L
ong before he was a Grammy-winning musician and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Bootsy Collins was a kid in Cincinnati looking to break into the music business. That quest led him to the door of then-bustling King Records in Evanston.
“He would go there every day and knock on that door as a 15-year-old,” Patricia Collins, Bootsy’s wife, says. “He was determined for someone to open that door and let him show them what he and his band could do. Next thing he knew, they became the studio band for King Records. It started his career.”
From the 1940s to the 1970s, King rose to become a powerhouse in the music world, eventually employing hundreds and standing as the sixth-largest record label in the country. What’s more, the company modeled integration in the workplace and popular culture decades before it was common or accepted.
Now, community activists are racing to restore the heart of the label’s legacy and hopefully revitalize Evanston in the process.
These days, the buildings where Collins and a number of other music luminaries got their starts are quiet and mostly empty. One might even be in danger of demolition.
But Evanston and Cincinnati leaders hope King’s legacy can once again birth opportunity there as efforts to shore up and renovate the label’s buildings and create a nearby education facility ramp up. Neighborhood leaders like Evanston Community Council President Anzora Adkins say that effort could draw new visitors and lock in gains realized by recent housing and business investments in the neighborhood.
Thanks to tireless efforts from community activists like Adkins, Evanston’s renaissance might already be underway. The neighborhood has a number of assets, including Walnut Hills High School, one of the state’s highest-ranked public schools. It also has a specialized world language K-8 school, the Academy of World Languages, and sits in close proximity to Xavier University.
Efforts to capitalize on those assets are ongoing. The Port Authority of Greater Cincinnati has plans to buy and rehabilitate 40 homes in the neighborhood. So far, it’s fixed up seven and sold four. Down the street from the King Buildings, on Montgomery Road just over the I-71 overpass, a new coffee shop called Common Blend has recently opened, and other small businesses are starting to take root in an area that has seen significant blight over the past few decades.
It’s a promising reversal for a neighborhood Adkins says has suffered since I-71 was built in the middle of the community in the 1970s, sectioning off the mostly black neighborhood and disrupting its once-thriving central business district. Today, Evanston’s median household income is about $24,000 a year, well below the city’s median of $34,000 a year.
An attraction paying homage to King’s heritage could take Evanston’s new start to the next level, some say. King boosters like Bootsy and Patricia Collins, who work with the Evanston Community Council through their Bootsy Collins Foundation, agree saving King could be transformative.
“Imagine that building on the corner of Montgomery Road,” Patricia says of the proposed education center, “and then you’ve got the King Building with all that history in it. You could tie it in like a village, with a walkway. It’s just phenomenal what’s getting ready to happen. You have to visualize it first, dream it, and then I know everything we’re putting forth is going to manifest.”
In other parts of the country, efforts to boost economic prospects by highlighting cultural history have had some success. Homages to musical history have proven bright spots in cities like Cleveland, which has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Memphis, which has a number of museums commemorating cultural touchstones like Sun Records and Stax Records.
And many will tell you King’s heritage is just as noteworthy, both in the breadth of music released and in its contribution to race relations during the fraught civil rights era.
“For me, what’s amazing about King Records is the wide girth of music that came from King throughout the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s,” said WNKU general manager Sean O’Mealy, a King Records expert, at a recent event celebrating the studios’ history. “Everything from Funk to Country Western and Rock ’n Roll. But there was also this cultural melting pot that happened, and it really represents who we are as a city as much as it does Rock ’n Roll today.”
Started in 1943 as a Country label by music impresario Syd Nathan, the label soon branched out into black Rhythm & Blues music. A decade before Bootsy Collins was banging on King’s door, the label was working with a struggling and cash-strapped singer with little acclaim but a big voice.
James Brown would end up producing a number of hits for King, first under its Federal Records imprint and then on King proper. Bootsy and his band would end up backing Brown for about a year in 1970 as the singer made a transition to the more syncopated Funk style that would later make Collins famous in his own right. The partnership forged at King would propel both of them to stratospheric heights in the music world.
Other King recording sessions with Brown would also prove influential for generations: In 1969, Brown recorded a track called “The Funky Drummer” at the Evanston studios. Its drum performance, played by Clyde Stubblefield, has made it one of the most sampled tracks in history as Hip Hop artists like NWA, Public Enemy, the Wu Tang Clan’s Raekwon and others grabbed the beat and used it on their own huge songs decades later.
Many other high-profile artists also spent time at the Evanston studios, including Otis Redding. King’s history is legendary in Cincinnati, but Evanston’s central role in the label’s legacy is under-recognized. A mural commemorating James Brown’s formative time in Cincinnati at King’s Evanston studios, where he recorded his first singles and launched his career, landed in Over-the-Rhine, for example, not Evanston. Meanwhile, the actual King studios buildings sit crumbling.
The push by Adkins, Collins and others could change that, but there are roadblocks. One of the label’s two former buildings, which are sequestered away in a corner of the neighborhood near its border with Norwood and just off I-71, could be torn down as its owners, Dynamic Industries, look to expand an adjacent industrial site.
Dynamic purchased the building at 1536 Brewster Road in 2009. In June, it applied for a demolition permit to remove the structure, which is vacant and in serious disrepair. The city estimates it could cost up to $500,000 to shore up that building.
Adkins is confident that a solution to the problem is near at hand, though she says she’s staying tight-lipped about the situation until an agreement has been reached. In the meantime, demolition of the building has been put on hold.
Last month, the Cincinnati Planning Commission voted to have the buildings once occupied by King declared historic landmarks. That move echoes a July vote by the city’s Historic Conservation Board along the same lines. The designation still needs final approval by Cincinnati City Council, which is poised to vote on it soon. In the meantime, Dynamic’s demolition permit application is stayed.
The company argues that it put in its demolition application before the move to declare the site historic was raised and that the historic designation and the resulting restrictions on demolition amount to a violation of the owners’ constitutional rights.
Some council members, however, seem very likely to vote in favor of saving the building.
“Cincinnati still has a rich music history,” City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson told a crowd gathered in Evanston for a King Records Month kick-off celebration Sept. 5. “I think that shouldn’t just be history. That should be future, too. The idea that we could save the old space and go forward with new programs, I’m all about that.” ©
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2015.