Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock & Roll

["Growin' Up" by Bruce Springsteen]

- There was a certain moment in time

when something happened here.

It wasn't happening any place else.

That mattered.

- Asbury Park, it was like Disney Land.

- Asbury Park was a honky-tonk town.

To us, it was this exotic feast for the eyes and ears.

- You just floated a foot off the ground all day long,

lifted by this great music all the time,

coming out of stores and clubs.

- We took a little bit from here,

a little bit from there, a little bit from soul,

little bit from pop, a little bit from the sound

on the West Side of the tracks, you know.

And we kind of combined it all into the sound

that this town and little part

of the Jersey Shore became known for.

- The Jersey sound, whether it be

Southside Johnny or Bruce Springsteen

or Gary U.S. Bonds, that Jersey sound

is distinctively and uniquely Jersey.

It's not black Jersey, it's not white Jersey, it's Jersey.

It defines us as a group, not separate and apart,

but it brings us together.

It's soul, is what it is.

- Asbury Park's music history goes way back,

and a lot of has been ignored til now,

and we wanna give it some recognition.

Any city that wants to move forward

also has to recognize its past.

- Asbury Park had been

the creation of James Bradley,

a Methodist who made a fortune

selling canon brushes to the Union Army in the Civil War.

He founded Asbury Park and named it

for his faith's first bishop in the United States.

He wanted to create a barrier for the Methodist

enclave of Ocean Grove, found to the south of Asbury,

from the excesses of the town to the north,

Long Branch, whose wine, women and gambling ways

Bradley found wanton and depraved.

- Over the years as the big hotels

started to come up, they had to compete with Long Branch,

which had alcohol and gambling,

and all the presidents went to Long Branch,

and eventually, Bradley capitulated.

It became a big playground on the Jersey Shore,

so you would go to Ocean Grove to pray,

and you'd to Asbury to party, basically.

- Asbury Park was a honky-tonk town.

They had pinball machines,

and rides and hotdogs and popcorn,

and I grew up in Ocean Grove, the town next door to it,

but we would cross over the little bridge.

There were bands playing all the time

and drunks and women of the night.

To us, it was this exotic feast for the eyes and ears.

We just loved it as kids, 'cause it,

Ocean Grove was a wonderful place to grow up in,

but it was boring, and Asbury Park was this

great sea of sin .

- From its very inception,

Asbury Park has always been a tale of two cities,

literally separated by a set of railroad tracks.

Tours from New York would pour out of the cars

into the prosperous and fashionable East Side of town

to enjoy the luxurious hotels and spend their vacation

dollars in the restaurants and nightclubs there.

On the other side of the tracks lay the West Side,

where for over a century, Italian immigrants

and African Americans had made their homes

and built their businesses.

- The West Side was created as soon as the large hotels

came here and they needed maids and they needed cooks

and they needed butlers and carriage men.

- Tension between the West Side and the East Side

has been a part of the city its inception,

historically going back to the very, very beginning.

- African Americans and the Italians, the Jews,

were not really permitted east of the tracks

for all intents and purposes.

- Blacks were not allowed on the boardwalk.

My grandfather's known for being a sand-sculpturer

on the Asbury Park beach.

He was really more than just an artist,

he was actually an activist as well.

People used to come from all over to admire his work,

and they would throw coins down.

And he did wear like a fez and some kind of robe thing.

He was sneaky enough to say hey,

I'm gonna find a way to be on the boardwalk,

and that way was to be dressed in a fez

so they really weren't quite sure,

and even if they did know, they could use the excuse,

well we didn't know he was black.

- Asbury was always a little bit of a mini city,

and it carried with it all the same plagues

and problems and injustices of the day.

- Asbury Park was one of the last integrated beaches

here at the Jersey Shore.

In between the casino and Ocean Grove,

you have what was called Chicken Beach.

That's where the blacks were allowed to go swimming

during the summer time.

And there's still hard feelings over that, even today.

- But the reason why that particular plot

of the beach was available was because it was

called the Muddy Hole, some called it the Chicken Beach.

And it was because that was where the black people went,

where the servants went, and it was also the place

where the sewage washed up.

- Asbury Park was legally segregated

until probably into the late 1940's, early 1950's,

and of course after that was defacto segregation.

The main thoroughfare in the West Side is Springwood Avenue.

- Springwood Avenue, in its hay day,

was the living room for West Side residents.

It was the boardwalk for the West Side of resident.

It was the playground for the West Side residents.

It was home.

We would go and sit in a car

or maybe go get a sandwich and sit on Springwood Avenue

and watch the people go up and down Springwood Avenue,

dressed sharp, comin' out of clubs,

just fun to see, it was a show within a show.

- Everybody thought of Springwood Avenue,

it was the jazz Mecca on the shore.

There was so much going on in the early days,

they had the Elks, they had the Turf Club,

they had Big Bill's, they had Madonna's,

they had the Orchid Lounge, it was so many places

that you could go hear some real good jazz.

- All the top acts used to go in all these clubs,

and if you were playing in New York, you would go there,

if you were gonna go on your way to New York,

you would stop in Asbury, do some gigs,

and then go to New York.

- My father used to take me to the Orchid Lounge,

to put like Kenny Burrell, Grant Green,

all those kind of organ trios or guitar trios

who'd come through there.

And I was way underage, but because my father

knew the owner, he would let me come in with him,

and the music was amazing back then, just inspirational.

To see that level of musicianship

up close like that was stunning.

Totally, totally motivated me and inspired me.

Jack McDuff, Charles Earland,

James McGriff, Jimmy Smith, Pat Martino, guitar player,

Grant Green, Joe Dukes, Ron Carter,

oh god, it was, all these cats I saw at the Orchid Lounge,

you know what I mean, and it's like,

and Pat Martino's white, you know, so what's the big deal,

it's beautiful play, it doesn't matter

what color you are there, you know what I mean?

It was like everybody was there.

- People drifted back and forth across the tracks.

Springwood Avenue was a huge center

of African American culture, and you went over there

for things, for clothes, fishes,

for music, you went to the Orchid Lounge,

where it was a black club, but you could be white

and go there and there wasn't any problems.

They played a lot of jazz, but they also had

soul entertainers come in.

- West Side there, it was just great.

I mean, when we were kids, we would see

all the top blues guys besides the jazz guys,

B.B. King, Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins,

all the great B three players played it then,

Orchid Lounge, and we'd stand outside and listen you know.

- If you were walking down the street

on a Saturday night, when I got a little bit older,

12, 13, 14, there'd be all these clubs,

and they'd have the doors open and there'd be bands,

and they'd be doing "What I'd I Say"

by Ray Charles, but they'd be using the dirty lyrics,

and there'd be a saxophone player, you know,

and it just was, it was exciting to us

because none of that existed in our little town.

- The players and the scene at that time

was really kind of happenin', and it was,

there was an education to be had

every time you walked through a door.

- Music on the West Side did have a big influence

on what was going on along the shore area.

Part of that was because a lot of black artists

would get to play in the white clubs on the East Side,

and musicians from the East Side would cross

over into the West Side and go into the clubs

and listen to what was going on there and draw from that.

No form of music exists in a vacuum,

everybody's influenced by everybody else.

- The popularizing of black music

that occurred in the 40's and 50's and early rock n' roll,

it brought, you know, it brought African American

culture into the mainstream.

And if you look at Elvis, he crossed racial lines,

and he had a lot of soul and a blackness to him,