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The Tuesday Night Club
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| Local blues legend Mickey Champion sings Little Pedro's once a week. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
How It Came to Be That Jazz Singer Mickey Champion Holds Court at Little Pedro's
by Kristin Friedrich
There are plenty of unpredictabilities about jazz singer Mickey Champion: that a woman who made a name for herself in the 1940s would still have such fierce pipes; that when she's not singing, she can out-drink, out-cuss and out-flirt anyone in the room; or that she appears every Tuesday, of all places, at a brightly colored cantina at the corner of First and Vignes streets.
Pre-show at Little Pedro's, Champion dotters around in sequined tops and glittery hats, tossing back whiskey and greeting her fans. She's small and not especially steady on her feet, but when starts singing the woman transforms.
Her booming voice makes newcomers start, and regulars grin. And the lady moves - not in a precious, grandmotherly kind of way, but like a hot-blooded, good-time party girl. She belts out a bawdy "Dr. Feelgood," she breaks your heart with "Please Send Me Someone To Love." She abandons the mic but raises her volume so it sounds as if she hasn't, then works the room and often walks right out of the bar entirely, belting her song along the way. When she feels like it, she re-joins the band without missing a beat.
"She's a blues queen in the classic sense," said bass player Rick Taub. "It's your job to follow her. It's not her job to follow anything except what she feels. And that's how it should be."
The Little Pedro's gig started when promoter Alexis Rivera took his girlfriend to see Champion at the Leimert Park club Babe & Ricky's. Rivera said he started talking to her about a regular weekly gig, and she started at Little Pedro's in April 2004.
Rivera shuttles her between her home in the Crenshaw District and the Downtown club, and has developed a few tricks along the way. As he told NPR in a piece the station did on Champion this summer, when he picks her up, he sets his clock back 20 minutes because he's chronically late. When he takes her home, he sets the clock forward, because if it's not 2 a.m., Champion will try to persuade him to stop somewhere for a nightcap.
She likes the nightlife a whole lot more than she likes questions about her past, and she doesn't mince words about why: Exposure never got her a thing. "I told my story before and everybody knows it by now. The same people ask the same questions and I tell them the same things."
"That boy," she said, referring to Rivera, "knows everything about me and he can tell you what you need to know."
The Action on Central
Mickey Champion was born Mildred Sallier in Lake Charles, La., and moved west after marrying a soldier stationed in California. Band leader Johnny Otis discovered her, but this wasn't the break it might sound. Otis had Champion act as a sort of stage double for Little Esther Phillips, who herself had become a hit when she was 13, and was too young, and soon too strung out on heroin, to perform. Champion would secretly take the stage in her place.
Champion charmed, and later married, bandleader Roy Milton, and as part of his band, the Solid Senders, she became a fixture in Central Avenue nightclubs during the late 1940s and early '50s. The avenue was lined with music venues in those days, and Champion walked from club to club, often singing with no mic. She shared the stage with Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie. She also ran an after-hours juke joint at the Dunbar Hotel, where she and comedian Rudy Ray Moore (he of blaxploitation flim Dolemite) hosted gambling and entertainment until morning.
Champion recorded both live and studio albums with Milton's band and alone, and some of the records are collectibles now - especially coveted, Rivera said, in England. Though she had a handful of hits, she never had a breakthrough album, and that, with a tapestry of other theories and explanations, is why Champion never became a mainstream blues name. She hated to fly, which made touring difficult; she refused to sign shoddy recording deals with labels; and she wouldn't play nice with industry suits she didn't like.
By the 1960s, she began work as a cook for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which she did for 30 years, and cared for her children. Finding out specifics about her kids, however, is like divining her real age - nearly impossible (most peg her at about 75). "She loves cooking and she loves young people," Taub said. "They're all her children."
But she can also drink Taub under the table. "Which is difficult to do," he admitted.
Taub met her in 1990, when he was the house bass player at Babe & Ricky's. Champion was re-emerging on the local music scene then, and putting together a band. Taub would go on to play with her at the Crenshaw Boulevard club the Living Room for 12 years.
He also worked on a documentary about her called Champion Blues, in which the producers interviewed late singer Charles Brown. "Charles told us that she was the last of a breed," Taub said, "that there's nobody left like her - the Big Mama Thornton school of blues shouters."
Rivera thinks Champion's Downtown appearances are almost bittersweet. "She's someone who should take a limo everywhere and perform at Royce Hall. But for one reason or another, she arrives in my car and she's at Little Pedro's every Tuesday," he said. "While she deserves more and more people to see her, it's an honor to be able to see a legend every week."
Taub says she's just fine with the way things are. "She's the finest example of a world-class artist who has stayed under the radar of fame," Taub said. "I think she's happy. She likes doing things on her own terms, and she does."
Little Pedro's is at 901 E. First St., (213) 687-3766 or littlepedros.com.
page 18, 11/21/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
Pre-show at Little Pedro's, Champion dotters around in sequined tops and glittery hats, tossing back whiskey and greeting her fans. She's small and not especially steady on her feet, but when starts singing the woman transforms.
Her booming voice makes newcomers start, and regulars grin. And the lady moves - not in a precious, grandmotherly kind of way, but like a hot-blooded, good-time party girl. She belts out a bawdy "Dr. Feelgood," she breaks your heart with "Please Send Me Someone To Love." She abandons the mic but raises her volume so it sounds as if she hasn't, then works the room and often walks right out of the bar entirely, belting her song along the way. When she feels like it, she re-joins the band without missing a beat.
"She's a blues queen in the classic sense," said bass player Rick Taub. "It's your job to follow her. It's not her job to follow anything except what she feels. And that's how it should be."
The Little Pedro's gig started when promoter Alexis Rivera took his girlfriend to see Champion at the Leimert Park club Babe & Ricky's. Rivera said he started talking to her about a regular weekly gig, and she started at Little Pedro's in April 2004.
Rivera shuttles her between her home in the Crenshaw District and the Downtown club, and has developed a few tricks along the way. As he told NPR in a piece the station did on Champion this summer, when he picks her up, he sets his clock back 20 minutes because he's chronically late. When he takes her home, he sets the clock forward, because if it's not 2 a.m., Champion will try to persuade him to stop somewhere for a nightcap.
She likes the nightlife a whole lot more than she likes questions about her past, and she doesn't mince words about why: Exposure never got her a thing. "I told my story before and everybody knows it by now. The same people ask the same questions and I tell them the same things."
"That boy," she said, referring to Rivera, "knows everything about me and he can tell you what you need to know."
Mickey Champion was born Mildred Sallier in Lake Charles, La., and moved west after marrying a soldier stationed in California. Band leader Johnny Otis discovered her, but this wasn't the break it might sound. Otis had Champion act as a sort of stage double for Little Esther Phillips, who herself had become a hit when she was 13, and was too young, and soon too strung out on heroin, to perform. Champion would secretly take the stage in her place.
Champion charmed, and later married, bandleader Roy Milton, and as part of his band, the Solid Senders, she became a fixture in Central Avenue nightclubs during the late 1940s and early '50s. The avenue was lined with music venues in those days, and Champion walked from club to club, often singing with no mic. She shared the stage with Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie. She also ran an after-hours juke joint at the Dunbar Hotel, where she and comedian Rudy Ray Moore (he of blaxploitation flim Dolemite) hosted gambling and entertainment until morning.
Champion recorded both live and studio albums with Milton's band and alone, and some of the records are collectibles now - especially coveted, Rivera said, in England. Though she had a handful of hits, she never had a breakthrough album, and that, with a tapestry of other theories and explanations, is why Champion never became a mainstream blues name. She hated to fly, which made touring difficult; she refused to sign shoddy recording deals with labels; and she wouldn't play nice with industry suits she didn't like.
By the 1960s, she began work as a cook for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which she did for 30 years, and cared for her children. Finding out specifics about her kids, however, is like divining her real age - nearly impossible (most peg her at about 75). "She loves cooking and she loves young people," Taub said. "They're all her children."
But she can also drink Taub under the table. "Which is difficult to do," he admitted.
Taub met her in 1990, when he was the house bass player at Babe & Ricky's. Champion was re-emerging on the local music scene then, and putting together a band. Taub would go on to play with her at the Crenshaw Boulevard club the Living Room for 12 years.
He also worked on a documentary about her called Champion Blues, in which the producers interviewed late singer Charles Brown. "Charles told us that she was the last of a breed," Taub said, "that there's nobody left like her - the Big Mama Thornton school of blues shouters."
Rivera thinks Champion's Downtown appearances are almost bittersweet. "She's someone who should take a limo everywhere and perform at Royce Hall. But for one reason or another, she arrives in my car and she's at Little Pedro's every Tuesday," he said. "While she deserves more and more people to see her, it's an honor to be able to see a legend every week."
Taub says she's just fine with the way things are. "She's the finest example of a world-class artist who has stayed under the radar of fame," Taub said. "I think she's happy. She likes doing things on her own terms, and she does."
Little Pedro's is at 901 E. First St., (213) 687-3766 or littlepedros.com.
page 18, 11/21/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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