Central Avenue and the Dunbar Hotel

Few places hold more import in Los Angeles' black history as Central Avenue, the birthplace of the West Coast Jazz and Rhythm & Blues scene and a magnet for those that sought a better life as they moved north from the Mississippi Delta.

By kiki

I remember driving by the Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue in South Central Los Angeles in the early '50s. Central Avenue was an extraordinary center of musical activity at the time. The Dunbar Hotel was where most black celebrities would stay when visiting Los Angeles back in the days of segregation. The Dunbar and other Central Avenue nite clubs were the Los Angeles mecca of jazz and blues-loving aficionados back then. On any given night, the likes of Duke Ellington, Dinah Washinton, Big Jay McNeely, Charlie Parker, Bobby "Blue" Blend, Johhny Otis, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and other iconic jazz and blues artists could be heard in one of the Avenue's many jazz and blues clubs.

Central Avenue would come alive as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. With its high neon signage burning brightly above the smoky air developed over the City of Angels, the Avenue would be turned into a veritable hepcat jive orgy. 

All up and down Central Avenue would be packed with parked cars, mostly Cadillacs. The hepcats, with their bright color clothes, their ladies dressed to the nines, would be strolling and jiving as they boogied to the music blaring from the clubs as they made their way up and down the Avenue.

I was not a part of the Central Avenue club scene because I was too young to walk the neon life of the Avenue. Nevertheless, I'd witness the comings and goings of the action on the Avenue as I would hang at Dolphins of Hollywood Record Shop on the corner of Vernon and Central in the early years of the middle decade of the twentieth century.