Martin Hartzold, bookseller

Generalist concern with ever-developing specialties in automobilia, vernacular photography, and the Midwest. A few items presented here, though most material offered via periodic e-lists and catalogs sent directly to our email list.

  • Shop
  • COMING MAY 12 AT THE BAR O’ MUSIC... [Heading - Original Printed Handbill]

COMING MAY 12 AT THE BAR O’ MUSIC... [Heading - Original Printed Handbill]

$150.00
3673.jpg
SYKES.jpg

COMING MAY 12 AT THE BAR O’ MUSIC... [Heading - Original Printed Handbill]

$150.00

[Music] : [African-Americana]

[Chicago, Illinois]: [1947]

Approximately 6" x 4 1/2" printed handbill broadside. Faint horizontal center crease, several scattered pinholes. Presents well. Very good.

A scarce handbill heralding a music performance at a club called The Bar O' Music on West Howard Street in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood featuring The Four Shades of Rhythm and Forrest Sykes. The print lacks a precise date, though we strongly suspect it is from 1947.

The Four Shades were an R&B quartet from Cleveland, formed in about 1939. They first came to Chicago in 1946, gigging prolifically and recording a handful of sides for the city's Vitacoustic label. Sykes, originally from Kansas City, was by all accounts an intriguing, exceedingly flamboyant, and sexually-charged performer. Apart from some scattered blog entries and brief mentions in liner notes for modern reissues, there seems to have been little published about this life, but what we have uncovered suggests he was an unheralded rock and roll pioneer and likely influence on artists like Little Richard, Esquerita, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The most expansive and reliable accounting we find of Sykes’ career was published in Jim O’Neal’s article in Issue #149 of Living Blues magazine where fellow Kansas City piano player Roy Searcy recalled:

“I knew some fantastic Kansas City musicians. The greatest boogie and blues piano man who ever lived was Forrest Sykes. Forrest Sykes was a radical son of a bitch. […] He'd get up on the bandstand and Charlie Parker and everybody'd leave! Shit. Even the damn drummer quit and that son of a bitch keep on playin'! He'd come in and drink a half pint of gin. Just turn it up and drink it down. He said he was ready to play then. When he got done, they didn't have to tune the piano, they had to rebuild it—that dude would break strings, knock off keys and leave the piano a mess. […] And he was makin' it big, he'd go to New York and different places, but he couldn't stay because of his attitude. It wasn't because he couldn't play! He'd walk around with a tuxedo on, tan shoes, all that kinda shit. Goin' to work like that at night, drunk.” [sic all] (January/February, 2000 ; pp. 45-46)

He seems to have been born Forrest Charles Sykes in Kansas City, Kansas in 1926 or 1927 to a Roy and Irene (nee Beatty). A 1930 census record has Irene and Forrest living on North 1st. Street in the city's industrial West Bottoms neighborhood. 1940 has Forrest (named as Charles) still in Kansas City and living with his Mother (now listed as divorced), but by 1943 he would be making a name for himself in Chicago, Philadelphia, and beyond as an electrifying boogie-woogie piano player.

The first print mentions of his name we find in relation to music are two separate August 1943 accounts of a Poetry Magazine “midsummer night’s jam” held at the Saddle and Cycle Club in Chicago where, “[…] 150 or so guests who missed out on dinner reservations and packed the brick walks between the terrace tables found it impossible to stand still when Dorothy Donegan, Robert Crum, Meade Lux Lewis, Forrest Sykes, and Roosevelt Sykes started “pounding the ivories” boogie-woogie style.”

(Dixon Evening Telegraph ; Dixon, Illinois ; Tuesday, August 17, 1943 ; pp.5)

Louisville’s Courier-Journal also printed a dispatch on the event:

“They were there at $5 a coifured head to hear “A Midsummer Night’s Jam,” a nightmare of boogie-woogie played by five pianists, one chocolate and one vanilla. It was staged by Poetry magazine to sanctify boogie-woogie and make money to make verse a little freer. […] “Most of you,” continued Peter de Vries, co-editor, don’t know boogie from the sound of a mix-master. For your information, it’s something between Gerswhin and bubble gum.” […] “First on our program,” said de Vries, “is Forrest Sykes, who really beats those horse teeth [...] Sykes, a six-foot, one-inch Negro from Kansas City, planted his white shoes beneath the piano and rocked into “Sykes Boogie.” He said he had been playing only three years. His performance was very convincing.”

(The Courier-Journal ; Louisville, Kentucky ; Monday, August 16, 1943 ; pp.9)

January 1944 had him performing at the Bamboo Room in Kenosha, Wisconsin and by September he was a regular performer in Philadelphia, where he seems to have stayed until returning to Chicago in 1947. It was there he made what appears to be his only recording, with Leonard and Phil Chess’ Aristocrat label, a song called, “Tonky Boogie” (b-side “Forrest’s Got the Blues”) in 1948. Following this, he seems to have bounced around between Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and the road until returning to Kansas City in about 1951.

The latest mention we see of any performance appears in a January 14, 1955 issue of the Kansas City Black Press daily, The Call, noting him as an attraction at a downtown nightclub on 13th Street called, The Flamingo (pp.9). He seems to have faded into obscurity after this with the only other publicity we find being a May 12, 1978 obituary in the Kansas City Times, which woefully understated, “Mr. Sykes was a pianist.” A pianist indeed, one whose life and career in the influential, proto-rock and roll Black music scenes in Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, New York, etc... seems clearly worthy of further study and collection.

Add To Cart

[Music] : [African-Americana]

[Chicago, Illinois]: [1947]

Approximately 6" x 4 1/2" printed handbill broadside. Faint horizontal center crease, several scattered pinholes. Presents well. Very good.

A scarce handbill heralding a music performance at a club called The Bar O' Music on West Howard Street in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood featuring The Four Shades of Rhythm and Forrest Sykes. The print lacks a precise date, though we strongly suspect it is from 1947.

The Four Shades were an R&B quartet from Cleveland, formed in about 1939. They first came to Chicago in 1946, gigging prolifically and recording a handful of sides for the city's Vitacoustic label. Sykes, originally from Kansas City, was by all accounts an intriguing, exceedingly flamboyant, and sexually-charged performer. Apart from some scattered blog entries and brief mentions in liner notes for modern reissues, there seems to have been little published about this life, but what we have uncovered suggests he was an unheralded rock and roll pioneer and likely influence on artists like Little Richard, Esquerita, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The most expansive and reliable accounting we find of Sykes’ career was published in Jim O’Neal’s article in Issue #149 of Living Blues magazine where fellow Kansas City piano player Roy Searcy recalled:

“I knew some fantastic Kansas City musicians. The greatest boogie and blues piano man who ever lived was Forrest Sykes. Forrest Sykes was a radical son of a bitch. […] He'd get up on the bandstand and Charlie Parker and everybody'd leave! Shit. Even the damn drummer quit and that son of a bitch keep on playin'! He'd come in and drink a half pint of gin. Just turn it up and drink it down. He said he was ready to play then. When he got done, they didn't have to tune the piano, they had to rebuild it—that dude would break strings, knock off keys and leave the piano a mess. […] And he was makin' it big, he'd go to New York and different places, but he couldn't stay because of his attitude. It wasn't because he couldn't play! He'd walk around with a tuxedo on, tan shoes, all that kinda shit. Goin' to work like that at night, drunk.” [sic all] (January/February, 2000 ; pp. 45-46)

He seems to have been born Forrest Charles Sykes in Kansas City, Kansas in 1926 or 1927 to a Roy and Irene (nee Beatty). A 1930 census record has Irene and Forrest living on North 1st. Street in the city's industrial West Bottoms neighborhood. 1940 has Forrest (named as Charles) still in Kansas City and living with his Mother (now listed as divorced), but by 1943 he would be making a name for himself in Chicago, Philadelphia, and beyond as an electrifying boogie-woogie piano player.

The first print mentions of his name we find in relation to music are two separate August 1943 accounts of a Poetry Magazine “midsummer night’s jam” held at the Saddle and Cycle Club in Chicago where, “[…] 150 or so guests who missed out on dinner reservations and packed the brick walks between the terrace tables found it impossible to stand still when Dorothy Donegan, Robert Crum, Meade Lux Lewis, Forrest Sykes, and Roosevelt Sykes started “pounding the ivories” boogie-woogie style.”

(Dixon Evening Telegraph ; Dixon, Illinois ; Tuesday, August 17, 1943 ; pp.5)

Louisville’s Courier-Journal also printed a dispatch on the event:

“They were there at $5 a coifured head to hear “A Midsummer Night’s Jam,” a nightmare of boogie-woogie played by five pianists, one chocolate and one vanilla. It was staged by Poetry magazine to sanctify boogie-woogie and make money to make verse a little freer. […] “Most of you,” continued Peter de Vries, co-editor, don’t know boogie from the sound of a mix-master. For your information, it’s something between Gerswhin and bubble gum.” […] “First on our program,” said de Vries, “is Forrest Sykes, who really beats those horse teeth [...] Sykes, a six-foot, one-inch Negro from Kansas City, planted his white shoes beneath the piano and rocked into “Sykes Boogie.” He said he had been playing only three years. His performance was very convincing.”

(The Courier-Journal ; Louisville, Kentucky ; Monday, August 16, 1943 ; pp.9)

January 1944 had him performing at the Bamboo Room in Kenosha, Wisconsin and by September he was a regular performer in Philadelphia, where he seems to have stayed until returning to Chicago in 1947. It was there he made what appears to be his only recording, with Leonard and Phil Chess’ Aristocrat label, a song called, “Tonky Boogie” (b-side “Forrest’s Got the Blues”) in 1948. Following this, he seems to have bounced around between Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and the road until returning to Kansas City in about 1951.

The latest mention we see of any performance appears in a January 14, 1955 issue of the Kansas City Black Press daily, The Call, noting him as an attraction at a downtown nightclub on 13th Street called, The Flamingo (pp.9). He seems to have faded into obscurity after this with the only other publicity we find being a May 12, 1978 obituary in the Kansas City Times, which woefully understated, “Mr. Sykes was a pianist.” A pianist indeed, one whose life and career in the influential, proto-rock and roll Black music scenes in Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, New York, etc... seems clearly worthy of further study and collection.