October 24, 1962: James Brown Plays His "Live at the Apollo" Concert

October 24, 1962: James Brown plays the Apollo Theater in New York. The concert is recorded for an album titled Live at the Apollo, released on May 1, 1963.

The album was recorded at the foremost African-American-oriented entertainment venue on Earth, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Brown and his backing band, the Famous Flames, performed as if there were no tomorrow.

The album lasts just 31 minutes and 31 seconds. And, of course, it doesn't include most of the songs associated with James, such as "I Got You (I Feel Good)," "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World," "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)," "Sex Machine" and "Living In America." All of those came later.

It does include his 1st hit, from 1956: "Please, Please, Please." And it includes his current hit, a reworking of "Night Train," Jimmy Forrest's 1952 rhythm & blues classic that gave football legend Dick Lane his nickname, and also became a mainstay of high school and college marching bands at football games.

In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine named this album the greatest live album of all time. In his 1995 book The Book of Rock Lists, music historian Dave Marsh said that making a great recording and making a great concert require different techniques that often contradict each other, and thus it was easier to name the worst live albums than the best ones. Nevertheless, he chose this as Number 1 on his best list, saying that it would be perfect if you could see Brown dancing.

The Apollo Theater, at 253 West 125th Street, opened in 1913, for white customers and performers only, even as the Harlem neighborhood around it was shifting from a German to a black neighborhood. In 1934, a new owner made it a venue for black customers and performers, and everyone from Duke Ellington to Lizzo has played it since.

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October 24, 1962 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that the film The Manchurian Candidate premiered. I have a separate entry for that event. And Jay Novacek, the tight end on the Dallas Cowboys' 3 Super Bowl wins of the 1990s, was born on this day.

The baseball season had ended 8 days earlier, with the New York Yankees beating the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NHL season was underway, but no games were scheduled.

There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Chicago Zephyrs beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 118-107 at the Chicago Coliseum. Walt Bellamy scored 42 points. The next season, the Zephyrs became the Baltimore Bullets. In 1973, they moved to Washington. In 1997, they were renamed the Washington Wizards.

And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Cincinnati Royals, 121-114 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Oscar Robertson scored 31 points. The Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968. The Royals became the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

August 12, 1958: "A Great Day In Harlem"

August 12, 1958: Art Kane takes a photograph of 57 jazz musicians on the stoop of an apartment building at 17 East 126th Street, between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue, in the Harlem section of Upper Manhattan, America's most famous African-American neighborhood and a major jazz center.

Esquire magazine publishes the photo in its January 1959 issue, under the title A Great Day in Harlem, as part of an article titled The Golden Age of Jazz.

In alphabetical order, they were: Red Allen, Buster Bailey, Count Basie, Emmett Berry, Art Blakey, Lawrence Brown, Scoville Browne, Buck Clayton, Bill Crump, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Art Farmer, Bud Freeman, Dizzy Gillespie, Tyree Glenn, Benny Golson, Sonny Greer, Johnny Griffin, Gigi Gryce, Coleman Hawkins, J.C. Heard, Jay C. Higginbotham, Milt Hinton, Chubby Jackson, Hilton Jefferson, Osie Johnson, Hank Jones, Jo Jones (not to be confused with Philly Joe Jones), Jimmy Jones, and Taft Jordan.

Also: Max Kaminsky, Gene Krupa, Eddie Locke, Marian McPartland, Charles Mingus, Miff Mole, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Pettiford, Rudy Powell, Luckey Roberts, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Rushing, Pee Wee Russell, Sahib Shihab, Horace Silver, Zutty Singleton, Stuff Smith, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Joe Thomas, Wilbur Ware, Dickie Wells, George Wettling, Ernie Wilkins, Mary Lou Williams and Lester Young.

Of the 57, 15 of them had also been in the CBS broadcast The Sound of Jazz, 8 months earlier: Allen, Berry, Dickenson, Eldridge, Hawkins, Hinton, Johnson, Jo Jones, Monk, Mulligan, Rushing, Russell, Stewart, Wells and Young.

Quincy Jones, not in the photo, would later say, "The importance of this photo transcends time and location, leaving it to become not only a symbolic piece of art but a piece of history."

He added: "The fact that all 57 musicians agreed to show up for a 10 AM photoshoot is a true testament to how dedicated they were. These musicians did not gather together on this early morning because they thought they would be paid or instantly be made an international superstar. Rather, they did it to celebrate the golden age of jazz and all that it stood for. Jazz was never just a genre, it was a way of life. And it still is." 

Golson said, "There was going to be an unusual shooting of a photograph for Esquire Magazine and I was being invited to be a part of it. I couldn’t believe it! Nobody really knew me that early in my career. But zippo, I was there on the intended date. When I arrived, there were all of my heroes."

It was lucky that the picture was taken then: Lester Young died on March 15, 1959, a little over 7 months later.

Almost as notable is who isn't in the photo. Willie "the Lion" Smith was standing just out of the camera's range. Billie Holiday, who also died the following year, wasn't there. It's not clear if she wasn't invited, or if she was but was too ill to make it.

Also not there, because they were touring, were Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Benny Goodman was invited, but was in Los Angeles, and couldn't get there in time. Ronnie Free, Mose Allison and Charlie Rouse got to the site too late for the photo. And I don't know the status of Cab Calloway, who, at the least, should have been invited.

In 2004, Tom Hanks starred in The Terminal, playing Viktor Navorski, a jazz fan from Eastern Europe, who had gotten autographs from 56 out of the 57 musicians, and was flying to New York to get one from the last holdout, Golson. Golson, presumably chosen because he was still alive and thus available, did appear as himself in the film, and signed the autograph for Navorski.

As of August 12, 2022, Golson, who is 93 years old, Sonny Rollins, who stands to turn 92 next month, are the last 2 survivors of the photo. Photographer Kane died in 1995.

UPDATE: Golson died on September 21, 2024, leaving Rollins as the last survivor. Rollins died on May 25, 2026, at 95 -- in Woodstock, New York, a town associated with not what "hippies" were in the 1950s, jazzmen, but what they were in the 1960s, long-haired peace singers.

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August 12, 1958 was a Tuesday. It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. But there were Major League Baseball games played on that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-2 at Yankee Stadium. Mickey Mantle and Gil McDougald hit home runs, to back the pitching of Tom Sturdivant. So it was a pretty good day, if not a great day, in the South Bronx.

* The Cincinnati Redlegs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 12-4 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. (Due to Cold War hysteria, the Cincinnati team had been officially named the Redlegs since 1953. They went back to the name Reds in 1959.)

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Milwaukee Braves, 10-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Red Witt pitched a shutout, allowing only 2 hits: A double by Frank Torre in the 2nd inning, and a double by Hank Aaron in the 9th.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Kansas City Athletics, 7-6 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-3 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Giants, 7-3 at Seals Stadium in San Francisco.

* And a game at Griffith Stadium in Washington was rained out, and made up on September 26. The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 6-4.

July 18, 1964: The Harlem Race Riot

July 18, 1964: A race riot begins in Harlem in Upper Manhattan, lasting 6 days. It begins "a chain reaction of riots" that would include, among others, North Philadelphia the next month, Watts in Los Angeles in 1965, Chicago and Cleveland in 1966, Newark and Detroit in 1967, and many American cities in 1968.

The riot began when a policeman, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed 15-year-old James Powell. Gilligan said that Powell had a knife. Powell was hardly a threat to Gilligan. He turned out to be the only death in the riots, but 118 people were injured, and 465 were arrested.

There had previously been riots in Harlem, America's best-known mostly-black neighborhood, in 1900, 1935 and 1943. This time, however, there were television cameras, and people saw things they had previously only read about in the newspaper. And, depending on their political views, they "saw what they wanted to see."

The event helped to mark 1964 as a turning point in New York. It included what turned out to be the last Pennant of the old Yankee Dynasty, and the opening of Shea Stadium, the new home of the Mets and the Jets. A World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens, across Roosevelt Avenue from Shea.

It was the year that The Beatles excited the country, especially New York, as they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in Midtown Manhattan. And it was one of the last great years of the Broadway stage, as Fiddler On the Roof, Funny Girl, Golden Boy, What Makes Sammy Run? and Hello, Dolly! premiered.

But it was also the year of the most notable, if not the most damaging, of the Harlem riots, and also of the murder of Kitty Genovese in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. Two weeks after her murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses either saw her stabbing or heard her screams, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.

The murder and the race riot raised the idea that New York was in a crime wave that was getting out of control, and that idea lasted 30 years, until the 1994 Crime Bill.

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July 18, 1964 was a Saturday. Talk-show host Wendy Williams was born. And this was the day that "Rag Doll" by The Four Seasons became the Number 1 song in America. I have a separate entry for that event.

The NFL, the NBA and the NHL were in their off-seasons. But there were Major League Baseball games played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 6-4 at Yankee Stadium. Bob Chance won the game with a triple in the top of the 15th inning. Tony Kubek hit a home run, and Mickey Mantle went 1-for-5 with a walk and an RBI.

* The New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 15-7 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. The Mets led 6-4 going to the bottom of the 8th inning, but the Cards scored 11 runs. Future Met Ken Boyer, and future New York broadcasters Bill White (Yankees) and Tim McCarver (Mets, then Yankees) homered for the Cards. Charley Smith hit one for the Mets.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 12-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Earl Wilson was the starting and winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Bob Tillman hit 2 home runs for the BoSox, while Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-5.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Baltimore Orioles won the 1st game, 6-1. The Detroit Tigers won the 2nd game, 3-0. Mickey Lolich pitched a 5-hit shutout. Brooks Robinson had 3 of those hits. Gates Brown also went 3-for-4, but for the Tigers, and had 3 RBIs. He had 3 hits in the 1st game, too. Over the 2 games, Al Kaline went 1-for-8.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 14-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Frank Robinson went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs. Pete Rose went 4-for-4 with a home run and 6 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Milwaukee Braves, 8-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bob Veale went the distance for the win, while Warren Spahn was knocked out of the box in the 4th inning. Roberto Clemente went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Hank Aaron went 2-for-4. Joe Torre went 1-for-3 with a walk. Eddie Mathews went 0-for-2, and was replaced with a pinch-hitter.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Jim Fregosi won it with a home run in the top of the 13th inning.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Sandy Koufax outpitched Larry Jackson. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Houston Colt .45s (they became the Astros the next season) beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Ken Johnson outpitched Billy O'Dell. Willie Mays went 1-for-4.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Kansas City Athletics were rained out at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on October 2. The ChiSox swept, 3-2 and 5-4, winning the nightcap in the bottom of the 9th, on a single by former Yankee 1st baseman Bill "Moose" Skowron.

May 22, 1968: The Battle of Morningside Heights

May 22, 1968: The West Coast had their leading collegiate protest movement at the University of California's main campus in Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco. The East Coast had theirs in New York City, not at a State university but at an Ivy League school, Columbia University.

They had one very significant thing in common: Great wealth in proximity to great poverty. The Columbia campus is in Upper Manhattan, between 114th and 122nd Streets, and Morningside and Riverside Drives. Traditionally, the residents there were poor white Irish Catholics. One was George Carlin, who, after becoming a comedian, said that he and his friends, in order to sound tougher than they actually were, called their neighborhood not by its real name, Morningside Heights, but "White Harlem."

For the actual Harlem was next-door, to the east across Morningside Park and the north across 122nd. At the turn of the 20th Century, it went from a white neighborhood of German and Jewish immigrants -- the German ones including the parents of baseball legend Lou Gehrig, who played at Columbia -- to America's foremost black neighborhood. (It has never been surpassed as such in influence, although Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant and the South Side of Chicago would each eventually have more people.)

Columbia planned to build Morningside Gymnasium for its nearly all-white students across Morningside Park in nearly all-black Harlem. On April 23, the nearly all-white protesters ended up occupying Hamilton Hall, named for the school's most famous graduate, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. 

The building included the offices of the university administration, including president Grayson Kirk. After 8 days, on April 30, Kirk had had enough, and called the police to clear the building, which they did. He had previously been a well-regarded president of the university, but this act permanently turned the student body against him. They demanded his resignation. They didn't get it.

A second round of protests began on May 17, when community residents occupied a Columbia University-owned partially vacant apartment building at 618 West 114 Street to protest Columbia's expansion policies, and later when students re-occupied Hamilton Hall to protest Columbia's suspension of "The IDA Six." Before the night of May 22, 1968 was over, police had arrested another 177 students and beaten 51 students. It became known as the Battle of Morningside Heights.

The public turned on the protesters, seeing them as rich, privileged white kids riding their parents' influence to an Ivy League school, and not knowing anything about the real world. This was stupid: That Ivy League school was educating them about the real world, in ways intended and otherwise.

In the end, the students got only one thing they wanted. Kirk decided to retire at the end of the academic year, which had come up, anyway. They didn't stop the building of the gym, and they didn't get the university to divest itself from its partnership with the military industrial complex. Life went on as before, except that Columbia now had a reputation for troublemaking kids. 

Meanwhile, in Paris, college students were bringing an entire country to a halt, and making the protesters at Columbia and Berkeley look like rank amateurs.

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May 22, 1968 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium, less than 3 miles from the Columbia campus. The Yankees led 3-2 going into the 9th inning, but future Met manager Davey Johnson led off with a walk, and Don Buford hit a home run off John Wyatt. Mickey Mantle went 2-for-4.

* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, 8-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Woodie Fryman pitched a 3-hit shutout.

* The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-0 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium the next year.) Frank Bertaina took a 4-hit shutout into the 9th inning, but needed Dave Baldwin to get the last 2 outs.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Atlanta Braves, 2-1 at Atlanta Stadium. (That facility was renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1975.) Willie Mays singled Ron Hunt home with the winning run in the top of the 9th inning. Hank Aaron went 0-for-4.

* The Houston Astros beat the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Rusty Staub singled home Ron Davis (not the later Yankee reliever) with the only run in the top of the 6th inning. Dave Giusti allowed only 2 hits, a single by Pete Rose and a double by Vada Pinson.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 13-6 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Roberto Clemente did not play, but Willie Stargell went 5-for-5 with 3 home runs and 7 RBIs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with a walk.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Jim Perry started for the Twins, and helped his own cause with a home run. But the bullpen blew it, before the 8th inning, when Tony Oliva doubled and Harmon Killebrew singled him home. Al Kaline singled in a run as a pinch-hitter.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium. Don Drysdale pitches a 5-hit shutout. It is his 3rd straight shutout, of what will be 6 straight, leading to 58 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings.

The losing pitcher is Bob Gibson, who finishes this "Year of the Pitcher" with a 1.12 ERA and a record of 22-9. If you want to know how he had the lowest ERA of the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, and still lost 9 games, this is one of the reasons. 

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 4-0 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Gary Bell pitched a 4-hit shutout. Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-4 with an RBI.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians, 2-0 at the Oakland Coliseum. Jim Nash pitched a 5-hit shutout. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3.

March 19, 1935: The 1st Harlem Race Riot

March 19, 1935: What is generally regarded as the 1st "modern" race riot in Harlem breaks out. It will not be the last.

Named by Dutch settlers for the city of Haarlem back home, the area -- generally agreed to be Manhattan Island between 100th and 155th Streets -- had started out as farmland tended by wealthy landowners. When it was first developed at the turn of the 20th Century, it became home to poor Germans, like Lou Gehrig and his family. But it soon became America's best-known black neighborhood. By the 1920s, it was the home of "the Harlem Renaissance," a literary and artistic flowering.

The New York Police Department, still largely made up of poor Irishmen, didn't like the attention that the blacks of Harlem were getting, and tended to treat them roughly. And, as with many racial disturbances, the one that began on March 19, 1935 began with a rumor. In all likelihood, this one will never be proven one way or the other. The rumor was that a black Puerto Rican teenager had shoplifted at an S.H. Kress "five-and-ten" (or "five-and-dime") store, and was beaten by the police.

That night, a demonstration was held outside the store, and, after someone threw a rock through the store's front window, more general destruction of the store and other white-owned properties ensued. Three people died (that Daily News headline above is an early edition), hundreds of people were wounded or injured, and an estimated $2 million in damages was caused to properties throughout the district. Unlike many later race riots in America, African American-owned homes and businesses were spared the worst of the destruction.

There have since been race riots in Harlem in 1943, 1964 and 1968.

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March 19, 1935 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Montreal Maroons beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the St. Louis Eagles, 5-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* And the New York Rangers and the New York Americans were not scheduled.

March 12, 1926: The Savoy Ballroom Opens

March 12, 1926: The Savoy Ballroom opens at 596 Lenox Avenue, between 140th and 141st Streets in Harlem, in Upper Manhattan. More than any other place, including Preservation Hall in New Orleans, it became the capital of jazz music.

The Savoy Ballroom was named after the Savoy Hotel in London as those who named the ballroom felt this gave the ballroom a classy, upscale feeling, as the hotel, which opened in 1889, is a very elite, upscale hotel. The hotel was named for the House of Savoy, once one of the ruling houses of Europe, including in Italy from 1713 to 1946.

It was owned by a white man, Jay Faggen, who modeled it after a Midtown Manhattan facility he owned, Roseland, which also became a legendary music venue. It was managed by African-American businessman and civic leader Charles Buchanan. He sought to run a "luxury ballroom to accommodate the many thousands who wished to dance in an atmosphere of tasteful refinement, rather than in the small stuffy halls and the foul smelling, smoke laden cellar nightclubs."

Like Roseland, the Savoy became known as a venue not just the "swing" bands that played there, but the people dancing to the music. It popularized the dance known as the Lindy Hop. Unlike the nearby Cotton Club, there were no "white nights" and "colored nights." The usual ratio was about 85 percent black and 15 percent white.

Frankie Manning, who became a dance star, was interviewed for Ken Burns' 2001 documentary Jazz, and lived until 2009 as a living link to the Savoy and its era, remembered: "One night somebody came over and said, 'Hey man, Clark Gable just walked in the house.' Somebody else said, 'Oh, yeah, can he dance?' All they wanted to know when you came into the Savoy was, do you dance?"

(Could Clark Gable dance? In 1939, he starred in the film Idiot's Delight. Wearing top hat, white tie and tails, and carrying a dancer's cane, he sang "Puttin' On the Ritz" and did a swing dance. Let's just say he was no Fred Astaire.)

That became the standard for every New York dance club to come, including the Peppermint Lounge with The Twist in the early 1960s, and Studio 54 with disco in the late 1970s: It didn't matter who you were, what you did, or how famous you were, all that matters was, could you dance?

There was a double bandstand, which allowed for an occasional "battle of the bands." It was useless, as the house band, led by a dwarf drummer, William "Chick" Webb, would take the opposing band -- even Count Basie's in 1938 -- and, in the parlance of the era, "cut them to ribbons." Only Duke Ellington's band, in 1937, was ever said to have beaten Webb's band.

Langston Hughes, the leading poet of "The Harlem Renaissance," called the Savoy "The Heartbeat of Harlem." But times change, as they always do, and it was closed on July 10, 1958. The Delano Village housing complex is on the site today.

From 1927 to 1948, Chicago also had a Savoy Ballroom, at 4733 South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive) on the South Side. Promoter Abe Saperstein sponsored a basketball team that played on its stage, called the Savoy Hot Five. The name was soon changed to the Harlem Globetrotters. Chicago's Savoy was renamed the Regal Theatre, demolished in 1973, and replaced by a venue named for a native son of the neighborhood, the Lou Rawls Theater Cultural Center.

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March 12, 1926 was a Tuesday. George Ariyoshi was born that day. He was the 1st Asian-American elected Governor of any State, elected in Hawaii in 1974, 1978 and 1982. He remains his State's longest-serving Governor. (UPDATE: On March 12, 2026, he turned 100.)

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. One game was played in the NHL: The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at the Duquesne Gardens in Pittsburgh. Harold Darragh scored the winning goal at 11:51 of overtime.

At the time, the NHL had a 10-minute overtime period for regular-season games, and potentially unlimited overtime for Playoff games. For the 1942-43 season, the League eliminated regular-season overtime, as a nod to World War II travel restrictions. For the 1982-83 season, it brought back 5-minute overtime.

Named for the city's baseball team, the Pirates were a first-year expansion team. They lasted until 1930, moved to become the Philadelphia Quakers, had a horrible season, and went out of business due to the Great Depression.

January 28, 1958: The Crash of Roy Campanella

Campy at Ebbets Field, the day demolition began,

February 23, 1960

January 28, 1958: Roy Campanella is paralyzed when his 1957 Chevrolet sedan slips on ice and crashes, less than a mile from his home in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York. At age 36, his baseball career should have had at least another couple of years left.

The Brooklyn Dodgers were in the process of moving from Ebbets Field to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, waiting for Dodger Stadium to be built. The close left-field fence at the Coliseum would have been perfect for Campy's swing.

Because of racism at the beginning of his career, and his accident at the end, he only had 10 seasons in the major leagues, 1948 to 1957, hitting 260 home runs. He should have had at least 400; without the crash, at least 300 would have been likely.

He regained some movement in his arms and hands, but he lived the last 35 years of his life in a wheelchair. After his former teammate Jackie Robinson, he became, in 1969, the 2nd black player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Campanella wrote his autobiography, It's Good to Be Alive, which was published in 1959. Michael Landon directed Paul Winfield in a CBS movie based on it, starring Paul Winfield.

Family legend has it that my grandparents took my mother to Ebbets Field sometime before his crash, and my mother, just a small child, and only having seen the team on black & white TV to that point, said, "Where's Campy?" In 1986, I got to see Campy and his Dodger teammates Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Sandy Koufax at the Baseball Hall of Fame's induction ceremony in Cooperstown, New York. (Robinson and manager Walter Alston were already dead. So was Gil Hodges, who would not be elected until 2021.)

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January 28, 1958 was a Tuesday. Baseball and football were out of season. And no games were scheduled in the NHL.

There were 2 games in the NBA, and there were played as a doubleheader at the old Madison Square Garden. In the opener, the St. Louis Hawks beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 123-109. In the nightcap, the New York Knicks lost to the Syracuse Nationals, 110-102.

January 26, 1934: The Apollo Theater Opens

January 26, 1934: The Apollo Theater is opened under that name. It has become the defining performing arts venue for black Americans, both performers and customers. Everyone from Duke Ellington to Lizzo has played it.

Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon opened it in 1913, at 253 West 125th Street, as a burlesque venue -- for white customers and performers only, even as the Harlem neighborhood around it was shifting from a German to a black neighborhood. In 1928, the Minsky brothers took over. In 1934, Sidney Cohen acquired it, and made it a venue for black customers and performers.

Frank Schiffman and his family operated the theater from 1935 to 1976. A group of black businessmen briefly operated the theater from 1978 to 1979, and former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton bought it at an auction in 1981. The Apollo reopened in 1985, following a major refurbishment that saw the construction of new recording studios. In September 1991, the New York State Urban Development Corporation bought the Apollo. Further renovations took place in the mid-2000s, and an expansion of the theater was undertaken in the early 2020s.

Among the theater's longest-running events is Amateur Night at the Apollo, a weekly show where audiences judge the quality of novice performances. Amateur Nights were held every Wednesday evening, and broadcast on the radio over WMCA (570 on the AM dial) and 11 affiliate stations. The shows attracted audiences of all races. Amateur Nights performances were showcased in the TV series Showtime at the Apollo, which ran from 1987 to 2008, and was relaunched in 2018.

Several performers recorded live albums there, most notably James Brown in 1962: Live at the Apollo, recorded on October 24, 1962 and released on May 1, 1963, has been cited by some music publications as the greatest live album of all time. The Godfather of Soul became so identified with the Apollo that, when he died on Christmas Day 2006, his coffin lay in repose on the Theater's stage as visitors passed by.

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January 26, 1934 was a Friday. Huey "Piano" Smith, an early rock and roll star, who surely must have played the Apollo at least once, was born on that day. So was Bob Uecker, a mediocre baseball player who became a beloved broadcaster and actor.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled for the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.