A Thin Blue Line down Central Avenue: The LAPD and the Demise of a Musical Hub

Abstract

Before Los Angeles's South Central had become indelibly linked in public mind with gang wars and riots, its main strip, Central Avenue, boasted glamorous nightclubs and swinging dance halls that rivaled great African-American music centers back east. Saxophonist Art Pepper paints an idyllic picture of the Stem as he remembers it from 1940s: It was a beautiful time. It was a festive time. The women dressed up in frills and feathers and long earrings and hats with things hanging off them, fancy dresses with slits in skirts, and they wore black silk stockings that were rolled and wedgie shoes. Most of men wore big, wide-brimmed hats and zoot suits with wide collars, small cuffs, and large knees, and their coats were real long with padded shoulders. They wore flashy ties with diamond stickpins; they wore lots of jewelry; and you could smell powder and perfume everywhere. And as you walked down street you heard music coming out of everyplace. And everybody was happy... [T]here were all kinds of places to go, and if you walked in with a horn everyone would shout, Yeah! Great! Get it out of case and blow some! They didn't care if you played better than somebody else. Nobody was trying to cut anybody or take their job, so we'd get together and blow. (Pepper and Pepper 1994, 41-42) Less than ten years after reaching its dizzying height during war years, however, Central Avenue club scene was on its way to extinction, and fifty years later, little remains of its former glory.