Document text
Forms to be Filled Out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF itORKER Frank Byrd
ADDRFSS 224 W. 135th St., N.Y.C.
DATE January 19, 1939
SUBJECT Harlem Personalities Cliff Webb and Billie Day
1. Date and time c interview
2. Place of interview
3. Name and address of informant By staff writer, Frank Byrd.
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
toucn with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
1t3
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NOE OF WORKER Frank Byrd
ADDRESS 224 W. 135th St., N.Y.C.
DATE January 19, 1939
SUBJECT Harlem Personalities Cliff Webb and Billie Day
HARLEU PERSONALITIES
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
In the Charles Dillingham production of "New Faces"
last season, that played to admiring, capacity audiences
for many months, were two faces that were once well known
in the vicinity of the Park Avenue Market in Harlem. They
were the faces of Cliff Webb and Billie Day who at one time
provided almost all the after -dark entertainment for the
peddlers in the Latin Quarter.
In a little basement cabaret in East 111th Street,
they gathered nightly to hear these twocroon their plain-
tive Negro, West Indian and Spanish songs to the accompani-
ment of an out -of -tune piano and a battered but tuneful
guitar. Cliff played the piano and Billie accompanied her
own singing with the guitar obiigatos. Occasionally there
was dancing. Then these two vivacious kids acted as chorus
and orchestra for the pleasure -seeking peddlers. The fact
that they were able to earn a living solely on the tips they
received was a tribute to their popularity. They never re-
-2-
ceived a definite salary. In fact, it was very peculiar #ow
they even happened to get the job.
The two kids had a habit of wandering from one little
restaurant or cabaret to another, singing their songs, dancing
(if asked) and passing the hat (if the proprietor had no ob-
jections) and filing out as quietly as they had appeared. One
night they went to the Casa Diablo, the small basement place
in 111th Street, and were such a huge success with the peddlers
and other transient guests that the owner of the place, a
Puerto Rican wham everyone called El Gato, asked them to come
in every night and sing for tips. The only incentive offered
them was all they wanted to eat and drink. They stayed.
Not long afterwards, the place became quite popular
and one night some friends of Leonard Stillman, the director,
stumbled accidentally into the place. They listened to the
two rollicking youngsters and tipped Stillman off to their
whereabouts. He engaged them for his show and they were an
immediate success. The very first night they "stopped" the
show; were forced to take curtain after curtain call. The
blase first nighters were simply mad about them. They were
so new, so fresh and unspoiled.
El Gatots place remained the favorite retreat for the
market peddlers but the atmosphere was never the same after
Cliff and Billie left. Night after night, the peddlers used
to sit around talking about the good times they had when these
two kids were about and haw different it was without them.