Country Rap Tunes and the Chitlin Circuit
I want to start by discussing the Chitlin Circuit and its impact on the release and promotion of rap acts today.
The Chitlin Circuits’ influence on pop music has been well documented, but some of its most notable figures have somewhat fallen to the wayside. These artists, managers, businessmen, promoters, and studio owners created the original circuit and tweaked and innovated the circuit through its peak in pop culture marked by the rise and fall of Johnny Ace.
Decades later the Chitlin circuit would have a renaissance with the birth of hip-hop and southern rap and has survived the digital online takeover that birthed social media and streaming. The city and characters of Houston and its role in the Chitlin Circuit will serve as the backdrop to the rest of the story since many of the promotional strategies, and strategies of artist development industry standard contracts were influenced by how the business was conducted in its heyday.’
The Civil War ended in 1865 and abolished slavery. Blacks were given freedom, but almost 100 years would pass before they were given equal civil rights. During this time informal and formal laws called Jim Crow made it illegal and unsafe for blacks to live, work or travel through many cities and countrysides due to the presence of law enforcement that was closely connected to white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Black families across the United States concentrated their efforts and gathered together in cities across the nation to support and protect each other and protect the inevitable emergence of black commerce brought on by millions of freed people entering the economic market for the very first time.
An entire population entered the labor pool to make a living for their families. As money entered the black community, goods and services were purchased and created a demand that fostered the entrepreneurial spirit and the birth of the first legitimate black businesses. Black entrepreneurship would shape `black culture and entertainment that would crossover into American popular culture and eventually the world. Like any town, you’d have both the good and the bad.
You’d see small-time, petty crime grow into organized syndicates that would corner a city’s or region’s market on illicit activities. Kingpins like Bumpy Johnson and Stephanie “Queenie” St. Clair would hold their own against organized crime and sometimes provide access to the new and growing market of gamblers and drug users within the black communities. On the flip side, you’d see geniuses like Madame CJ Walker who would dominate the multimillion-dollar hair business.
The chitlin circuit would serve as a bridge that would blend legal business with proceeds from the underworld by providing a gathering place for celebrities, upcoming musicians, and criminals as well as hardworking people just looking for an evening of dance and drink to escape the harsh realities of the Jim Crow era.
The network of venues in these black cities would become known as the Chitlin Circuit and would provide entertainment, financial stability, and cultural significance for black people through the early mid-twentieth century. The Chitlin Circuit was a collection of venues that would provide entertainment, financial stability, and cultural significance for black people throughout the early and middle twentieth century.
Each town had a ‘stroll’ that would meet people’s need for entertainment and vice and these churches, restaurants, juke joints, theaters, and in small country towns, were as small as barber shops and barns dotted as far northeast as Boston, southeast as Jacksonville, southwest as Houston and northwest as Chicago. On the weekends these venues would host crowds of people with money to spend and the smell of tobacco, reefer and liquor would spill into the surrounding areas along with the sound of black music.
Some people say the name Chitlin Circuit comes from the fact that the venues served chitlins as payment to small-time musicians as payment for entertaining the crowd. Others say that the venues, entertainers, and by extension, the people who attended were considered second-rate and unacceptable for white audiences like the food it gets its name from. The best etymological answer to how the circuit got its name is that it was a metaphor for taking the worst of something and making it into something great.
In Indianapolis, the stroll was on Indiana Avenue and after TOBA disbanded a gentleman by the name of Denver Ferguson would set up several businesses that would play a leading role in re-establishing live black entertainment that would come to dominate the Chitlin Circuit over the next couple of decades.
The roots of the Chitlin circuit would start in Vaudeville where black performers would perform variety shows, a mixture of music and comedic acting, in blackface since black performers were prohibited from entering. A black man by the anime of Sherman Dudley would begin booking the same black performers in venues that were safe for blacks to attend. He would start by buying and leasing venues in the Washington DC and Virginia areas and in a few years he was able to expand to the south and midwest United States.
Every week he would advertise in black newspapers who would be performing on Dudley’s circuit. Dudley was eventually struck by some unknown financial difficulties beyond his control which prompted him to sell his venues and would leave the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), which Dudley’s original circuit had provided the foundation for, as the only booking agency that would book black entertainers, but would eventually close its doors as business slowed during the great depression.
Denver would resurrect the live black entertainment industry and forge partnerships across the country that would build an economy of independent ‘mom n pop’ businesses that years later would spawn the chitlin circuit’s brightest start Johnny Ace and the music business’s first black mogul, Houston’s infamous Don Robey and decades later would spawn southern rap acts with global corporate relationships.
Born in Brownsville, KY, Ferguson embodied the entrepreneurial spirit pouring out of the black community at the turn of the century. As a teen he purchased a printing press and founded a newspaper., but after being drafted and discharged by the military he would move his printing business to Indianapolis and established the Ferguson printing company. The printing business was profitable but also served as a front for illegal activity.
The “numbers game” or “policy game” was a big racket that basically worked like a lottery and Ferguson, with his printing press, was able to make the printed tickets resemble a baseball scorecard. This discreet and ingenious design created a successful stream of cash for Denver and prompted him to hire his brother Sea to be the face of the business. With money flowing in weekly, the brothers looked for other investments such as real estate, and became renowned for their generosity from their giving to the local black community.
In 1931, they found new investments when they opened the Cotton Club and the Trianon Ballroom and started bringing live big band acts to perform on the weekends. Denver D Ferguson would partner with Walter Barnes, who had experience touring the south via TOBA and was able to build a network of promoters and venues across the south, midwest, and east to provide entertainment for black patrons.
The first venue was the Sunset Cafe located in Bronzeville, IN after partnering with his brother. Gradually, he built his network through word of mouth from agents that would spread the word in black-owned barber shops, restaurants and cafes, and churches.
The venues of the Chitlin Circuit were often the only venues in Houston, Kansas City, Macon, Tampo, Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago, and other industrial cities that black artists could consistently get paid for performing and black patrons could enter and get exposed to the latest in black entertainment. Consequently, the Chitlin Circuit was the birthplace of big band, rock n roll, blues, black theater, and subgenres of rap and comedy.
Legendary performers, such as Nat King Cole, B.B. King, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, and James Brown were notable favorites who performed and perfected their craft on the Chitlin Circuit before they went mainstream and were featured on major recordings and performed in New York, Los Angeles and on television. Contemporary blues musicians such as Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, and O.B. Buchana continue to consistently perform on the Chitlin Circuit to this day. Legendary comedians such as Red Foxx, Rickey Smiley, Bernie Mack, and Kat Williams made their names performing in the cities formerly known as the Chitlin Circuit.
Tyler Perry also was able to build and sustain his theatrical business for over a decade via performances in churches in CHitlin circuit cities before breaking into the mainstream.
The Chitlin Circuit still exists today by sustaining the careers of independent rappers and hip-hop artists. Major artists like Future, 2Chainz, Yo Gotti, and Lil Boosie are just some of the big-name artists that consistently make appearances and perform year-round on the former Chitlin Circuit. But there was a lull in the ’90s when the chitlin Circuit was declared “dead” for black music.
In the early days of hip-hop, southern rap/country rap tunes didn’t have the connections to get played on major radio outside of their region and sometimes outside of their city. This prompted the local artists to hit the road and sell CDs “out the trunk” while sometimes booking live events on the fly by doing $5 and $10 gigs at 600 to 1000 person venues. Independent record labels like No Limit Records, Cashmoney Records, Rapalot Records, and independent artists would sell directly to fans and mom-and-pop record stores located along the Chitlin Circuit.
Today, artists like Lil Boosie, Moneybag Yo, Sauce Walka, and Sadababy continue to make a living and thrive on the legendary circuit.