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Tune in to a special edition of Ye Olde Tuesday Afternoon Rocke Show when Andrew Kahrl will be talking to author and Temple University historian Bryant Simon about the history and legacy of Philadelphia’s legendary Uptown Theater, the subject of a class Simon is currently teaching at Temple. A playlist curated by the students of the class will also be featured on the program.

Located in the heart of North Philadelphia, the Uptown Theater was the city’s version of the famed Apollo Theater. Built in 1927, The Uptown operated for decades, first showing movies and then in the 1950s, staging gospel concerts and soul music revues for Black audiences. Little Richard, the Flamingos, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, the O-Jays, Miles Davis, Sam Cooke, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Ike and Tina Turner, and James Brown danced and sang on this stage. Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx and Flip Wilson told their “dirty” and politically charged jokes. Local acts like Soul Survivors, the Delfonics, the Intruders, the Stylistics, Billy Paul, and Lou Rawls played there and gave shape to the cool and sometimes militant Sounds of Philadelphia. Keeping time with the music, the NAACP and other organizations raised money at “Freedom Shows” at the Uptown, and buses headed to the March on Washington in 1963 left from outside the art deco theater, first built as a movie palace in the 1920s.  

In Simon’s class students are digging deep into the history of Philadelphia and the Uptown Theater to better understand the complex processes of migration, cultural transition, deindustrialization, white flight, civil rights, and the shifting geographies and meanings of race and popular culture in postwar Philadelphia and America.  They also listening to a lot of music and watching videos of classic performance.

Bryant Simon is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of History at Temple University. He is the author of four books, three co-edited collections, and numerous essays and commentary in the Washington Post,  New Republic, the Root.com,  Christian Science Monitor,  Public Books, and the Philadelphia  Inquirer.  In addition, he has appeared as a talking head in documentaries about Starbucks, the history of American Food, blue jeans, the Jersey shore, Monopoly (the board game) and Alabama-based rock and roll band, the Drive-By Truckers.

“It’s now a graveyard.” That’s how one person described Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater in 2010. The pop of the snare drum, the thump of the bass, the blast of the trumpet, and the soaring gospel harmonies of the backup singers are silent. The “sweet soul music” of yesterday can only be heard in echoes and in memories.

But it wasn’t always quiet on the corner where Broad and Susquehanna Streets meet in North Philadelphia.  That was and is where the Uptown Theater, Philadelphia’s version of the famed Apollo Theater. Built in 1927, The Uptown operated for decades, first showing movies and then in the 1950s, staging gospel concerts and soul music revues for Black audiences. Little Richard, the Flamingos, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, the O-Jays, Miles Davis, Sam Cooke, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Ike and Tina Turner, and James Brown danced and sang on this stage. Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx and Flip Wilson told their “dirty” and politically charged jokes. Local acts like Soul Survivors, the Delfonics, the Intruders, the Stylistics, Billy Paul, and Lou Rawls played there and gave shape to the cool and sometimes militant Sounds of Philadelphia. Keeping time with the music, the NAACP and other organizations raised money at “Freedom Shows” at the Uptown, and buses headed to the March on Washington in 1963 left from outside the art deco theater, first built as a movie palace in the 1920s.  

The music stopped in the mid-1970s. After that the theater showed movies (again) and then became a church. And then it closed for good, and that is how it remains today – shattered and closed. An eerie echo of the past. But there are dreams of reopening the theater, starting up the music again, and reviving the neighborhood.

Tags: Andrew Kahrl, Bryant Simon, Philadelphia, Temple University, Uptown Theater, WTJU, WTJU Rock, ye olde tuesday afternoon rocke show