The Palladium and the Marathon craze

A marathon dance in 1910 in St Louis ended when it was called a draw and three prizes were awarded to three couples. As organizer of the benefit, Annie Jackson made the call. She was worried that the police would interfere if the marathon became too strenuous on the couples. Already that summer, marathons had been raided by police in San Francisco and Brooklyn and Annie didn't want any such trouble at her event. Also, the public attendance for the week had been exceptional so she could easily afford to pay each couple the $25 prize. That wasn't how the marathon dances craze of the later Jazz Age usually went. Typically, these things were 24/7, no-mercy, last-man-standing kind of endurance contests. The same themes of reality TV like Survivor, Idol and Dancing with the Stars, the dance marathon was the beginning of the stuff of American pop culture. Horace McCoy's book, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was made into a movie in the 1970s and it portrays the character, the hype and the seedy scenes of the marathon spectacle very vividly.

The Palladium building off Grand at Delmar and Enright was built as a Roller Skating rink in 1914 and a newspaper article told of Gene Rodemich's early St Louis Jazz band performing there. Music was changing from the Ragtime fad to the Jazz fad and the spectator sport of Roller Derby was evolving around the Rollerskating fad. On these roller skating rinks, the Marathon Dance Derby or "Walkathon" fad began.

Reliable information available about the Marathon craze is scarce and most of what is available assumes that it occurred only during the depression. But it was in at least two other cities besides St. Louis by 1910 and the last one in St. Louis was held at the end of the 1930s.

By 1950, the Club Plantation had seen it's best days. The club's old crowd had settled down to make baby-boom babies and didn't come out much anymore. The new younger crowd with their new music were making some new place crowded, like the beatniks over in the Gaslight Square area or the lounge crooners at the Chase Hotel.

Historically, St. Louis culture has a unique creative technique in finding the future trends - it takes the best of the past and brings it forward. So it doesn't seem strange that the Club Plantation's owner, Tony Scarpelli, had an idea to bring back some business to his place by bringing back the Marathon. He ran an ad in the entertainment trade journals for a revival of an authentic old-time Walkathon Derby in the authentic, historic Palladium building.

It's not known if his Walkathon revival ever happened. Shortly thereafter the Club Plantation was gone and Tony had gone into other business. But maybe years later, he saw the movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

And maybe years later, Tony saw the end of the 1970s when the younger crowd and their new music called Disco were dancing on Rollerskates in Roller Rinks.

The Palladium Building, St Louis, Missouri

The Palladium Building on Enright Avenue just west of Grand is for sale. The building was built in 1914 as a rollerskating rink and ballroom. The Palladium was not the fanciest of the legendary St Louis dancehalls, but it was home for some of the greatest music in the city.

From the earliest days of the jazz age, the Palladium was a unique spot for entertainment. Gene Rodemich's St Louis jazz orchestra played a dance there in 1914 for the Sunshine Society's Benefit Ball. In the book, Devil At The Confluence, Rodemich's outfit is noted as the first recorded jazz group from St Louis. During World War II and just into the 1950s, the building was the famous Club Plantation, home of the very popular Jeter-Pillars recording orchestra.

The importance of this structure to St Louis music history is significant for the great local and national musicians who played there and the generations of people for whom this was the place to be on a Saturday night.

So we started discussing an effort to save this building and raise awarness of the important cultural history that St Lous has and how very few of the heirlooms remain. This video was created as an introduction to the discussion and to demonstrate what is already lost. Not regret nor complaint, but to create appreciation for St Louis historical treasures.

The Palladium Amusement Company built the building at 3618 Enright in 1914 and had a roller skating rink there until 1941. The Enright address is the skating rink’s front doors, on the north side of the building. The south side of the building, the 3600 block of Delmar, had no storefronts listed until 1940 when a warehouse for Dupont Paints was listed. The Club Plantation opened on Vandeventer and was there for about five years until it moved to the Palladium Building. The Vandeventer location soon became the site of a very popular and important music spot known as the West End Waiter’s club, just down the block from the West End Hotel. From 1947 to 1952, the Club Plantation is listed at 3617 Delmar, and 911 N. Vandeventer is the West End Waiters club.

At the Club Plantation, two extraordinary young musicians joined the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, bassist Jimmy Blanton and guitarist Charlie Christian. Blanton was playing with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra at the Club Plantation when Duke Ellington first heard him in 1939. After joining Ellington, Blanton, more than anyone else in jazz, made the string bass a solo instrument. In September of 1939, record producer John Hammond heard Christian playing with the Jeter-Pillars band and recommended him to Benny Goodman. The Jeter-Pillars Orchestra also saw in its ranks, Jimmy Forrest who recorded the hit single, "Night Train." By 1942, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra became the most popular band in St. Louis and besides local radio shows on WIL and KMOX, the band was featured on the national radio program, The Fitch Bandwagon. Jeter and Pillars disbanded their orchestra in 1947.

Popular St. Louis bandleader, Eddie Johnson talked about his memories of the Club Plantation, “I had a band that was twelve pieces. I had a chance to work with all these top bands in the country, like McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Fate Marable, Duke Ellington they would come here, to the Club Plantation, at 911 North Vandeventer. I opened the Plantation Club back in 1931, that's when I had a fellow called Tab Smith in my band.” Johnson also spoke of the Palladium building “And when the Plantation closed on Vandeventer, they moved up there and called it the Plantation.” And he recalled that he worked with the Mills Brothers there. In the interview, Johnson named a number of other St. Louis clubs from the 1930s, such as the Dance Box, the Chauffers' Club, the Finance Building. but none of those locations remain.

The Jeter-Pillars Orchestra backed many popular national talents when they came to town including Louis Jordan. The biographies of Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis talk of the Club Plantation and the St. Louis jazz bands of George Hudson and the visiting orchestra of Billy Eckstein’s. Davis was eighteen years old and sat in with Eckstein and local trumpet man Clark Terry was in Hudson’s band. Terry remembered the Plantation orchestras as having the best local talent and being known by the national superstars for their excellent musicianship.

“We played the Club Plantation and all the acts from Nat King Cole To Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, the Nicholas Brothers – all acts came to the Club Plantation because it was a very, very popular place. They brought their music and we would play their music better than anybody ever played it.” “They would hear the music played like they’d never heard it played before. They would go all over the country, “Man, you got to go out to St. Louis and have that George Hudson band play your music. You’ll never ever hear it played like that.” So that’s how the band got their reputation. It was a great band.”

Memphis Travel and Tourism Bureau runs ads in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that bills Memphis as the “Birthplace of Rock n' Roll.” Their preservation of Sun Records studio is commendable and Graceland draws tourists from all over the world of course, but it’s deplorable that they were permitted to run a false claim like that in Chuck Berry’s hometown paper. Not only did the father of rock n’ roll invent it in his home in St. Louis, but every good Memphis musician besides Elvis Presley, such as Ike Turner, Albert King, and Little Milton, left there to come here. A strong claim to the birth of rock and roll could be made for the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis, but the Cosmopolitan is now gone. And rock-solid claims could be made about St. Louis’ contributions to America’s cultural legacy from ragtime to jazz through blues, rock n’ roll, swing, alternative and other trends of music.

Many of St. Louis’ cultural landmarks are gone. And these now-gone St. Louis landmarks were not of minor importance to American cultural history. These local sites were simply forgotten or unnoticed by the city. This is an unfortunate habit of St. Louis, and a bad habit not shared by other cities. And most assuredly, the value and benefits of such claims to historical treasures are not unnoticed by cities like Memphis or Chicago – who has capitalized on other treasures and honors neglected by St. Louis. The Bandstand is gone. The Jazzland, the Rosebud, the Arcadia, the West End Waiters club, the Elks Club and Club Riviera are gone. And now the Palladium is in danger of becoming a parking lot. The building is not in a questionable area, in fact it is comfortably in one of the most vibrant areas for entertainment in the city. It could easily be a gem of cultural history and a proud local treasure, a worthy landmark, and one of few remaining.

Another interesting fact about the block of Grand Blvd across from the Palladium and the old Club Plantation: In 1959, Chuck Berry opened a club called The Bandstand across Grand Blvd from the Palladium at 814 N. Grand Blvd between Delmar and Enright in the old Latin Quarters nightclub underneath the Chuck Wagon diner. So it can be added to the Palladium building’s history that it saw the transition from the swing music of the World War years to rhythm and blues to rock and roll and the greatest musicians of those decades.

The Palladium Building should be saved from becoming just another parking lot. It should be preserved as an heirloom for future generations to know the long and great legacy that they are a part of. A legacy that has come very, very close to being lost. It’s something very similar to an inferiority complex that St. Louis has that keeps her from bragging about her cultural importance and keeps her from defending her qualities and successes. She makes no argument when other cities make claims to her treasures and historic landmarks. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t realize how important these historical artifacts are. Maybe knowing the history and realizing the value will stop this downward spiral of low self-esteem and cultural neglect.