Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9405230048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Stewart, 73, worked in the Dumas Hotel in the late 1930s when it was the center of Roanoke's black culture and played host to such jazz greats as Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
"This was the place," Stewart said. Whenever he arrived at Henry Street, the commercial district that was home to the Dumas and many other thriving black businesses, "I was in heaven."
On Sunday the old place - which has become the Henry Street Music Center and Jazz Institute - was packed with performers and spectators. And Stewart, now a member of the music center's board, was pleased.
"If we can get a good start, we might be able to make this thing shine like it used to," Stewart said. "I tell you one thing we gotta do - we gotta figure out a way to get more chairs in here."
He was worried about the chairs because the crowd exceeded expectations. Sponsors of the jazzfest had expected 100 to 150 people to come. But the standing-room-only crowd reached an estimated 200.
"I thought maybe it might be a little shaky," said Roanoke jazz musician William Penn, who helped organize the show. "But when I saw the people coming through the door at 4 o'clock, I said, `Hey, this is gonna work.' "
Total Action Against Poverty, which runs the center, hoped to raise $1,500 to $2,000 from the event. The money will go toward the $800,000 that TAP still needs to raise to finish its renovation of the center.
About two dozen musicians donated their time, including the Dave Figg Quartet and the Ray Ebbett Trio.
For Stewart, it was heaven. He believes jazz is the universal music. He worries that Americans' musical standards have deteriorated as people have lost the art of listening. "They listen to that boom box - I call it the Scud missile - for a while and that's it."
Stewart grew up in Pulaski and moved to Roanoke for his last couple years of high school. He later worked for chemical companies in New Jersey and California before returning to Pulaski in 1989.
It was then he started following the news stories about the Henry Street revival project. One day on a visit to Roanoke, he asked then-Assistant City Manager Earl Reynolds how he could help. Reynolds sent him over to TAP and Stewart ended up on the music center's board.
He doesn't play an instrument - "I'm strictly a listener" - but he has talked to veterans groups and Head Start classes about jazz and played them tapes he's made of great recordings.
Stewart is trying to start an organization, Youth 2000 Club, that will use jazz to show young people that there are alternatives to drugs. Kids need "to know about the people who created this music and what they went through to give it to us."
On Sunday, Stewart wore a black T-shirt that said, "JAZZ. Not Older . . . Just Better. KEEP IT ALIVE!"
When he worked at the Dumas as a teen-age dishwasher and short-order cook, he got to see many of the great jazz bands of the era. "I met quite a few of them. Not the leaders - but I met most of the players."
It was the music he grew up on. "Then rock 'n' roll came along. I could take so much of it before I'd go back to what I heard in the beginning. . . . It made you feel like you had something of your own."
by CNB