HOBBY BAR
music: "Is
It A Sin" - Timiko (Checker1041a)
Just a couple of blocks down
Linwood Avenue from The Parizian, the Hobby Bar
was another eastside venue that mainly showcased
local artists.
It was where Mr. Watt had been
working for the owner, Mr. Harold Bernstein,
since it opened in 1960. Mr. Bernstein had
promised to sell the club to Mr. Watt, whose
expertise had made it a lucrative nightclub. But
he significantly upped the asking price after he
returned from a month in Israel and found his
takings had increased. Feeling cheated, Mr. Watt
quit and turned his attention to buying a
failing strip club on Fenkell – an east-west
conduit about 5 miles north of downtown Detroit.
Most of Mr. Watt’s cash had come
from running numbers; an activity shared by
Correc-tone’s boss Mr. Wilburt Golden and
largely controlled by the wealthy Mr. Ed
Wingate. Although it was illegal in Michigan,
many Detroiters played the numbers: a simple
process of choosing three digits that were
linked to horseraces. Many people picked ones
that were linked to life’s events, which were
outlined in a special book. Mr. Watt explained:
“You got a dream book and ‘baby’
was 121 - so if your wife had just had a baby,
you chose 121. Death was 967; 369 was adultery.”
It was a popular form of
gambling - albeit illegal - and, as Mr. Watt
told me: ”A lot of people made a lot of money
that way - I sent my kids through college.
That’s what gave me the money to buy Mozambique.
The feds don’t care as long as you had a $50 tax
stamp that you had to have on you. But it wasn’t
legal as far as the city (police) was
concerned.”
Detroit’s police department was
notoriously racist and it was a brutal raid on a
blind pig (gambling den) on 12th
Street in 1967 that sparked devastating riots.
“I got busted two or three times,” Mr. Watt
said. “So when I bought Mozambique, I had to put
it in my brother’s name.”
After getting caught, police
told him not to let it happen again and so he
sold his numbers operation, which, as Mr. Watt
succinctly put it, was “hard to give up when you
make fresh money every day.”
Danny Woods,
whose career started with Correc-tone, opened
Watt’s Club Mozambique in April 1969, which was
around the time he signed with Invictus Records
as one of the Chairmen of The Board.
Since
the early 1960s, the African country of
Mozambique had been fighting for independence
and from continually hearing it mentioned in the
news, Mr. Watt had fallen in love with the
exotic sounding name. By the late 60s, African
consciousness had swept to the forefront of
American culture and Mr. Watt named his latest
venture Watt’s Club Mozambique. He carried the
theme on and decorated the interior with bamboo
wallpaper and had banana leaves draped around
the ceiling.
It was a hit from day one.
McKinley Jackson and former Correc-tone artist
Danny Woods shared the opening bill in April
1969 - along with The Terrifics, a group signed
with James “Diamond Jim” Riley’s recording
company.
Diamond Jim had a
nearby after-hour gambling joint - a blind pig -
that had a jukebox and offered a steady supply
of liquor. It was where people went once they
left the regular clubs – such as Club
Mozambique.
Mr. Riley’s legal
business was a gym that he ran: he loved boxing.
To add a bit of showbiz glamour to his life, he
started three record labels in the mid sixties:
Big D, Diamond Jim and Riley’s.
Known as a flashy
dresser with a penchant for diamonds - he even
had one set in his front tooth – he held lavish
public birthday celebrations that included a
cake with ‘a gem in every slice’: usually in the
20 Grand’s up-market Driftwood Lounge. Diamond
Jim couldn’t be described as bashful and as Mr.
Watt recalled with understatement, “He was very
well know and dressed sharp.”
In 1970 Mr. Riley
committed his megalomanical persona to vinyl in
“The Legend Of Diamond Jim” - a monologue
released on his Diamond Jim label, which extends
to Part 2. Here’s a brief sample:
"The ladies fall right into Diamond Jim’s trap
Cause they just
love his smooth taking rap"
You
get the idea. But these self-delusional lyrics
were soon to become his undoing.
“Diamond Jim used
to come to the club every night; that was his
hangout,” Mr. Watt recalled. “Because that’s
where he’d get the crowd to go to his
after-hours club.”
Mr. Watt clearly
remembered one particular Saturday night in May
1971: “There were two or three young girls sat
in the corner and he bought them champagne all
night. Then at the end of the night he asked
them to go to his after-hours club. They kept
turning him down, so he said, ‘You bitches… sip
my champagne all night and then tell me you
ain’t going to my club?!’”
“The guy that was
with him said, ‘Don’t call them bitches; one of
them is a friend of mine.’”
“Jim said,
‘Motherfucker, if you feel that way about them…’
and he turned around and knocked that guy over
two tables, then kicked him while he was on the
floor.”
“When he was
getting up, he pulled a gun out. But Diamond Jim
don’t have no gun - this guy was acting as his
bodyguard.” Donald Bryson then emptied his gun
into Mr. Riley, reloaded and then fired some
more.
|
“I just wasn’t
making any money at jazz.”
Cornelius Watt,
owner of Watt’s Club Mozambique |
With Disco dancing
having already killed off most live
entertainment, Diamond Jim’s death was another
nail in the coffin, with fewer and fewer singers
and musicians appearing live on stage. Numerous
once-popular Detroit nightclubs were closing
down and it wasn’t long after Diamond Jim’s
demise that Mr. Watt decided that having male
strippers for a women-only clientele would be a
more lucrative and far less dangerous
dollar-earner: “I just wasn’t making any money
at jazz. But I told a lot of the groups, don’t
worry, this ain’t gonna last. You’ll all be
back.” But that never happened.
Mr. Watt, whose
managerial career spanned a few decades, sold
Mozambique shortly before he passed away in
October 2006. It’s still catering to a female
audience.
Continued
