Chitlin Circuit Provided Safe Passage

While some venues in Hot Springs and a few other towns around Arkansas were known to welcome black acts, these were generally by invitation only. The establishments on the Chitlin Circuit were safe places to entertain or be entertained for blacks traveling across the southern United States. West Ninth Street in Little Rock was the only, consistently safe stop in the state of Arkansas. Since the next closest Chitlin Circuit locations were in Louisiana or Tennessee, that meant black performers touring through our region of the country would almost always make a stop on The Line.

Promoters Provided Safe Venues

The Circuit alone was not enough to bring music to Ninth Street. Local promotion and ticket sales were key; enticing performers to stay in Little Rock and play. The Dreamland Ballroom was not the only venue on The Line and promoters and clubs came and went over its many functioning years. Gerald T Perry, owner of Perry’s Rhumboogie Supper Club, and the Jones brothers, Popeye and S.L (full name lost to time unfortunately) are some of the standouts.

Promoting the ‘Dreamiest’ Venue of All

Two of the promoters that put Little Rock on the map, bringing some of the most impressive names to the Dreamland Ballroom in the 1930s and ‘40s, were Sharper W. Tucker and Mrs. Clark Bass. Tucker was a successful black entrepreneur who owned several businesses in the Ninth Street district and Mrs. Bass was nationally known as “the South’s only woman promoter.”

Lloyd Armon partially owned Dreamland in the late 1940s and early ‘50s and helped Tucker with promotions both there and at the Robinson Auditorium. When Tucker died, his nephew Buck Allen partnered with local disc jockey and Arkansas State Press reporter Al Allen (ironically both with the sir name Allen) to continue Tucker’s promotion company and operate Club Morocco out the Dreamland Ballroom. In the 1950s, several other locals joined the promotion of the club, Eddie LeMonte known as “Old Sad Sack,” being the most prominent among them.

Dr J.A. “Doc” Jamieson was a promoter, mostly for amateur boxing, when the United States Officers Club occupied the Taborian Hall during WW2.