keyword pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< 1 of 58 >
1980 --- Ray Charles Playing Piano --- Image by © Henry Diltz/Corbis
1971, Budapest, Hungary --- American Musician Ray Charles --- Image by © Miroslav ZajÌc/CORBIS
Title: African American Paris Calendar – JANUARY Year Painted: 2011 Type: Oil on Canvas Dimension: L 15.75” (40 cm) W 15.75” (40 cm) Weight 3.3lbs (1.5kg) Price: 2,500 Description: Leroy Haynes (BORN JANUARY 1919) who opened the first authentic American Soul Food restaurant in Paris in 1949, once described himself as “Kentucky-born, Chicago-bred and Parisian by choice”. Haynes became a small part of the folklore of America in Paris where expatriate blacks nostalgic for classic Soul Food congregated for eating “Honey, I always knew I wanted to be famous and I knew I didn’t want to do much of anything gettin’ there. And you know what? I managed to do just that. And, God, it’s been fun.”- Leroy Haynes Leroy Howard Milton Haynes, opened the first authentic soul food restaurant in Paris in 1949. The son of Robert Haynes and M.C. Curine Lena was born in “Clinton Kentucky on January 7th, 1914. His family settles down in Chicago where Leroy is raised by a father-in-law who worked for Al Capone during the time of Prohibition. Moreover, Haynes enjoyed telling that, as a child, he happened to meet the famous gangster. While growing, he deviates however from the trail of this gangster father-in-law. After High School he goes to the iconic Morehouse College in Atlanta. Life later took him to Paris where Haynes opened the very first American restaurant in Paris. He was a cook, an actor, a wrestler and a sociologist. He had many friends from both sides of the Atlantic, and his restaurant quickly became a favorite hangout for the local African American community and visiting celebrities. Jazz musicians, singers and dancers, Hollywood actors, all of them smiling and beautiful on the black and white pictures hanging from the walls, with little notes scribbled in the corners with tributes to the man who brought ribs, barbecued chicken, black-eyed peas, corn on the cob, pigs’ feet, gumbo, and chitterlings to the city of haute cuisine. Leroy “Roughhouse” Haynes once described himself as “Kentucky-born, Chicago-bred and Parisian by choice”. Where once upon a time, legendary watering holes such as Chez Bricktop’s and Le Boeuf sur le Toit was the place to amuse, Leroy Haynes continued that tradition with food and ambience which attracted a glitzy and eclectic following of internationally celebrated jazz musicians, actors, singers, and other performers. Haynes became more than famous. He became a legend in the local expat community. The football player for Morehouse University, former sociology major and secretary of the Urban League in Atlanta ended up in the restaurant business by pure chance. He once explained, “I never thought one step in front of the other. I just sort of did things that seemed obvious to me at the time”. His love of Paris became the obvious thing to him after his World War II Army service in Germany and France. But he could not find a place in Paris that served the kind of food he loved so he opened his own restaurant. “What else could a man do but open a restaurant?” he once said. When ask if at that time, he had prior cooking experience, Haynes responded, “No, baby, never, but what`s that got to do with anything?” He opened a restaurant with a modestly priced menu offering good old-fashioned, southern cooking and aptly southern folksy names such as “Ma Sutton’s Southern fried chicken”, “Uncle Jason’s barbecued pigs’ feet”, “Sister Lena’s barbecued spare ribs”, and “Kentucky oysters” (good ole chitterlings). Homemade apple pie was main dessert and the drinks would include American favorites, Rum and Coke, Tequila Sunrise, Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Gin Fizz, and Planter’s Punch HAVING FUN “Playin’ around and just generally havin’ a real good time” was the whole point for Haynes. He had a jovial personality, and his uninhibited spirit brought in the crowds and kept them coming back. He often regaled his friends and patrons with famous football anecdotes as well as his recollections of being a Chicago paperboy. His difficulty in delivering the Chicago Tribune as a boy went like this, “It must be the heaviest paper in the world. I used to have a heck of a time throwing it.” . EARLY LIFE - FOOTBALL AND SOCIOLOGY At five feet nine and athletic, Haynes joined the football team and becomes a football star player on the Morehouse School team, where he earned the nickname "Roughouse", for his stout frame. Sports did not prevent him from continuing education. In 1940 he received his Master’s degree in Arts and Sociology. GI IN EUROPE At age 28, after the attacks on Pearl Harbor Haynes joined the Pacific Army from 1942 to 1945. In 1946, he became a Warrant Officer and moves to serve in Germany where he remained until 1949, on the bases of Kitzingen and Würzburg in Bavaria. His reputation as a footballer followed him and he trained GI teams while there. Deciding not continue his military career he travels in Europe and discovers France with which he falls in love. His wish was to register in Sorbonne for a Doctorate of Sociology but, either due to his lack of French, or his lack of money, or to both, he was unable to. He settled in Paris and finds work as a barman in a French traditional restaurant, where he met his future wife Gabrielle Le Carbonnier (Gabby), a young Frenchwoman from Cherbourg, whom he marries very rapidly. Haynes and Gabby had a son, Richard, who later will learn to cook like his father. In 1949, the two started a restaurant on 7 rue Manuel in the 9th district, near rue des Martyrs and close to Place Pigalle named "Gabby and Haynes", the first time traditional Soul Food was offered in France. AMERICA'S LITTLE ACRE IN PARIS Haynes once told a journalist, “All I knew how to cook, was green vegetables, chicken, chitterlings and soul food, a kind of food French people could not understand". One early morning, while he came back from the meat market (in Les Halles), he came back to rue Manuel with two military trucks full of black GI’s who were coming from Nuremberg and got lost in Paris. " They really found in my place the food their mother used to make: fatback and greens, piece-fried sausage, etc. ". Soon, word got around in the American bases of NATO that it was possible to find Southern cooking in Pigalle. Black GI’s were soon joined by American jazzmen performing in the 1950’s, which included such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Sydney Bechet (godfather of his son Richard), The Platters, and Lionel Hampton. Gabby and Haynes became a small part of America in Paris where expatriate blacks nostalgic for classic Soul Food congregated for eating. Haynes once recounted the story of Louis Armstrong, who during a concert, hurried up to finish his last song announcing to the public that a “warm plate of red beans and rice was waiting for him at Haynes”. The restaurant quickly became a place of preference as well for writers and African American jazz musicians visiting or living in Paris during these post-war years. Authors Richard Wright and James Baldwin became regulars. According to New York Times, some 2000 to 3000 African American lived in Paris during the 50s which included students, artists, writers, showmen, and hotel’s or service’s employees, American Embassy and Consulate employees, NATO’ s employees headquartered in Porte Dauphine, or UN’s employees. Many married locally and took French and other European nationalities. A FORMER BROTHEL BECOMES THE TEMPLE OF SOUL FOOD In ten years between 1950 and 1960, the Marshall Plan was transforming France. North of the 9th district in Paris was known for the effervescent evening and nightlife: music halls, cinemas, cabarets, and strip teases. Night birds, musicians, tourists, and neighbors all looked for pleasure and relaxation away from the main roads between Blanche and Pigalle, and for familiar or exotic places to eat and if possible hear some live music. On the 18th side there were Abbesses and rue Lepic’s restaurants which leads to the over-run Montmartre today but in the years 1950-1960, it was relatively deserted. On the 9th side there were discreet restaurants at the end of rue Laferrière (behind the place Saint Georges. The couple separated in 1960. After separation from his wife Gabby in 1960, Haynes moved to Frankfurt Germany, where he stayed until 1964. On his return to Paris, he came back to the 9th district and opened a second restaurant, Chez Haynes at 3 rue Clauzel, a street which also looks onto rue des Martyrs, about 50m above rue Manuel (where he sign on the banner of the restaurant created in 1949 is now written Chez Gabby's). Number 3 rue Clauzel was affectionately named by its customers "Le Socrate de la rue Clauzel” and is, according to legend, a former brothel frequented in the XIXth century and at the beginning of the XXth by artists and middle-class people who live in the district. Its arches and twisted columns are evidence to the design of a place of fantasy and pleasure of that era. In Van Gogh, Maurice Pialat’s movie (1991), a hint is made concerning a brothel on rue Clauzel where the painter frequented (a notion supported by the fact that the painter used to buy his brushes and his tubes at Le Père Tanguy (from 1873 to 1892) at 14 rue Clauzel on the opposite side of the street). References to rue Clauzel were also made by other significant writers in the past as well: Guy de Maupassant, author of La Maison Tellier, lived at 17 rue Clauzel. The rue Clauzel, like rue Manuel is described by Paul Léautaud in its narrative Le petit ami (Mercure de France, 1903) as a place of solicitation: " Women in hair which hung up the passers-by". This small part of the 9th - "Breda Street de Gavarni (…) full of artists and “lorettes " - was one of the warm parts of Paris before WWI. Chez Haynes open its doors with a menu of tuna salad, spare ribs barbecue wipe, honey fried chicken, Mexican Chile, shrimp and chicken gumbos, T-bone steak, grilled gambas and kidney beans. Banana and carrot cake, apple pie, and banana split were the desserts. Many music and movie stars became regular patrons: Ray Charles, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter O' Toole, Rod Steiger, Warren Beatty, Sidney Poitier, Marianne Faithfull and many more artists and musicians of that time signed the Visitors' book and allowed the photographers immortalize their presence. Black Panther Stokely Carmichael also came to rue Clauzel. During 1970s, Bodil Christensen, a tall pleasant Danish girl who brought a certain energy to the place was the hostess, as other American restaurants emerged in in Paris. Most would open in Les Halles, then in full transformation at a time of the vast construction of the site which destroyed the classic arts Baltard pavilions to put up the ill-advised Forum des Halles. Joe Allen, a New York styled venue with square printed tablecloths, was opened on rue Pierre Lescot in 1972. Not far away, Conway, with its big wooden lounge, opens in 1976 on rue Saint Denis. Mother's Earth with its old sofas, wooden chairs and tables bought in thrift shops, opened on rue des Lombards, and for the purists, Gabby continued to operate on rue Manuel with son Richard Haynes as the cook. IN MY ARMS NOUNOU!! Leroy Haynes also performed as a movie actor and extra in films as “Un nommé la Rocca” (1961), “Le Gendarme à New York” (1965), “Trois chambres à Manhattan” (1965), “Tendre voyou” (1966), “Mr Freedom” (1969), “Popsy Pop” (1970), and “Les Pétroleuses” (1971). At Haynes, his friends and colleagues were well received in a warm and jazzy atmosphere. Evenings concerts often took place at Jazz Box on rue Artois, in the 8th, managed by Ben Benjamin. In the evening of the opening of Les Pétroleuses, both stars Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, accompanied with their director Christian-Jacque landed rue Clauzel. " In my arms Nounou! " shouted Brigitte Bardot to Haynes, her partner in the movie. Prior to his death Haynes married a Portuguese woman, Maria in 1985. After his death in April 1986, Chez Haynes continued to exist for almost twenty-three years but became mostly a venue for Brazilian themed events bereft of its illustrious past, as the early spirit and audience of Pigalle’s soul of the 50s and 60s, pretty much evaporated. Leroy Haynes never returned to the United States since 1946 but throughout his time in Paris, couldn`t be anything but an American in Paris. Jean SEGURA pays tribute to Haynes When GI Leroy Haynes and his French wife opened a soul food restaurant in 1949, it was a lifesaver for Black GIs hankering for some home-style fatback and sausages. In the 50s and 60s, within its pale yellow walls it gathered together the famous – Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison; the stars – Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, and the locals. And right up until its closing in April 2009, visitors to Paris came looking to sample that last taste of African-American history in Paris. Were you one of many who had your picture taken outside against its odd log cabin exterior on narrow rue Clauzel in the 9th district? Or could be you gawked at the glamorous gallery of autographed photos that decorated every inch of the inside. Or if you were lucky, you got a glimpse an original Beauford Delaney painting of James Baldwin that used to hang above the hallway to the kitchen. With its closing, we’ve lost a real brick and mortar place where you could plant your feet and say: this was created by a Black American in this cosmopolitan city. It outlived any other African-American owned businesses that followed. What we’ve lost also is a concrete I-can-touch-it sense of continuation. Its location in Lower Montmartre dovetailed neatly into history already engraved in this area by Bricktop, Eugene Bullard, Sidney Bechet, and Josephine Baker during the 1920s & 30s. After the numerous black-run/owned clubs shut their doors in the face of Nazi occupation, GI Haynes returned and planted the flag for African-American culture once again African Americans in Paris Calendar Series, black Paris and other Paris Noir stories in Ealy Mays’s black art gallery, featuring black posters & prints, and other ethnic artwork & merchandise online
Ray Charles 3/6/81
Ray Charles Robinson, best known by his stage name Ray Charles is shown on stage during a "live" concert performance.
Ray Charles Robinson, best known by his stage name Ray Charles is shown on stage during a "live" concert performance.
Ray Charles Robinson, best known by his stage name Ray Charles is shown on stage during a "live" concert performance.
Ray Charles Robinson, best known by his stage name Ray Charles is shown on stage during a "live" concert performance.
Ray Charles Robinson, best known by his stage name Ray Charles is shown on stage during a "live" concert performance.
1980 --- Ray Charles Playing Piano --- Image by © Henry Diltz/Corbis
1980 --- Ray Charles Playing Piano --- Image by © Henry Diltz/Corbis
1980 --- Ray Charles Playing Piano --- Image by © Henry Diltz/Corbis
See photo in original gallery.
keyword pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< 1 of 58 >