by Harold McMillan

I always heard the blues ,you know, and we've always had some very good blues players here. What happened, the guitar -- the amplified guitar -- became very, very popular. Charlie Gilden, when he finally opened Charlies Playhouse and put in, installed a house band with Hubbard on guitar, that really put a dent in the acoustic bands ability to get work. Because everybody wanted to hear the guitar, and amplified sound, and you know they wanted things loud for dancing and so forth.

Charlie Gilden operated a club, as I said on 7th street and I think somewhere before that, but then he moved to Chicon, right off of 12th Street and then he moved from there up to a club on East 11th Street that became Charlies Playhouse. It was a showbar at one time. This building was very popular, it was a popular place. It always had it's crowd, but when Charlie got it and renovated it and expanded it, it really became a mecca of both black and white people seeking entertainment at night. But he had very loyal following, that was some very good entertainment.

East 11th Street, down towards what is now Interregional [Interstate Highway 35] there was a club called the Cotton Club, that was a place where they booked top bands in the country: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, uh...what was...Jimmy Lunsford and there are a lot of anecdotes, some of the older Austinites could tell you about some of the things that went on in association with the different bands.

Cotton Club was in the late '20s until probably around '44. I think they closed the Cotton Club down during WWII because of the high incidents of cuttings and shootings that went on. It was still a great big dance hall and there was a lot of blood let. Because during WWII, we would have 30,000 soldiers come to town. It was tough. It was a black business area of clubs, restaurants and what not. And this is where the soldiers would mainly come to--pool halls.

You had large incidents of prostitution. Rosewood Park, 12th Street, 11th Street and 6th Street, just on the weekends there would be thousands of soldiers all over East Austin. And you had a lot of people got killed during this period. WWII the scene shifted to East 11th street and as I said you would have four or five clubs with live bands.

I think maybe the blues now is healthier than it ever has been as far as being recognized for what it is. Back then everybody just, you know, you just enjoyed the music. There was nothing of historical significance involved. It was happening.

Charlie's Playhouse and all of East 11th Street now is just gone down. You can't imagine. If you drive through there now and see the condition that it's in now, it used to be fabulous. You talk about lights -- it was lit up like Broadway, you know. It was the street! It was just as busy and noise and full of traffic as 6th street is at any time.

I'll never forget this, one night when I was working at the post office many years ago, I worked a shift where I got off from work about 11:30 at night. And I was coming home one night down 11th Street and I got to Interregional, so there was a convertible pulled up beside me and there was some young University students in there, and it was like maybe a Friday or Saturday night, you know. And you looked up the hill, there was the 11th Street scene up there. And one of them said, "My God, what's going on up there?" so the other one said--now you have to remember this was like 1960-61 somewhere along there, when it was still 11th Street was still jumping. And the other one said, "Man, let me tell you, they got more niggers up there than they got in Chicago!" But you know, that was the way it was. It was just like I say, it was just as alive as 6th Street is now.

But you go through there now and uh it's gone! Sixth Street used to be a part of the East Austin scene. A lot of money was poured in there. I don't see why. 11th Street and 12th Street used to be the main stem so to speak, and you had a lot of College and University students that would come over in East Austin in those days, and that was before integration. They would flood over here. Especially to Charlie's.

But we don't have entrepreneurs. For some reason we don't develop the same kind of entrepreneurs since the demise of...since integration, that we had before. Because if they do have entrepreneur skills, they utilize them in an integrated situation. Nobody wants to come...nobody wants to take a chance on East Austin.