Rockhead's Paradise
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Rockhead's Paradise
Rockhead's Paradise was a night club in Montreal, Canada, the first in the city to be owned by a black businessman. From circa 1931 until its demise in 1977, Rockhead's, as it was known locally, featured singers, dancers, comedians, and other African-American entertainers, mostly brought in from the United States; they were accompanied on stage by a house band of local black musicians. The three-story building also housed a street-level bar where jazz musicians, mostly local, performed, and a tavern. In 1928, Rufus Rockhead, a Jamaican-born immigrant, First World War veteran, and former railroad porter, bought the building at 1258 St.Antoine Street West, corner of Mountain street. The three-story building initially housed hotel rooms on the top floor. In 1931, Rockhead converted the second and third floors into a cabaret-style night club. Rufus Rockhead faced an excessive amount of discrimination as a Black business owner. While segregation laws did not exist in Canada, prej ...
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Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as ''Fort Ville-Marie, Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill around which the early city of Ville-Marie is built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which obtained its name from the same origin as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. The city is east of the national capital Ottawa, and southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City. As of 2021, the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a Census Metropolitan Area#Census metropolitan areas, metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest city, and List of cen ...
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Oscar Peterson
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian virtuoso jazz pianist and composer. Considered one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community as "the King of inside swing". Biography Early years Peterson was born in Montreal, Quebec, to immigrants from the West Indies (Saint Kitts and Nevis and the British Virgin Islands); His mother, Kathleen, was a domestic worker and his father, Daniel, worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway and was an amateur musician who taught himself to play the organ, trumpet and piano. Peterson grew up in the neighbourh ...
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Nightclubs In Montreal
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance, dance floor, Laser lighting display, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs generally restrict access to people in terms of age, attire, personal property, personal belongings, and inappropriate behaviors. Nightclubs typically have dress codes to prohibit people wearing informal, indecent, offensive, or gang-related attire from entering. Unlike other entertainment venues, nightclubs are more likely to use Bouncer (doorman), bouncers to screen prospective patrons for entry. The busiest nights for a nightclub are Friday and Saturday nights. Most nightclubs cater to a particular music genre or sound for branding effects. Some nightclubs may offer food and beverages (including alcoholic beverages). History Early history In the United States, New York City, New York increasingly became the ...
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Le Sud-Ouest
Le Sud-Ouest ( en, "the southwest") is a borough (''arrondissement'') of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Geography Le Sud-Ouest is an amalgam of several neighbourhoods with highly distinct histories and identities, mainly with working-class and industrial origins, grouped around the Lachine Canal. These include Saint-Henri, Little Burgundy, and Griffintown to the north of the canal, and Ville-Émard, Côte-Saint-Paul, and Pointe-Saint-Charles to the south. Located southwest of downtown Montreal (hence the name), the borough is bordered to the northwest by Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, to the northeast by the Ville-Marie borough, to the south by the borough of Verdun, to the west by the borough of LaSalle and the town of Montreal West, and to the north by the city of Westmount. The Saint Lawrence River is located upon part of its eastern edge. History :''See History of Saint-Henri, History of Little Burgundy, History of Ville-Émard, History of Côte-S ...
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Black Canadian Culture In Montreal
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have often been used to describe opposites such as good and evil, the Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment, and night versus day. Since the Middle Ages, black has been the symbolic color of solemnity and authority, and for this reason it is still commonly worn by judges and magistrates. Black was one of the first colors used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of the underworld. In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches, and magic. In the 14th century, it was worn by royalty, clergy, judges, and government officials in much of Europe. It became the color worn by English romantic poets, businessmen ...
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Padlock Law
The ''Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda'' (french: Loi protégeant la province contre la propagande communiste), commonly known as the "Padlock Law" or "Padlock Act" (french: La loi du cadenas), was a law in the province of Quebec, Canada that allowed the Attorney General of Quebec to close off access to property suspected of being used to propagate or disseminate communist propaganda. The law was introduced by the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis and made it illegal to "use houseor allow any person to make use of it to propagate Communism or Bolshevism by any means whatsoever". This included printing, publishing or distributing of "any newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, circular, document or writing, propagating Communism or Bolshevism". Violations of the Act subjected such property to closure by the Attorney General, including the locking of access doors with padlocks, against any use whatsoever for a period of up to one year and any per ...
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Maurice Duplessis
Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis (; April 20, 1890 – September 7, 1959), was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 16th premier of Quebec. A conservative, nationalist, anti-Communist, anti-unionist and fervent Catholic, he and his party, the Union Nationale'','' dominated provincial politics from the 1930s to the 1950s. Son of Nérée Duplessis, a lawyer who was serving at the time as a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Maurice studied law in Montreal and became a member of the Bar of Quebec in 1913. He then returned to his home town to practice law, where he founded a successful consultancy. Duplessis ran as a Conservative candidate in the 1923 elections but only managed to get the Trois-Rivières seat four years later, which he retained until his death. His rhetorical skills helped him become the leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly in 1933 in the place of Camillien Houde. As opposition leader, he agreed to a ...
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Oliver Jones (pianist)
Oliver Theophilus Jones, (born September 11, 1934 in Little Burgundy, Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian jazz pianist, organist, composer and arranger. Musical career Born to Barbadian parents, Oliver Jones began his career as a pianist at the age of five, studying with Mme Bonner in Little Burgundy's Union United Church, made famous by Trevor W. Payne's Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir. He continued to develop his talent through his studies with Oscar Peterson's sister, Daisy Peterson Sweeney, starting at eight years old. In addition to performing at Union United Church when he was a child, he also performed a solo novelty act at the Cafe St. Michel as well as other clubs and theaters in the Montreal area. "I had a trick piano act, dancing, doing the splits, playing from underneath the piano, or with a sheet over the keys." He started his early touring in Vermont and Quebec with a band called Bandwagon, and in 1953–63 played mainly in the Montreal area, with tours in Queb ...
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Little Burgundy
Little Burgundy (french: La Petite-Bourgogne) is a neighbourhood in the South West borough of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Geography Its approximate boundaries are Atwater Avenue to the west, Saint-Antoine to the north, Guy Street to the east, and the Lachine Canal to the south. The adjacent neighbourhoods are the borough of Ville-Marie and downtown Montreal to the north and northeast, Griffintown to the southeast, Pointe-Saint-Charles to the south, and Saint-Henri to the west. The neighbourhood comprises the former city of Sainte-Cunégonde and Saint-Joseph's ward. Origin There are differing accounts of the origin of the name Little Burgundy (''Petite-Bourgogne''). A surveyor's map of 1855 identifies a property called Bourgogne, owned by the heirs of the Hon. Louis Guy (brother of Étienne Guy, for whom Guy Street was named). The property corresponds to the areas bounded today by Rue des Seigneurs, Rue Notre-Dame, Rue Saint-Martin, and Rue Saint-Antoine. Offici ...
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Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching , is the world's longest binational land border. Canada's capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Indigenous peoples have continuously inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces an ...
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Female Impersonators
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and part of gay culture. People partake in the activity of ''doing drag'' for reasons ranging from self-expression to mainstream performance. Drag shows frequently include lip-syncing, live singing, and dancing. They occur at events like LGBT pride parades, carnivals and drag pageants and in venues such as cabarets and nightclubs. Drag queens vary by type, culture, and dedication, from professionals who star in films and spend a lot of their time in their drag persona, to people who do drag only occasionally. Those who do occasional drag may be from other backgrounds than the LGBT community. There is a long history of folkloric and theatrical crossdressing that involves people of all orientations. Not everyone who does drag at some point in thei ...
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Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly he ...
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