Terrific Street
Terrific Street was a short-lived entertainment district on San Francisco's Barbary Coast during the early 20th century. It consisted of dance halls, jazz clubs, and various kinds of drinking establishments. Terrific Street was centered upon a single block of Pacific Street, which was one of the earliest streets to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove. The district was located between Kearny and Montgomery streets on Pacific Street.
The term 'Terrific Street' was first used in the mid-1890s by musicians in describing the quality of music at Pacific Street's clubs, and indeed the first jazz clubs of San Francisco occurred there. At the beginning, the prevailing music was ragtime and slow blues, but within the first decade of the 20th century the music clubs began to develop early forms of jazz. The district also attracted many famous entertainers such as actress Sarah Bernhardt, Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, and musicians Sophie Tucker, Al Jolson, and Jelly Roll Morton. A principal attraction of Terrific Street was dancing, and many nationally known dance steps like the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot were invented on Terrific Street. However, the district's existence was short-lived, and Terrific Street's dominance slowly came to an end by 1921 after a newspaper's crusade to shut down the district, and severe restrictions were placed upon its dance halls by the Police Commission.
Early Barbary Coast
Pacific Street went through many transformations from its early days of the 1860s when it was the main thoroughfare for the vice-ridden Barbary Coast. The Barbary Coast was born during the California Gold Rush of 1849 when the population of San Francisco was growing at an exponential rate due to a rapid influx of tens of thousands of miners trying to find gold. The early decades of the Barbary Coast were marred by persistent lawlessness, gambling, administrative graft, vigilante justice, and prostitution. The Barbary Coast's most violent and vice-ridden days occurred between the 1860s to the 1880s, when its theft, harassment issues, and violence caused most San Franciscans to avoid the area.However, with the passage of time San Francisco's government gained strength and competence, and the Barbary Coast's maturing entertainment scene of dance halls and jazz clubs later influenced America's culture. Entertaining this large influx of miners, new entrepreneurs, and sailors became be a huge business and resulted in varied and inventive forms of entertainment. Except for some auction houses and stores, the stretch of Pacific Street from the waterfront to Kearny Street was packed with drinking establishments and dance halls. Due to progressive music clubs like Purcell's which enabled jazz to get an early foothold in San Francisco, there were positive cultural aspects developing in the district.
The Barbary Coast's century-long evolution upon these few blocks of Pacific Street went through massive incarnations due to the city's rapid cultural development during its transition into the 20th century. Terrific Street was just such a later transformation of the early Barbary Coast.
After the 1906 earthquake
Due to the earthquake and fire of 1906, most of the buildings on that stretch of Pacific Street were destroyed. However the city's financial boosters then saw an opportunity to clean up Barbary Coast, and transform it into an entertainment area that could be acceptable for every-day San Franciscans. Possessing a new sense of civic pride, the boosters invested heavily in reconstruction, and within three months over a dozen dance halls and a dozen bars were rebuilt and operating. This new incarnation of Pacific Street was gentrified and tame compared to the lawless pre-earthquake version of the Barbary Coast, and Terrific Street became a tourist mecca for middle-class youth.This time around, things were different—the city and its merchants were going to pressure the police and club owners into quelling the violence of the old Barbary Coast. During that earlier era of the Barbary Coast, people were not even safe when they were inside of the saloons or dance halls. Oftentimes customers might be pickpocketed by the waitresses themselves, and also might be drugged unconscious so that they could be robbed within that establishment. Because merchants and politicians committed to reversing that previous predatory behavior and attempted to protect customers from theft and harassment, they could expect much wider appeal by attracting middle and upper class customers. As a result, the district then drew tremendous crowds, and at night its brightly lit block could be seen from across the bay in Oakland despite the fact that neon lights had not yet been invented.
The new tone of the neighborhood attracted a type of tourist called a slummer—middle and upper class individuals who go to the rough side of town to see how the other half lives. And in keeping with that tourist theme, the dance halls and concert saloons were referred to as resorts within local newspapers. These resorts offered cleaned-up entertainment venues consisting of large dance floors, variety shows, and musical bands. To further accommodate and protect the slumming tourists, the dance hall owners installed a separate raised viewing gallery over the dance floor which became known as a slummers' balcony. Though the slummers in the balconies intended to view the violence and depravity of the early Barbary Coast of which they had heard, what they really got was only a staged performance by employees of the dance hall. Dance hall owners paid employees to stage nasty dancing, fake fights, and scuffles on the dance floor for their gaping viewers' entertainment. The owners purposely geared their fake floor shows to shock, but not to repulse. High prices were charged to those in the slummers' balcony and there were differing prices for alcohol, depending on whether a customer was on the dance floor, in the slummers' gallery, or in a private booth. The Hippodrome, Olympia, Midway, and Thalia dance halls all had slummers' balconies.
The large dance floors became a main attraction for those in the slummers' balconies. A principal attraction of Terrific Street was dancing, and many nationally know dance steps like the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot were invented in those dance halls. During the early days of Terrific Street, the most common musical genres were ragtime and slow blues, but with the start of the 20th century the musicians quickly became involved with America's new musical genre, jazz. The house band at Purcell's Cafe was the first band in history to use the word jazz in its name when it became called the So Different Jazz Band. The musical venues on Pacific Street usually starting out with just a piano, then later working up to four, and then six pieces according to what the establishment could afford. Some dance halls had bands with as many as 18 musicians. From the seeds of cheap mining-town amusements of the old Barbary Coast, Terrific Street emerged as a vibrant and glamorous district which nurtured the beginnings of arguably America's greatest cultural contribution, jazz music.
Dance halls and concert saloons
Terrific Street's dance halls and concert saloons give an insightful view into the district's cultural identity. One advantage of the west coast's lawless nature was a lack of the east coast's racial segregation laws, which enabling integrated establishments that were called black and tan clubs. The brightest aspect of Terrific Street's culture was its robust jazz music scene which grew from earlier versions of ragtime and blues. Jazz may have started in New Orleans, but due to clubs like Purcell's and musicians Sid LeProtti and Jelly Roll Morton, San Francisco inspired composers and band leaders like Art Hickman and Paul Whiteman who taught this jazz to mainstream America.Musician Sid LeProtti recalls the excitement of Terrific Street:
We used to call it Terrific Street. I can remember the time you could come across San Francisco Bay on the ferryboat and you could pick out that blaze of electric lights on Pacific Street. There wasn't any neon in them days; just millions of electric lights. There was The Midway, The Hippodrome, The Thalia, Louie Gomez's, Parenti's Saloon, Griffin's, Spider Kelly's, The Bella Union, and a slug of other places like that. You could see all the lights from them for miles in any direction. I've seen good times on Terrific Street when the street was so crowded with people nobody could go through there in an automobile, and I remember the night the officers of the law come in and closed everything down...
Purcell's Café
Purcell's was located at 520 Pacific Street, and during the early 20th century was regarded as one of the most important music clubs of the west coast. In its early years it was also known as the So Different Club, but later adopted the name of Purcell's. Purcell's was started by two African Americans, Lew Purcell and Sam King, who previously worked as Pullman Porters. Though owned by African Americans, the club was open to all races and was known as a black and tan club due to its audience's racial diversity.Purcell's was smaller than most dance halls and was furnished with just a bar, a few tables and chairs, and 20 or more benches which faced a dance floor. Though small, it was a very innovative establishment when it came to making money from its customers. On the opposite side of the room from the bar was a large partition. Behind that partition were female employees who were paid to dance with the customers. Customers could buy copper tokens for 20 cents each that entitled them to one dance with one of the dancers. As soon as the customer was on the dance floor, the floor manager approached them and urged them to order either a whiskey, cigar, or beer. Using a token or a dance-ticket to buy a dance from a female employee is the hallmark of taxi dancing, and indeed taxi dancing was first invented in San Francisco during this era.
Oftentimes the band played as many as 30 songs in an hour. Because of the rigorous performing schedule, it was not unusual to find piano players whose fingers were protectively taped, and the pianists often wore out a piano in just a year's time. Dancing was a major attraction of Terrific Street, and Purcell's management understood that its audience wanted to see the newest, most thrilling varieties of dance and music such as ragtime, blues, Turkey Trot, and the Texas Tommy. Gene Harris, a white pianist at the nearby Thalia dance hall stated "All the new dances came from Purcell's which hired the best colored entertainers from coast to coast."
During pianist Sid LeProtti's first time at performing at Purcell's, club owner Sam King noticed his special talents and immediately made Sid LeProtti the house band's new leader. Sid LeProtti became a major jazz influence on Terrific Street, and his extensive interviews left behind one of the better documented descriptions of the district during its heyday. By 1915, Sid LeProtti had rebuilt the So Different Jazz Band into one of the finest performing groups of the San Francisco Bay Area. They are said to have been the first band in America to use the new term 'jazz' in its name. His house band consisted of a clarinet, baritone sax, flute, piano, string bass, and drums.
LeProtti's grandmother was a famous contralto of San Francisco, and around 1860 she became the first African American woman to sing on a stage in California. Also fluent in German, LeProtti's grandmother arranged for him to take piano lessons from a German music teacher who trained LeProtti in classical music and encouraged him to memorize songs—something that later helped his skills in jazz improvisation. LeProtti later evolved from musician to composer, and like other Barbary Coast musicians freely shared many of his arrangements with others.
Despite its sophistication in music, Purcell's was not a tame club, and slummers often came there to see fights and risque dancing. LeProtti recalled in an Alan Lomax interview how violence occasionally occurred. On one night a customer pulled out a pistol and started shooting, only to have the bartender hit him over the head with a whiskey bottle which ultimately caused his death.