The St. Louis Palladium.

This is very cool! Famous St Louis architectural photographer Peter Wilson came along one day to the Palladium building and set up a tripod for a couple of shots while we talked about the history and the Club Plantation. He was so casual about what he was doing, that I suspected that he was just snapping reference shots. Then last week he sent me this -

Wow. What a beautiful shot!

This isn't what I saw that day. When I was standing on the sidewalk across from the building, I could find no other view of the structure other than a straightforward composition. Also, it was getting dark early and I assumed there wouldn't be much light to work with. So I am very impressed. Wilson's image really creates an exciting scenery out of the blank shuttered building. No trick floodlights, the photograph shows the natural condition of the building. And in his artwork I can see the antique elegance of the old building - something I now know that Wilson was capturing, but I didn't see while standing in the cold late afternoon on Delmar.

Mr. Wilson's website is here: peterwilsonphotography.com

And this is cool too! Andrew Torch is a fellow artist and proprietor of Andy's Toys. He mentioned to me one day that he had a poster of a montage of St Louis-related ephemera that showed tickets to the St. Louis Palladium Roller Skating Rink. So I rushed over and got a couple of pictures of them.

Looks to me like it's from the 1930s.

Thanks Andy! Go see his store at 9620 Gravois in St. Louis, it's got all the cool stuff your mom threw away when you went away to school.

Review in the American Library Association's magazine, College & Research Libraries News.

George M. Eberhart, senior editor of American Libraries and editor of AL Direct, wrote to say that Devil At The Confluence was "an excellent contribution to St. Louis history." Then in his review of the book in the December 2010 issue of College & Research Libraries News from the American Library Association, Eberhardt says that the book, "sets the record straight with a wealth of primary research."

"Belford, a professional illustrator, started out to make a series of portraits in honor of St. Louis blues and jazz musicians prior to World War II. When he found out how little research had been done on them compared to blues musicians further south, he launched a massive project to reestablish the city’s musical heritage. Here he sets the record straight with a wealth of primary research, noting that what became ragtime music was played in the city as early as 1888, and quoting St. Louis piano bluesman Stump Johnson on blues origins: 'St. Louis had some of the best blues singers that ever there was in the history of the blues. The levee at St. Louis was known throughout the country as the origination of blues.'”

PRE-ORDERS For The Book

There have been a lot of requests to pre-order the book, 

even though we don't have a shipping date yet. 

We only know that the books will be here sometime in September.

So we're going to try to do this the old pre-internet way – 

through the U.S. Postal Service.

If you'd like to reserve your signed copy of 

Devil At The Confluence, 

please send an email to

devilattheconfluence ( at ) gmail.com, 

tell us what state or country you're in 

and we'll give you the mail-order information.

We're very encouraged by the flood of requests and 

of course, there will be many opportunities at 

local events to get the book. 

And all of that will be announced here soon. 

Thanks everyone!