By Leo Newman | Contributing Writer
Paul Knauls’ talent agent called him from Oakland to let him know the deal was set: come January, 1970, Etta James would play a four-week residency at the Cotton Club, “the only club on the West Coast with wall-to-wall soul.” Knauls made all the necessary arrangements. James would be backed up by Knaul’s house band, Billy Larkins and the Delegates, and the “At Last” singer would stay at Knauls’ five-bedroom house on N Williams and Monroe Street, which exclusively accommodated talent travelling through town. When the Delegates’ drummer backed out of the gig on the first day of rehearsals, Knauls plucked a teenage Ron Steen from across the street and put him behind the drum kit. Steen had never played for an audience.
Knauls, an airforce mechanic, moved to Portland from Spokane in 1962 with a dream of opening a nightclub for Portland’s African-American community. Successful nightclubs lined Albina’s commercial district along N Vancouver and Williams Avenues- and then there was the Cotton Club. By 1962, the small, declining nightclub on N Vancouver and Tillamook was a venue for burlesque shows and community events under the ownership of Lee “Mr. T” Thompson. Knauls bought the club from Mr. T, whose “high yellow” complexion, old suit and low grumble reminded him of a “grumpy old white man.” Its house band, an organ trio, was made up of neighborhood kids Hank Swarn on guitar and Mel Brown on drums. In an attempt to look older, the band members wore matching tuxedoes complete with bowtie and cumberbund. Brown, an 18-year old PSU freshman, had to sit in the kitchen between sets.
Knauls reopened the Cotton Club in 1963. The small nightclub, a converted auto repair shop, was split into a bar and a showroom. The latter’s wooden floors and sandy wall paneling radiated amber. Tables circled around a waist-high, velvet-lined stage. Hoping to rehabilitate its reputation, he ditched the burlesque dancers and brought in organist Billy Larkin to lead the house band. The new trio became immediately popular.
“That’s when things really got going,” says Brown. A year later, Billy Larkin and the Delegates would find themselves cutting their first record, Pigmy, in Dick Bock’s Los Angeles recording studio. The Delegates would rock the Cotton Club until 2:30AM, when attendees poured out onto Vancouver looking for an after-hours bar, such as Knaul’s own Geneva’s, which he opened in 1968.
Alternatively, when Brown and his roommate George Page got their hands on new jazz records coming out of Chicago, they invited other musicians to their apartment off 8th and Knott to listen. “You couldn’t even get in the door,” Brown remembers, “we had all the latest sounds.” A decade later, Page would help start KBOO radio, where he showcased Black music that major stations refused to broadcast.
During Knauls’ tenure, the Cotton Club became Portland’s prime destination for popular Black musicians of the 1960s. Notable performers included Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Big Mama Thorton and Little Esther Phillips. Oregon Journal writer Doug Baker featured the club in his column “Baker’s Dozen,” which helped popularize it among Portland’s White community.
In 1965, Brown moved to Vancouver BC to drum a young band led by a young Tommy Chong, which had recently been signed to Motown. Brown got on well with the Motown crew and was touring the world with the Temptations by 1967. Between tours, he worked as a session musician for Motown in Detroit.
The Cotton Club closed its doors in 1970. Knauls cites racial division following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the development of the Legacy Emmanuel Hospital as contributing factors to the closure of the Cotton Club and Paul’s Paradise, another Albina bar he owned.
In January 1970, Billy Preston introduced Brown to the Beatles after a London concert at the Talk of the Town nightclub. Preston invited Brown and two other members of the Temptations’ backing band to help him record a version of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” In 1973, Brown moved back to Portland, where he formed a new trio and in 1978, the trio went on the road with Diana Ross.
In the years to follow, Brown and Steen became pillars of Portland’s jazz scene, both establishing Sunday jam sessions around town that live in legend for local musicians. Steen has hosted a Sunday jam session at Clyde’s Steakhouse, another jazz institution, for the past 20 years. Brown has longstanding residencies at the Jack London Revue and Salty’s on Columbia, and plays regular gigs at the Alberta Street Pub.
Catch these Portland jazz greats in concert this month at these locations:
Ron Steen
Every Sunday from 7:30-10 pm
Clyde’s Steakhouse (5474 NE Sandy Blvd.)
Mel Brown
Saturday, October 4th, 1 -3 pm
Alberta Street Pub (1036 NE Alberta St.)
Thursday, October 16th, 8 pm
Jack London Revue (529 SW 4th Ave.)
Every Friday, 6 -9 pm
Salty’s on the Columbia (3839 NE Marine Dr.)