Rhythm and blues, and its offspring, doo wop, found a home on Morrisania street corners and in talent show sponsored at Morris HS and PS 99 Night center but its most prominent exponents got to perform at the 2,000 seat Hunts Point Palace, on Southern Boulevard and 163rd Street, where singers like Sonny Till and the Orioles, Lloyd Price, and James Brown, got to share top billing with the Machito, Thelonious Monk and the Mighty Sparrow.īut for sheer variety and musical excitement, nothing matched the stretch of Boston Road between 166th Street and Prospect Avenue. Four blocks away, on Westchester Avenue off 163rd street, stood the Tropicana, one of the most dynamic Latin music clubs outside of Havana, where Machito, Tito Rodriguez, and Tito Puente often headed the bill. On 161 Street and Prospect Avenue stood club 845, one of the most important centers of be bop in New York City, where Thelonius Monk, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, and Sonny Rollins all played regularly in the late 40’s and early 50’s. From the early 1940’s, when upwardly mobile Black and Latino families began moving to Morrisania from Harlem in search of bigger apartments, better schools and safer streets, to the late 60’s, when drugs, crime and the deterioration of its housing stock led many of its more economically successful residents to leave, Morrisania had perhaps the most diverse and vibrant live musical culture of any New York neighborhood outside of Manhattan. The Morrisania story shows how hip hop is both an extension of, as well as a departure from, styles of African American, Caribbean and Latin music that thrived in South Bronx neighborhoods in the years after World War II. From the mid 70’s through the late 90’s, one hip hop innovator after another found a receptive audience for their work in this historic Bronx neighborhood, whose capacity for nurturing musical talent miraculously survived the often tragic economic and cultural upheavals that accompanied hip hop’s emergence as the voice of inner city youth. The great hip hop mc and philosopher KRS 1 was discovered by social worker Scott La Rock at a homeless shelter in a Morrisania Armory on 166th Street and Franklin Avenue, and Fat Joe launched his career while living in Morrisania’s Forest Houses. Grandwizard Theodore perfected the art of scratching in outdoor jams in Morrisania schoolyards, while Lovebug Starski honed his skills in discos held at a Morrisania Burger King. The Bronx’s largest predominantly African American community from the 1940’s through the late 80’s, stretching from Webster Avenue to the West, Crotona Park to the North, Westchester Avenue to the South, and Southern Boulevard to the East, Morrisania’s schoolyards and abandoned buildings provided the setting for Grandmaster Flash’s first neighborhood parties, while its after hours clubs offered a venue from groups ranging from the Cold Crush Brothers to the Fantastic Four. No neighborhood in New York City, or for that matter in the entire nation, has been more important in the rise of hip hop than the Morrisania section of the Bronx.
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