- FILE
Prince Edwards, fire dancer, having the last mouthful of a bulb which he ate as a part of his act on Christmas Eve night, at the opening of the New Top Hat Club on Red Hills Road.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
The Sunday Gleaner continues to open the creaking doors on nightspots which contained the glee of the grandfathers and grandmothers, fathers and mothers of the present generation of clubgoers. Today we look at the Red Hills Road strip.
THE 2006 version of the upper section of Red Hills Road, St. Andrew, is an ant-line of slow moving traffic by day and a fog of pan chicken smoke by night. And there are many stationary cars, as the lovers of wings and breasts, legs and thighs stop for a quarter or two, wrapped in shiny aluminium paper.
There was a time when there would be more people having chicken on the spot, rather than driving away. They would be coming out of one of the many nightspots that dotted and dominated the section of Red Hills Road from close to where the Sunrise Supermarket currently is to near Price Smart, with one being close to the Price Rite Supermarket.
Some 30 years ago Red Hills Road was red-hot with nightlife, and the names of the clubs rang on the lips of partygoers. Tit For Tat. Stables. El Rancho. Top Hat. The Rock. And the one which outlasted them all, Turntable.
It is a time that Olga Hinds remembers well. "Red Hills Road was the spot," she said. "Turntable was a must for Thursday night. Is like how Asylum is for the young people now."
She remembers the strip's lower limit, heading towards Half-Way Tree, as being Turntable on one side and a more exotic set-up, Neptune, on the other. The Rock was not on the strip, strictly speaking, as it was on Chancery Street near to the Price Rite Supermarket, but it marked the other end of the concentrated nightlife. "It used to give Turntable a run for them money," Hinds said.
A SAFE FEELING
"The strip then was like what is now the Knutsford Boulevard strip," Marie Francis said. "It was a time when you could walk around and feel quite safe, regardless of the hour. Whether you walked, took taxi, drove or took the bus, you were safe," she said.
So safe that many times, Francis recalls, the partying went on until literally daylight. "If it was a Sunday morning you would buck up the people going to church. If it was Friday, it would be the people going to work and school," she said.
Hinds said that club-hopping was the order of the night on Red Hills Road in the early 1970s, the women sporting clogs and bell-foot pants, and the men treading
lightly in Hush Puppies and crimpelene trousers. There were many very good musicians playing in close proximity to each other, Francis saying, "You had a lot of live entertainment. You had a lot of bands at the time. You could go on the strip and get a little piece of three different bands working."
One of those bands was The Jackie Mittoo trio, in which Leroy Sibbles, popular singer with The Heptones, played bass in the mid-1960s. The band was resident at Tit For Tat.
Sibbles placed the club "on the same side as Turntable, going up Red Hills Road. We played at least three times a week." He said it was a "casual club" in terms of dress, with the band playing an instrumental programme. "It was a regular dance club, with mid-town people," Sibbles said.
TERRIBLE VIOLENCE
Skin, Flesh and Bones, the resident band at nearby Stables, had Sly Dunbar behind the drum set.
Olga Hinds puts her heyday on Red Hills Road between 1971 and 1975. Then there was another kind of heat and >
everything changed.
"The terrible violence started in 1976. The shooting start and the violence start kill the strip. Is not only Red Hills Road," she said.
Still, even as other clubs closed down, "Despite all what happen, Turntable still used to lick. Even in rough times, Turntable used to swing."
But even Turntable, which Francis recalls opening on Red Hills Road in 1973/1974, had to concede to red-hot situations which turned the clientele off and away. The last hurrah, as Francis puts it, came at an unforgettable time. The massacre on nearby 100 Lane was carried out on New Year's Eve 2001, "while people were partying upstairs in the safety of Turntable." They heard nothing until they were going home.
Today, the only reminders of the red-hot dancing days on Red Hills Road are the legends 'Tit For Tat' and 'The Rock'. There is a taste, though, Hinds saying "The only thing that is on Red Hills Road is pan chicken. They developed a clientele." Francis remembers Pawny, who opened the uptown version of a cold supper shop in the plaza downstairs the Turntable. When he left, his sprat, roast breadfruit, ackee and saltfish were replaced by chicken parts and drums cut in two.
Hinds notes a shift from Red Hills Road to a new party place that remains to this day. "From there it was a place in Spanish Treasure Plaza (in New Kingston)," she said.
And today there is the Knutsford Boulevard strip, hosting the party people as the upper section of Red Hills Road once did, 30 years and many lifetimes ago.
