2015, Andy and April McAfee bought the business.

“My number one selling artist is Nano Lopez,” says Andy McAfee says, standing next to one of the sculptor’s larger works, a 400-pound, distinctly abstract bronze interpretation of a goat. “Lopez is from Columbia, South America. He currently resides in Walla Walla, Washington. That’s like a $68,000 goat.” Known for his almost mythological approach to his subjects and a singularly vibrant color palette, Lopez created a smaller but equally kaleidoscopic bronze of a parrot, being crated and shipped out as we spoke. “[Nano Lopez] was one of the first artists I picked up. He’s just turned 70.”

The showroom is brimming with original oils and sketches by Rod Chase, Pino, Hessam and Roberto Salas, mixed media originals by Bisaillon Brothers, as well as limited edition giclée and serigraph reproductions on canvas from Iranian artist Sabzi and artist Thomas Arvid, known for his portrayals of wine. McAfee also offers a collection of fanciful drawings from the fertile mind of Dr. Seuss.

“I’ve been here long enough that now I work with mostly the family of the artists,” McAfee says. “Like with Hessam, I work with his son. Pino, who made Fabio famous, passed away about 14 years ago, but his artwork still sells well.” McAfee notes that the shop has an email list of 5,000 who are interested in Pino alone.

Dealing in original art is not without its pitfalls. “I’ve had to learn the hard way,” McAfee says. “An artist can be famous for figurative, but his landscapes could be worthless.” Oftentimes it comes down to subject matter: “Like with Pino, everybody wants the female or the mother-daughter. If I had a mother-and-daughter Pino original, it would sell pretty quickly.”

Each year Leland Little, the illustrious auction company in Hillsborough, ends up with a significant number of acquired pieces. “They sold a couple of original Peanuts comic strips by Charles Schultz for me,” McAfee says. It so happens that Charles Schultz sketches in particular are some of the most common forgeries out there. “Schultz mailed all of his strips in, so there should be folds in [an original], which it had,” McAfee says of the research involved in authentication. “I found the year and the date of the actual strip and it was identical.” The strip with Snoopy in it went for around $14,000, and the one without Snoopy sold for a little more than half that. “So there’s a huge difference.”

Shortly after purchasing The Art Shop, the McAfees opened a North Carolina Gallery inside the store dedicated to artists from around the state, such as painter Phillip Philbeck from Casar, a small town near Hickory. “He came down and did some original paintings of Greensboro for me, which I love.” Stunning is the only way to describe his meticulous, photo-realistic depictions of our downtown skyline and shops along Elm Street.

McAfee is happy to do walk-in appraisals for those curious about a cherished treasure. “I just enjoy doing them, really. If you brought something in and wanted me to look at it, there wouldn’t be any charge for that.” If travel is required in order to assess a collection spread out across an entire house, there’s an hourly rate. “A lot of art is inherited,” he says, adding that some people have no idea the item that’s been hanging on their wall for 50 years is something special. But it’s also not uncommon to come across artwork an owner believes is worth tens of thousands of dollars when, in fact, it’s a print ordered from a catalog. “And people are like, ‘No, it has to be an original — my grandmother said it was.’ There are a lot more reproductions out there than originals.”

For 125 years, award-winning custom framing has remained at the core of The Art Shop’s mission. “We do a lot of corporate work. We’re getting ready to do the Truist Leadership Institute campus out by the airport,” McAfee says of what the organization dubs “the perfect getaway for self discovery and personal growth.” He continues, “We hang a lot of hospitals; we did High Point University; and recently hung art throughout an entire home on Figure Eight Island.”

As Greensboro’s second-oldest locally owned business (Binswanger Glass beat it by a quarter-century), The Art Shop has developed and changed its focus over time, selling it’s last photographic accessories, paint and brushes many decades ago. Still, it’s name may suggest something else to some people. McAfee, chuckling, says, “For the 27 years I’ve been here, people are still calling asking for art supplies.” OH

Billy Ingram is the author of EYE on GSO, a compendium of stories (mostly) about the Gate City’s rich history. For instance: How Greensboro, Charlton Heston with a cast of thousands, and a camp filled with Nazis won World War II. Oh yeah!

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

Elvis Hasn’t Left the Building

No other recording star had a more enduring relationship with our city than Elvis

By Billy Ingram

Feature Photo: Elvis Presley boarding the Lisa Marie to leave Greensboro, N.C. for Asheville

“Of all the places we’ve been to, you’re one of the most fantastic audiences we’ve had.” — Elvis Presley to a Greensboro crowd

A few minutes after midnight on Monday, July 21, 1975, a Lockheed JetStar glided to a halt on a secluded spot at the Greensboro-High Point Airport’s tarmac. A fleet of limousines awaited the colorful parade of passengers as they deplaned, followed by the greatest superstar of the 20th century, Elvis Presley. The King was in town to electrify what would be a record-breaking crowd at the Greensboro Coliseum that night.

Within half an hour of touchdown, Elvis and his enormous entourage pulled up behind the high-rise Hilton Hotel on West Market, located across from Greensboro College, where an advance team had already covered every window on the top two floors with aluminum foil, preventing even a ray of daylight from encroaching. Elvis was escorted to the Wedgewood Suite, encompassing the western end of the 10th floor, familiar to him from two previous stays in 1972 and 1974. Shortly after arrival, the Memphis Mafia called down to the kitchen to order a fruit tray.

Normally closed by midnight, the Hilton’s kitchen was fully staffed and prepared to fulfill room service orders not only from the ninth and 10th floors but for the two levels below, where The King’s less crepuscular courtiers were holed up. When the order for that fruit tray came in from Elvis’ suite, a tower of melons, grapes, bananas and cottage cheese was prepared, oddly enough, by Greensboro Daily News reporter Jerry Kenion, who had taken a part-time job in the kitchen in an attempt to score an interview with Presley. The closest she came was catching a glance of the star while wheeling the food cart into the suite’s living room.

Around 3:30 a.m., word went out from Presley’s personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, to Greensboro Coliseum general manager Jim Oshust that Elvis was suffering from a major toothache. Armed with the City Directory, Oshust began ringing up local dentists one by one. Officer Judy Allen, part of a security task force assigned to serve the King, had a better idea. She suggested her longtime practitioner, Dr. J. Baxter Caldwell.

Minutes later at 1100 Sunset Drive, the cacophonous ringing from 1970s-era landlines interrupted the stillness of what was an unusually hot summer night. On the line, the voice of an all-night operator informed Caldwell that the most famous mouth in America was in need of emergency oral surgery. Could he be of assistance?

Caldwell agreed to attend to Presley, dressed hurriedly, and arranged to meet his receptionist, Mrs. Ann Wright, at his practice located just up the street at 1817 Pembroke Road (still a dental office today with the same phone number). Officer Allen drove Presley’s limo to the physician’s back door around 5 a.m. while another stretch transporting two bodyguards and Elvis’ physician, the infamous “Dr. Nick,” followed closely behind.

What the dentist didn’t know was that it had become common for Presley to remove one of his fillings, then arrange to be seen on a rush basis for what would eventually yield him a prescription or two. What Elvis didn’t know was that Dr. Caldwell was especially reticent to prescribe painkillers to his patients. But Presley’s predicament was entirely legit this time. Dr. Caldwell determined there was an abscessed tooth under the bridge in the lower right bicuspid, which he went right to work on. Returning to the Hilton around sunup and before retiring for the day, Elvis finally noshed on that fruit tray he’d ordered earlier.

Around 8 p.m., Elvis, attired in his bedazzled Aztec-inspired outfit, and his posse descended the elevator to encounter about a dozen fans congregating outside the Hilton’s rear exit. Bodyguards had advised the assembled that Presley was suffering from a toothache and wouldn’t be hanging around to talk.

During the previous night’s concert in Norfolk, Elvis began inexplicably pestering his female backup singers, The Sweet Inspirations, with crude insults. Most of his vitriol was reserved for on-again, off-again girlfriend Kathy Westmoreland, who harmonized with the girl singers. All but one of the women walked off stage midperformance. Determined to quit for good, “The Sweets” reconsidered in Greensboro after a preshow heartfelt apology from Elvis. On July 21, all but Westmoreland performed at the coliseum.

To the tune of “CC Rider” at 8:30 sharp, a newly slimmed-down Elvis glided confidently but casually on stage, his mere presence causing 16,300 fans to erupt into screaming and squealing conniption fits. Before he ever sang a note. One local reviewer declared this 1975 appearance “better than ever.”

As the concert progressed, Elvis became increasingly obsessed with a rough spot on his reconstructed tooth that kept rubbing his tongue. Not a small distraction. A midnight call went out to Dr. Caldwell. The entire staff was on hand when Elvis arrived around 1 a.m., including two dental assistants who had been in the audience that night. Receptionist Ann Wright noted that the entertainer didn’t look particularly tired, considering he’d given such a high voltage performance, while Dr. Caldwell told The Greensboro Record, “He was a nice fellow. It was ‘Yes sir this’ and ‘Yes sir that’ with him.”

Upon returning to his 10th-floor Hilton penthouse, Kathy Westmoreland reluctantly met with a morose Elvis as he sat on the bed, clad in karate pajamas. Brandishing a gun in one hand and a gift-wrapped jewelry box in the other, Elvis offered her a choice: “Which do you want? This or this?” Nervously accepting and opening the gift, a watch, she agreed to remain by his side until the end of the tour.

More bewildering, at the airport the next afternoon, Elvis’ retinue discovered that he had flown ahead to their next engagement in Asheville without them. After the jet was piloted back to Greensboro and everyone finally settled in at Asheville’s Rodeway Inn, Elvis demonstrated his remorsefulness by showering his entourage with what the jeweler who traveled with Presley, Lowell Hayes, called “Practically a whole jewelry store!”

That erratic behavior continued. There were multiple accounts that Elvis was angry that his personal physician had confiscated the drugs he’d just scored from another dentist. His temper also flared up when the vertical hold on the TV screen went haywire, a not frequent occurrence. According to those reports, he fired a bullet into the Rodeway Inn television set, which ricocheted into Dr. Nick’s chest but caused no injury.

Frustrated by the lack of standing ovations in the last of his three Asheville dates, Elvis doled out a diamond ring from the stage, worth $6,500 (about $38,000 today), and handed over to a random fan perhaps his most iconic guitar, a Gibson Ebony Dove with a mother-of-pearl “Elvis Presley” inlaid into the black rosewood fret board. Prominently featured in his 1973 Aloha From Hawaii TV special and strummed onstage frequently, that guitar sold at auction in 2016 for $334,000.

Elvis triumphantly returned to the Greensboro Coliseum and the Hilton (now called The District at West Market) in June 1976 and April 1977, the latter being opening night for the last concert tour before The King’s untimely death in August that year. Employees at The District swear to me that Elvis’ spirit hasn’t left the building. I’ll believe that when a late night phone call goes out to Dr. Caldwell’s office. After all, he has the number. OH

Billy Ingram is a hunka hunka burnt-out love.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

Remembering Gangrene-sboro Days and Nights

Or how to get your foot into show business

By Billy Ingram

“They [The Beatles] had no idea who we were. I walked over to John Lennon and said, ‘John, a lot of people mistake me for you.’ He laughed. I had the Zulu haircut. There’s a great photo of them playing with my hair.” — Marty Allen

The first superstar I ever met was Andy Williams, who bounced me on his knee at The Plantation Supper Club on High Point Road, or so my parents reminded me ad infinitum. I was 2 years old at the time. Ten years passed before I met another celebrity . . . and I’ll wear the scar from that encounter until my dying day.

Early one Saturday morning in 1968, I found myself pedaling barefoot up Northwood to Greensboro’s newest Winn-Dixie at (what is now) 1616 Battleground, a large retail center fronted by Main & Taylor and Huntington Learning Center. The reason? On hand to greet the fine folks entering the home of “The Beef People” that day, Winn-Dixie had booked Las Vegas comedy headliners Allen & Rossi. No idea why. Maybe they were playing the Plantation.

Even though Allen & Rossi’s blunt-force attempts at laughter largely left me cold, I still wanted to roll my grapes over two real Tinsel Town TV stars. Comedian Marty Allen and singer Steve Rossi blended their two disparate acts in 1957, not-so-coincidentally a year after the incredibly lucrative Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis nightclub act busted up. As a result, Allen & Rossi became the most successful of a multitude of Martin & Lewis imitators that chased that improbable dream of sold-out club dates and marquee dominance. Like Deano, Steve Rossi was a handsome, statuesque Italian crooner (“Al Di La”) plagued with a befuddled-looking, bushy-headed nincompoop, Marty Allen, complete with his own lame catch phrase: “Hello Dere!”

A mainstay of The Ed Sullivan Show, Allen & Rossi were on the broadcast the night The Beatles made their American debut. Infiltrating some 700 talk and variety shows in the ’60s, they were perhaps best known for the summer of ’66 big screen flop The Last of the Secret Agents?, a lethargic James Bond spoof where Nancy Sinatra languished as the film’s femme foil. That movie was directed by a true legend — a guy I had the pleasure to collaborate with years later — Norman Abbott (The Munsters, Sanford and Son).

In one of mankind’s greatest leaps in technology — that is, until the impending moon landing — when Winn-Dixie customers at this location stepped on a rubber mat at the entrance, those heavy, metal-framed doors whooshed open automatically. Land o’Goshin, I don’t believe anyone ’round here had ever witnessed such a mechanical marvel. At least, I hadn’t. When those doors swung open with no effort for the little old lady in front of me, she stopped, looked skyward, then whispered, “Thank you, Jesus.” (I may be wrong, Big Bear at Lawndale could have boasted the first automatic doors, but bear with me.)

As I approached the famous comedy team, who were meandering by WD’s meat display, Allen spun around unexpectedly, crushing the big toe on my left foot under the heel of his impeccably shined black, patent-leather shoes, the kind I’d only seen gangsters wear in movies. As I cried out in pain, Allen sneered, looked over at his partner, muttering under his breath, “Can you believe people walk around barefoot in a grocery store? What kind of hick town is this?!?”

In all fairness, it really wasn’t that unusual for kids to wander around everywhere shoeless back then, before “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs began popping up. I probably wasn’t wearing a shirt either.

Pedaling painfully home, I showed the injured toe to my dad, who declared it fine. A week later socks began sticking to that scabbed-over appendage, but my parents, who, as was the style of the day, took an arm’s length approach to raising children, assured me everything would be OK. When red vines began creeping up my leg, I once again asked if this was still in the vein of what they considered normal. Dad, who had served in the Army (quite literally, he was a Mess Sergeant), recognized immediately that a serious infection was underway. We secured an emergency appointment with a podiatrist, who told us in no uncertain terms, “Obviously the foot will have to go, but we might be able to save the leg.” I told the doc, “Oh, heck no! That’s not gonna happen.”

That podiatrist proffered what admittedly was a long-shot solution: There may be a chance to save my foot by soaking it in scalding water and Epsom salts pretty much every waking hour. Doc operated on my big toe, carving away the worst of it, as well as half of the toenail in the process, then wrapped that melange in so much gauze I had to cut an opening out of the tip of my left Topsider to accommodate the bulk.

Returning to Mendenhall Junior High (Home of the Mustangs!) on Monday, teachers were sympathetic to my plight, until I limped into Coach Loflin’s gym class. Perpetually clad in a gray polyester polo shirt with the requisite whistle around his neck, Loflin was a pretty decent guy, sterling I suspect, but had this annoying habit of bestowing demeaning nicknames on classmates who weren’t athletically inclined; his chosen epithet for me was “Stick” (I was skinny, sue me). That wasn’t so bad. He referred to another kid as “Chigger.”

Spying my crutched hobble upon entering his inner sanctorum, Loflin bellowed, “Everybody gather around!” then whistled. “Stick is trying to get out of gym class with some dumb stunt or another.” So sure I was faking, Coach instructed everyone — even the girls dressed out in their faded blue bloomers — in the gymnasium to assemble around me as he knelt down and began unbraiding that bulbous bandage.

As yellow hues that Pantone still hasn’t replicated slowly emerged, Loflin glared up at me and said, “You’re good, Stick, but I’m onto you!” He continued unraveling until coming close to the bloody red center of my tootsie pop — then he began re-raveling.

Mere months after rubbing elbows and toes with the rubes at Winn-Dixie, Allen & Rossi split up suddenly. Exiled to a kitchen stool mornings and evenings before and after school, I dunked my digits in that scorching Epsom salt brew for a month or so before getting the podiatrist’s all-clear.

One would have to employ the Hubble Telescope to detect what is today a minute defect on the toe of what many forensic pathologists consider to be a flawless physique. That minor imperfection nonetheless serves as a daily reminder to steer clear of two-bit gagsters wearing mobbed up footwear. OH

Of the six books published by Billy Ingram thus far, two are (mostly) about Greensboro history — Hamburger² and Eye on GSO — both breezy summer reads. The author can frequently be found weekends enjoying the lobster bisque at The Pied Pier.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

A Building for a Song

Ivan Battle’s dream of musical education plays on

By Billy Ingram

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”
— Maya Angelou

There’s plenty of activity surrounding what’s become known as Midtown, where flashy attractions like Mac’s Speed Shop, RED Cinemas, Scratch and Doggos Dog Park & Pub are the obvious lures. Just behind those establishments, along a shady lane named Beaman Place, there’s a newly minted coffee klatch on the corner followed by two enchanting gift boutiques you really should check out.

Near the top of the crest on Beaman Place, Midtown is anchored by what has been one of this city’s creative bedrocks for more than four decades: The Music Academy of North Carolina. Serene on the outside, this two-story ensemble of studios, rehearsal and performance spaces is harmonically sonorous as you step inside. “Cool place!” is how seasoned musician Zac Richey described his experience, having won a guitar competition there when he was 15 years old. That mirrors others with similarly gratifying stories about fine tuning their skills in pursuit of dreams both large and small under the academy’s expert tutorage.

Armed with a UNCG degree in musicology and a doctorate from the University of Kansas, Ivan Battle — a musician, performer, composer and recording artist — was 25 in 1982 when he kicked off the first term at what was then called Greensboro Music Academy. With just two teachers and fewer than a couple dozen students, the organization operated out of his small home on Pisgah Church Road.

As a teenager growing up in Greensboro in the early-1970s, Battle recognized that our fair city was, to a great extent, a virtual musical desert. He felt budding musicians, no matter their age or experience, would benefit from an academic environment employing a collaborative approach in addition to one-on-one instruction.

With the help of co-founder Rev. Joe Flora, former associate minister at First Presbyterian Church, where Battle played the organ as a youngster, Greensboro Music Academy grew exponentially over the years. Its success led it first into a two-story house on Bessemer, then, in 1988, to its decade-long headquarters on Westover Terrace, where Chipotle is today.

Described by those who knew him as “informal and playful,” Ivan Battle passed away in 1995, but not before witnessing enrollment top some 700 attendees. Still, that was a few short years before the academy moved into its current digs on Beaman Place, where Battle’s vision — that one day his nascent organization would occupy a suitably sized space dedicated entirely to musical education — began inching toward reality.

A quarter-century later, Music Academy of North Carolina remains a vibrant community asset for those with a song in their hearts

“The benefits of music-making are far reaching,” says executive director Kellie Burgess. “It makes us smarter, gives us more confidence, teaches us discipline and gives us an opportunity to express ourselves, to work with others.” In a recent partnership with Lindley Elementary School, MANC instructors discovered that non-English speaking kids learned the language much more quickly by singing words set to melodies.

Referencing our public school music teachers, Burgess insists, “I think they’re doing a great job. They just have a lot on them.” One of MANC’s major outreach efforts is providing sectionals to school choirs, orchestras and bands. For instance, Burgess mentions a recent trip to Ragsdale High to work with violin students. “We will do whatever we can do to build their confidence and help them hone their skills so that they can have a stronger collaborative group.”

Chris Rachal, director of student relations, touts the “top tier, well-educated in music teachers” on deck as one reason this nonprofit’s methodology is so effective. “I teach recording at the Music Academy,” Rachal says, noting he has both older and younger students. “I love both. I enjoy the younger students’ enthusiasm for learning and the older students’ willingness to learn something new.”

“We have the whole broad spectrum,” says Burgess. “Some younger students may not want to be here. You can tell because mom is making them play.” Others, though, are very ambitious and look forward to every visit, committing for semester-long courses.

“We meet students where they are, then just guide them on their own journey,” Burgess says. And the instructors each offer a unique curriculum and style. “We give them a good bit of guidance because sometimes students don’t want to play scales or don’t want to learn this or that, but we know it’s important that they do.”

The centerpiece of the first floor is a large recital hall, where Sunday recitals are often held. “We can also do workshops and group classes in here,” says Burgess. “We actually have a monthly jazz workshop. It’s free and open to the public and this is a perfect space for it.” (See musicacademync.org for schedule.)

Participants in the jazz workshop have an opportunity to perform in a manner similar to a jam session. “It’s basically for students of any age who have an interest in jazz,” Burgess points out, “to learn more about the language of jazz, learn more about the history.” Unlike standard jams where the group plays one song after another, with individuals standing to solo, this program tends to be more free flowing. “We have so many young students and adult students that come not knowing anything about jazz. So we want to make sure they’ve got the right tools to navigate the sessions.”

It was relatively quiet when I toured the Beaman Place facility on a recent afternoon, most kids still in school. “We do have adult students and homeschool families that’ll come during the day,” Burgess explains. “Most of our students start trickling in around 2, 2:30, and hang around until about 7 or 8. Our core is private lessons — that’s what we’re probably most known for.”

Ivan Battle’s dream for a stable future of Music Academy of North Carolina became even more solidified just last year. “The Murphy family . . . enabled us to buy our building in October,” Burgess says. (Pam Murphy is the owner of Greensboro’s flavor-maker, Mother Murphy’s.) “It was a huge donation and we’re very grateful for their commitment to music education and to the Music Academy and the community.” Being spared that monthly rental expense allows additional resources for extended outreach.

This summer, MANC will conduct its annual symphonic summer camp in harmony with Eastern Music Festival, held on the Guilford College campus. “We’ve been doing this one for, gosh, probably close to 20 years,” Burgess tells me. “Students get to visit the orchestra each day, sit and watch a rehearsal, and sometimes actually get up on stage with the musicians.”

Dreams do come true, it could happen to you . . . but it does take practice. OH

An internet pioneer, Billy Ingram’s TVparty! was the first to combine text, pictures and embedded media via a web page, the experience we’ve now come to expect online, and the first to broadcast television clips over the net.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

The Organ Pipes Are Calling

Nothing could be fina than to play the Carolina

By Billy Ingram

“Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.” — Charlie Chaplin

The Carolina Theatre will once again be giving us the silent treatment at 7 p.m., April 30, when Mark Andersen — one eye focused on the screen — performs his original score for Charlie Chaplin’s highly acclaimed, bathtub-gin-era rom-com, The Circus. First projected on the Carolina’s big screen in March 1928, this was the last motion picture Chaplin made during the pre-talkie era, winning the Little Tramp his first Academy Award for “versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing.”

Rapidly approaching its 100th anniversary, the Grecian-Revival-inspired Carolina Theatre boasts an unusual but valuable component installed before opening night: a Robert Morton Pipe Organ designed and constructed specifically to accompany silent pictures. It’s become a rarity; mere months before this opulent movie palace (locally designed by James M. Workman) first welcomed moviegoers in 1927, sound had arrived for motion pictures, leading to the company that made those instruments going belly-up in 1931. As a result, the Carolina Theatre possesses the only remaining Robert Morton Pipe Organ in North Carolina.

This magnificent wind-and-keyboard instrument is in pristine condition, thanks to Mac Abernethy, who, beginning back in 1968, assembled a team of volunteers determined to restore this long-neglected music maker to its full-throated glory — while, at the same time, city leaders were finalizing plans to raze the Carolina Theatre in favor of a municipal parking lot. “It’s taken a lot of work with a lot of help over the years,” Abernethy says of maintaining that Art Deco-inspired, three-manual console pipe organ. “In 1968, we had to come here after the last movie at 11 o’clock to do any work. We’d be up here until 2, 3, 4 in the morning.” The area around the theater in those days was a veritable urban hellscape. “When we went to leave, you didn’t know what you were going to run into.”

For last February’s screening of a rarely seen silent race film, Body and Soul, which was produced, written and directed by Oscar Micheaux, the Carolina Theatre invited world-renowned composer and musician Mark Andersen to provide accompaniment. “You name it, I’ve played it,” Andersen says of the illustrious pipe organs he’s performed with across the globe. “Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall in London. I was associate organist at Notre Dame in Paris and went to school at the Paris Conservatory there.” Having played over 400 concerts across America on just about every large organ that exists, Andersen served as organist for the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler and as head staff music arranger for NBC in New York.

Andersen’s love for pipe organs began in first grade, when he won the North Carolina State Piano Teacher’s competition. “I’m the youngest artist that has ever played with the North Carolina Symphony,” he notes. At that time, the church he was attending was installing a brand-new pipe organ. “The company that put that organ in was kind of amazed that this little guy was interested in learning to play it.” Having grown up in Lumberton, Andersen recalls that “the first time I played [the Carolina Theatre’s] organ I was 8 years old. I was with a group of musicians that were coming here because we could not imagine a pipe organ in a movie theater. I met Paul Abernethy, who was Mac’s dad, and he showed us the organ that sat down in the orchestra pit then.”

Sixty years later, bringing an added excitement and authenticity to its Silent Series, Mark Andersen returns to the Carolina.

I got to roll my grapes over that Robert Morton Pipe Organ when I was introduced to the maestro recently. Also in attendance was musical theater star Brody Bett. He, too, had an organic epiphany at a very young age. “I’m homeschooled,” the 14-year-old triple-threat performer tells me. He recalls going on a field trip with fellow homeschooled students to Greensboro’s Christ United Methodist Church. “I saw this ginormous pipe organ. I was like, wow, you have all these sounds and it’s so massive and it’s so powerful. My 5-year-old mind, seeing that organ, I’m like, ‘Dude, I think this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life!’”

If the name Brody Bett sounds familiar, I hipped you to his amazing career in my January 2023 column. He was 6 years old when he first got up on the boards in Greensboro theatrical productions. Then, at 8 years old, he landed the juvenile lead in the multimillion-dollar Broadway touring production of Finding Neverland and spent the next season crisscrossing the country as Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Off-ramped due to the pandemic, the lad’s career undertook an unexpected but welcome pivot when he began securing roles as a voice-over artist for animated shows on Nickelodeon, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Currently, he can be heard as Rocky in the PAW Patrol: Grand Prix video game and Kakeru in episode 4 of the hit anime series Kotaro Lives Alone.

Brody remembers like it was yesterday (I mean, it practically was) when he sang and danced across the stage with the Community Theatre of Greensboro at the Carolina. “The first silent movie I ever saw here was when I was 9 years old,” Brody says. “Michael Britt, who unfortunately passed away last year, accompanied The Phantom of the Opera.”

All of the scores that accompany the silent films Andersen performs were written by him. But still, he says, “You have to closely watch the movie while you’re playing.” He remarks that, when composing a soundtrack for silents, it’s just like scoring a live movement. “Like the soundtrack of a talkie movie, it’s meant to be played at a certain time. Is the projectionist running it too fast, running too slow, where your scenes change, and so forth?”

Brody has sent fingers flying across the keys in an impressive number of venues. “I’ve played the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia,” the largest, fully-functioning pipe organ in the world, he says. “I’ve played the Bedient Organ at First Congregational Church in Sioux Falls and the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ in LA, the one Manuel Rosales designed.” He can list so many others, including arguably the most famous such instrument in America, the Salt Lake City Tabernacle (formerly Mormon Tabernacle) Organ, festooned with over 11,000 harmonic pipes.

Closer to home, he says, “I’ve been playing for church Sundays at Irving Park United Methodist — it’s a great space.” Brody Bett’s first funky single, “Times Square,” can be found on Spotify and sampled on YouTube.

I wonder if one day I’ll be attending a silent at the Carolina and Brody will be in front of the keyboard. OH

Born and raised in Greensboro, for a 10-year period in the 1980s and ’90s, Billy Ingram was part of the Hollywood design team the ad world enshrined as “The New York Yankees of motion picture advertising.”

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

Spotlight on Juan Fernandez

Remembering an icon of the Greensboro theater scene and beyond

By Billy Ingram

“Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.” — Tom Stoppard

I’m not remotely the right person to pen this. We weren’t close friends. I never met his wife, Lana, and hadn’t seen the guy in 50 years. But when I heard that former Page High School classmate Juan Fernandez (class of ’74, best ever!) passed away, I couldn’t let that tiptoe by unnoticed.

Let’s wayback to the 1972–73 school year, significant in part because the Vietnam War ended, 18-year-olds gained the right to vote, Bob Fosse’s Pippin debuted on Broadway and McDonald’s started serving breakfast (except on Sundays). It was also the year Page High junior Juan Fernandez, whose family moved here from Connecticut just a year earlier, unknowingly, but with an air of inevitability, began his journey as the first Black actor in Greensboro to be consistently cast in leading roles in both amateur and professional productions.

In 1973, Juan and I were both cast in Li’l Abner, a big, splashy musical from Broadway’s Golden Age, featuring one of the funniest scripts (by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank) and wittiest scores (Gene De Paul with lyrics by the immortal Johnny Mercer) the Great White Way ever mounted.

At Page, as directed and choreographed by Louis Hrabovsky and Frank Holder, the show featured a 22-piece orchestra recruited from the Greensboro Symphony, costumes sewn by UNCG’s theater department, and over 50 student hoofers and belters crowding the stage. This lavish but innocently sexy, fully integrated production of Li’l Abner was an unusual theatrical manifestation for a high school at that time. More importantly, during those weeks and weeks of rehearsals in the role of Marryin’ Sam, Juan Fernandez morphed from gawky teen into a dynamic performer possessing an unmistakeable brilliance comparable to any of the mid-’70s Broadway superstars I sat in awe of. And I saw ’em all, baby. Juan absolutely demolished that Li’l Abner audience on opening night.

And 15-year-old me hated him for it!

Li’l Abner was a genuine hit, largely due to Fernandez’s infectious performance. Standing ovations, sold-out crowds every night and, in the first and only instance I’m aware of, the show was held over for an additional weekend, then booked into War Memorial Auditorium for a short run. After Abner, Fernandez dazzled local theatergoers in musical productions of Showboat, Shenandoah, Godspell and Flower Drum Song, to name but a few. His range was astonishing. Livestock Players Musical Theatre, Greensboro Youtheatre, The Broach, Carolina Theatre, Barn Dinner Theatre . . . there wasn’t a stage Juan Fernandez couldn’t rob of every last laugh or teardrop, often inhabiting pivotal roles previously portrayed primarily — if not exclusively — by white actors.

“I met Juan when he was 16 and auditioned for Sweet Charity,” says Carole Lindsey-Potter, choreographer and director for Livestock Players during the years Juan Fernandez was active there. “He got the role of Daddy Brubeck, which had the best song in the show, ‘The Rhythm of Life,’ and he brought the house down.” Lindsey-Potter recalls being the first North Carolina theater group to get rights to Pippin, a musical that saw Fernandez cast as Leading Player in the Livestock Players’ 1974 production — “his most memorable performance.” He was what they call a triple-threat performer: “He was a wonderfully talented actor, singer and a natural dancer. Barbara Britton cast Juan as The King in The King and I in 1976. This was long before nontraditional casting here.”

Actor-director and Page alumni Charlie Hensley notes that Fernandez “was a terrific performer and a wonderful man, always at ease on stage.” What he recalls most is Ferndandez’s star turn as Daddy Brubeck in Sweet Charity. “He went on to perform ‘The Rhythm of Life’ hundreds of times after that, all over the world. He was also amazing as the lead in The King and I with Shannon Cochran.”

Obie- and Theatre World Award-winning star of stage and screen Shannon Cochran (see my April 2023 column) recalls that staging fondly. “When Juan and I did The King and I together, I think he was very conscious of the essential misogyny written into his role and went out of his way to be gallant and attentive to me. I couldn’t move easily in a hoop skirt, but he was always there with a pad or pillow for me to sit on during breaks, always helped me off the floor — our lowly heads weren’t supposed to be higher than his! — and, additionally, he was a divine dance partner! ‘Shall We Dance’ was a dizzying, thrilling ride in his arms. Such a class act with a genuinely strong stage presence.”

Greensboro’s theater scene has spawned a multitude of African-American Broadway stars — Deon’te Goodman (Hamilton), Avilon Trust Tate (The Wiz), Chris Chalk (Fences), J. Alphonse Nicholson (A Soldier’s Play) — who surely couldn’t have known that Juan Fernandez was first to break the color barrier onstage locally. Universally loved. Universally respected.

“I worked with him once at The Broach. He was such a nice guy and good actor,” director Michael Lilly says. “I had tried to get in touch with him about a year ago in Wilmington about a project but never got a response. Then someone said he had moved to Costa Rica. I recall hearing he was not well.” Charlie Hensley remarks how, “We usually touched base a couple of times a year, I remember thinking on his birthday recently that he’d been quiet for a while.”

After high school I hadn’t much of an opportunity to interact with Juan Fernandez, having gone away to college, summers spent out of state or touring before relocating to Los Angeles in 1978. Happily, he and I connected on Facebook before his passing last year, allowing me to finally tell him how envious I was of his ability to command the audience in Li’l Abner.

True, Juan Fernandez strut from life’s stage into the wings far too soon, but it’s the actor’s lot to leave the audience wanting more. One wonders if he ever considered or was even aware of his legacy, the trail he blazed. Unlike almost every other artistic pursuit, after the curtain falls and stage lights go dark, theater leaves behind little more than a rock skipping across the surface of a pond. In the case of Juan Fernandez, the ripples he created will reverberate well into the future, lifting and inspiring not only those he came in contact with, but also performers who, decades later, unwittingly followed his lead to achieve a level of stardom that generally skirts the first player the spotlight shines upon. OH

Make no mistake, Billy Ingram was a showstopper as Evil Eye Fleagle in Li’l Abner, but it’s worth noting that Juan Fernandez wasn’t anywhere onstage during those scenes.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

Hiding in Plain Sight

Seventy-five years of Lawndale Shopping Center and the oldest bar in Greensboro

By Billy Ingram

“He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future.” — Frank Herbert, Dune

Seventy-five years ago, southbound transients riding the rails typically leapt from open boxcars around Cornwallis Drive as locomotives slowed their roll into Greensboro city limits. In 1949, those so-called “hobos” would have undoubtedly been surprised to encounter a row of storefronts that was rapidly devouring a major portion of a wooded oasis they’d been bivouacking in for decades. To accommodate this nascent shopping center, the city extended a boulevard running parallel to the tracks that previously began at Cornwallis, a street once known as Fairfield, rechristened in the 1920s as “Lawndale.”

A further encroachment on their leafy lair — directly behind that emerging retail corridor overlooking Irving Park Elementary — was a collection of handsome duplexes under construction on Dellwood Drive and a freshly carved cul-de-sac called Branch Court.

By the time I started third grade in the 1960s, that emerging shopping center from 1949 had become a bustling Lawndale Shopping Center. As an 8-year-old, I was expected to walk to my home on Hill Street from Irving Park Elementary, a 1.5-mile trek. Yes, uphill both ways and it snowed year-round. On school days, a quarter rested in my pocket to pay for cafeteria slop, but I skipped lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those days, new comic books were released, 25 cents being the exact amount required to buy two DCs (12 cents each with a penny tax). So as soon as the bell rang, I’d hightail it in the opposite direction of our house, to Lawndale Shopping Center.

Lawndale Shopping Center was a genteel, modestly upscale row of clothing stores, druggists, hair salons and neighborhood taverns in the mid-’60s, a lineup practically unchanged from the very beginning.

Entering Lawndale Shopping Center from Sunset, past Bill Blake’s Texaco, was Mr. & Mrs. Q-Ball (Elizabeth’s Pizza today), erected a full decade after the strip was fully completed in 1954. This was the city’s first and only co-ed pool hall, open until midnight and decorated in space-age splendor with blue-and-tangerine gaming tables, a pink-tiled ladies lounge and gleaming vending machines surrounding multicolored, molded plastic seating.

Nearby was The Pied Pier Lounge (Boo Radley’s Tavern now). When the waitress at Brown-Gardiner’s lunch counter left to tend bar there, it ignited a cause célèbre. That place was widely known to be a (gasp!) gay bar, although no such place was allowed to legally exist.

A few doors down was my fave place growing up, Franklin Drug Store (a Hookah lounge in 2024 — wait, what?!?). With seven locations around town, Franklin’s at Lawndale was almost 10,000 square feet, packed with nearly anything a kid could desire: a soda shop, two comic book spinner racks fronting rows and rows of magazines and paperbacks surrounding the opening for an escalator, which led to a cavernous toy store below that sold everything seen on the teevee and more.

Mom’s favorite clothing boutique was Gin-Ettes (Acme Comics today), specializing in the Mary Tyler Moore look during the 1970s. Sadly, that boutique closed in the late-1990s after more than 50 years. The optometrist’s office now next door was The Briar Patch, where I picked out my back-to-school Lacoste shirts as a preteen. My bristles were buzzed for the first time by Gilmer (Ed) Jones at Lawndale Barber Shop (it’s been the Hair Shop for decades).

For the most part, if you lived in Irving or Latham Park, your drug store of choice was either Brown-Gardiner or my parent’s preference, advantageously located in the Lawndale Shopping Center, Crutchfield-Browning, both offering speedy delivery and charge accounts so mom’s lithium ’script never ran out. And the liquor store was right next door to the drug store — how convenient? Both were located under what is currently the Hannah’s Bridge sign.

The Big Bear Super Market (“The Thrifty Store That Saves You More!”) anchoring this retail daisy-chain wasn’t just air-conditioned in the summer; it was refrigerated, a veritable meat locker. As soon as bare feet hit that store’s frosty Formica floor, you were engulfed in bone-chilling frigidity, no matter how hot it got outside.

Every purchase at Big Bear earned shoppers a scratch-off ticket listing three horses competing in three races in that Saturday’s 6 p.m. broadcast of Off To The Races on WFMY. If one of your designated nags came in first, you got $100; place and show netted a few bucks or S&H Green Stamps. Every week there was a fresh list with dozens of local winners posted.

Despite original tenant Scruggs Florists closing very recently, there is some comforting continuity. For instance, Head Hunter Salon has been styling and profiling in the same location for an impressive 50 years.

Surprisingly, there is one remaining original tenant from 1949: Lawndale Drive-In, by far the oldest bar in Greensboro, once a popular watering hole for Irving Park businessmen wishing to avoid country club stuffiness. This was affectionately known in those days as Mrs. Mac’s, referring to owner and barkeep Bernice McCloskey, whose husband founded this saloon in 1942 in a more rural setting before relocating here seven years later. After his untimely death, she became LDI’s proprietress.

Lawndale Drive-In was a happy hour bar then and it still is, only open from 4–10 p.m. on weekdays, longer hours on weekends. I vividly recall wandering past this joint en route to Crutchfield-Browning as a youngster, oftentimes to pickup Mother’s tampons and other icky stuff (how embarrassing!). Seemed like that barroom door was always open, the afternoon sun illuminating an unbroken row of men seated at the bar. I wondered then, “Can you make money doing that?”

My last visit was some 20 years ago, but what I discovered on a recent visit to Lawndale Drive-In is a proper but casual dive bar, populated primarily with long-time regulars who made this stranger feel welcome. A back patio was added in the 2000s when the place changed hands, but not much else is different from back in the day. LDI’s grandfathered-in decor and weathered wooden bar lends an air of warmth to the surroundings. More importantly, the beer is served refreshingly ice cold.

Is there more comfort in familiarity than in any contempt that it might breed? Looking back, a wealth of memories are triggered by Sach’s Shoe Store, G.I. 1200 surplus store, Sports & Hobbies Unlimited, Lawndale Music House, Warren’s Toyland, Piedmont Jewelers and Straughan’s Book Shop.

Well into the 1990s, randos could be found guzzling Thunderbird in what was left of the woods between Lawndale and Branch Court. There’s hardly a tree surviving today. And so what if pedal pushers and penny loafers have given way to hookahs and THC dispensaries? Lawndale Shopping Center remains to this day a disparate collage of locally owned enterprises, precisely as it always has been for three quarters of a century now. OH

Billy Ingram wishes to dedicate this article to the late Linda Spainhour Cummings, a very talented artist and poet who will be fondly remembered at Page High’s 50-year reunion of the class of ’74.

2024 Department Wandering Billy