March 30, 2004

Heat and Light Uptown

nstage at the Apollo Theater on Sunday night, the octogenarian actor and activist Ossie Davis was talking about music and civil rights. When Sam Cooke, an Apollo legend, first heard the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind," Mr. Davis recalled, with its signature line, "How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?," Cooke was moved to write a rallying anthem of his own, "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Mr. Davis said he had met Mr. Dylan once, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, when he introduced him to the crowd on the day in 1963 that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech. And now, he said, he had the opportunity to do it again. At which point the lights came up on Mr. Dylan, fronting a band at an electric piano. Completing a circular vignette, singing in his unmistakable gravelly growl, he saluted Sam Cooke in a rendition of "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Perfectly choreographed, it was a goose-bump moment. It was also part of a starry celebration of the Apollo Theater, the musical mecca of Harlem whose famous Amateur Night is 70 years old this year. The performance by Mr. Davis and Mr. Dylan was the program's best illustration of the evening's theme: the present and past coming together to celebrate black popular music.

Billed as "A Hot Night in Harlem," the show, a benefit for the Apollo Theater Foundation, the nonprofit corporation that runs the theater, was filmed by NBC for broadcast in June. The foundation is overseeing a $55 million restoration that began in 2000.

The cameras' presence made for an unusual and often amusing event. Well-known performers and public figures showed up for brief appearances, among them Denzel Washington and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who did a James Brown imitation. And the audience was treated to a close-up view of the artifice of television. Celebrity hosts read from prompting machines, occasionally with timing problems. "Could you roll it back some, please?" the comedian Mo'Nique said, interrupting herself and addressing the technical staff in the balcony. "Follow my mouth."

At one point Jesse L. Martin, a star of "Law & Order" on NBC, introduced "the incomparable Patti LaBelle" to thunderous applause, except that it turned out Ms. LaBelle wasn't there. (Along with a handful of other performers, she filmed her segment yesterday.) Instead, Mr. Martin, who seemed as surprised as anybody, returned to the stage and said, "They sent me out here to tell y'all that Patti ain't going to be here."

But there was no shortage of musical excitement. The trumpeter Arturo Sandoval raised the specter of Louis Armstrong. Harry Connick Jr. and Herbie Hancock saluted Duke Ellington with an electrifying piano duet of "Caravan," and Branford Marsalis joined them on sax, with Mr. Connick singing, for "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good."

Patti Austin paid homage to Ella Fitzgerald, singing "How High the Moon," complete with scat. Natalie Cole performed the Etta James tune "Something's Got a Hold on Me." Ashanti covered the Staple Singers' standard "I'll Take You There"; Anthony Hamilton revived Al Green's "Love and Happiness." And Willie Nelson, declaring somewhat surprisingly that "Ray Charles did more for country music than just about anybody I can think of," sang "I Can't Stop Loving You."

The evening was brought to a rousing end with an acknowledgment of the gospel tradition at the Apollo; four potent voices — Yolanda Adams, Fred Hammond, Donnie McClurkin and Shirley Caesar — backed by a choir in claret-colored robes, made a joyful noise, beseeching the audience with the musical question: "Anybody want to go to heaven?" The correct answer was yes.

In between performances the audience saw film clips from the history of the Apollo: comedians from Pigmeat Markham and Moms Mabley to Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle; highlights from amateur night, "the original `Gong Show,' " which has discovered more talent, in the words of Mo'Nique, "than `Star Search' and `American Idol' put together"; and dazzlingly dressed singing groups like the Four Tops, the Temptations and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

They underscored just what a cultural powerhouse the theater has been. It was often referred to during the evening as "the epicenter" of black music and culture, and hyperbolic as that may sound, the program made a pretty good case.

When the building that houses the Apollo opened in 1914, blacks were not allowed in the audience. It was originally known as Hurtig & Seamon's (New) Burlesque Theater, after the two men who took out a 30-year-lease on the new building. In 1928 the building was taken over by the famous burlesque impresario William Minsky, and when he died four years later, Sidney Cohen, the president of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America and the original holder of the mortgage, bought the building outright.

Cohen and his manager, Morris Sussman, renamed the theater, calling it the 125th Street Apollo Theater, and changed its programs from burlesque to variety shows geared to the neighborhood's growing black population.

On Jan. 26, 1934, its first black patrons were allowed in. That year the amateur nights began, during one of which Ella Fitzgerald made her debut, only the first in a remarkable list of performers (including Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, James Brown, the Isley Brothers and the Jackson Five, who appeared at the Apollo when Michael was 10) to have been propelled to stardom from the Apollo stage.

Quincy Jones, a guest who was the subject of a film-clip tribute and received a lifetime achievement award from Bank of America, said that at 71 he was a year older than the Apollo and recalled that he first appeared on its stage when he was 18, as a trumpeter in Lionel Hampton's band. He received one of the longest ovations of the night, surpassed perhaps only by the enthusiastic reaction to a public address announcer after Mr. Dylan's performance of "A Change Is Gonna Come."

"Folks, we've had a problem," the disembodied voice said. "We need to do that once more, Bob. Very sorry."