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Urban archeology tour seeks out undiscovered jazz landmark |
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Written by Ronaldo Oregano
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Saturday, 04 February 2006 |
 Sid leProtti So Diff'rent Jazz Orchestra
The Fillmore area of San Francisco has perhaps a deeper legacy with
jazz music than commonly thought. Historian John
William
Templeton has researched the impact of three black-owned nightclubs in
the Barbary Coast area dating from 1901 on the development of jazz
music for his four-volume anthology Our Roots Run Deep: the Black
Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and for an exhibition in Los
Angeles last year called JazzGenesis.
Under the sponsorship of the Jazz Heritage Center, slated to open in
2007 in the Fillmore Heritage Center at Fillmore and Eddy, Templeton
has researched the genealogy of the members of the Sid leProtti So
Diff'rent Jazz Orchestra.
In Los Angeles, he found the son and granddaughter of the saxophonist
Benjamin
Franklin 'Reb" Spikes, billed as the 'world's greatest saxophonist"
in promotional literature for Purcell's So Diff'rent Nightclub. The
building of Purcell's, rebuilt in 1906, still stands at 550 Pacific St.
(between Montgomery and Kearny).
 Sid leProtti Band
The walking tour will survey many sites where jazz musicians played
along Fillmore Street, with commentary by Fitzsimmons, son of jazz
performers and organizer of a list of local jazz legends honored during
the groundbreaking of the Fillmore Heritage Center.
Fitzsimmons is launching a National Photo Contest from the website
www.jazzheritagecenter.com
beginning Feb. 1 for submissions which will be displayed as icon
display panels on the exterior of the building. For additional
information, call 415-255-7745.
Aan
urban archeology walking tour led by celebrity tour guide Peter
Fitzsimmons, director of the Jazz Heritage Center, and historian John
William Templeton on Saturday, Feb. 4 at 11 a.m. beginning at Fillmore
and Eddy Streets.
The tour is one of four weekly Saturday tours produced by
FillmoreLive!, the year-round production and performance project of San
Francisco Juneteenth, during its Black History Month schedule which
began Wednesday night with Mineola to Mayor, a lively one-hour
discussion with former Mayor and Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr.,
who credited much of his extraordinary political success with the
exposure and lessons he learned in the Fillmore district.
On Monday, Feb. 6, the Harriet Tubman Health Conductors will meet in
the African-American Art and Culture Complex at 762 Fulton St. at 5:30
to begin a training class for lay educators on effective personal
health practices.
For more details on FillmoreLive! Black History Month activities, call
415-265-9455 or email
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