Despite being born and raised in Pensacola, Florida, I was unfamiliar with most of the colorfully rich Black music history the city holds until fairly recently, when I came across a blurb about its role in the Chitlin' Circuit on the town's website. As I learned more about the historically Black neighborhood I often passed through, heading to my favorite downtown spots, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the district's multi-decade history of being a booming, self-sufficient community where Black businesses and entertainment thrived. Even more, I was disappointed that I had missed out on community celebrations for the neighborhood over the years.
The Belmont-DeVilliers neighborhood, affectionately known as "The Blocks" is about 35 city blocks just west of central Downtown Pensacola, where many Black families lived and businesses operated during the Jim Crow era. Even today, some of those businesses, like Blue Dot Barbecue, which opened in 1946, remain. But what stands out most to me is the neighborhood clubs and record store being part of the few dozen venues at the time that allowed Black musicians to perform when they were denied access at segregated venues.
The Chitlin' Circuit was a network of performance venues that were safe and welcoming for Black musicians and comedians who were prohibited from white performance spaces during the mid-20th century. The circuit's reference to the scraps of pig intestines enslaved people turned into a culinary staple perfectly encapsulates how, even with fewer resources, Black art and creativity flourish. The touring circuit consisted of at least 34 venues across the Eastern United States from Taylor, Texas, up to Harlem, New York, and down to Abe's 506 Club in Pensacola.
Abe's 506 Club
At the epicenter of Belmont-Devilliers was Abe's 506 Club, run by Abraham "Abe" Pierce and his brother Bob Pierce.
Robin Reshard is the executive director of the Kukua Institute, where she and her husband focus on art history, science, and technology. Reshard has a wealth of knowledge about the neighborhood's 100-year-long entertainment and entrepreneurship history.
According to Reshard, Abe held multiple jobs: a waiter at the San Carlos Hotel, as well as a chauffeur for the New Deli Taxi and the Tom's Bar and Grill, all in the 1940s. "A lot of the Black men worked at the Pensacola Country Club and some other entertainment spots as barmen, bartenders, servers, and caddies, so they knew how to order liquor and food," Reshared said.
The customer service and management skills Abe developed in these jobs helped him launch his own business called The Ranger Bar in the late 1940s—at the same location where he would later open Abe's 506.
In 1955, Abe and his younger brother Elijah ran into trouble after he was convicted of robbing $6,000 from a bank in McCullough, Alabama and fined $5,000. It's unclear how much of his 20-year-long sentence he served as he also ran Savoy Ballroom in 1965 and merged the dance hall and club at a larger building at 515 West Belmont Street. The money was never recovered, but Reshard said shortly after the robbery, Pierce paid off all of his business debt. Later on, Abe's was also burglarized for about $80 to $100.
As Reshard understands it, with Pensacola being a straight shot from New Orleans on Interstate 10, it seemed to be a favorable location for booking agents to consider. Soon, artists like B.B. King, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, and Fats Domino were performing in the neighborhood, making it an official part of the circuit.
"The commercial core of the neighborhood is four blocks, so you would see this dollar just continuously swirl around. That's part of that power of the neighborhood and how it added to this fabric of Pensacola," Reshard said.
The energy of The Blocks was electric, as dancing spilled out into the streets and carried over to other businesses in the neighborhood. After business started to decrease as the economics of the neighborhood changed due to integration, the nightclub closed its doors for the last time on New Year's Eve in 1981.
Gussie's Record Shop
But the party didn't stop at the nightclub. Located diagonally from Abe's was Gussie's Record Shop, where artists often came after their performances to continue promoting their music and mingle with the community. Even today, a vinyl store owned by a Black woman is a rarity, but back then, Mrs. Gussie Streeter, who is now 90 years old, was an astute businesswoman who had the foresight to meet the demands of the community and the ingenuity to keep both customers and artists coming back for more.
Though Mrs. Gussie's entrepreneurial abilities seemed instinctual, her eldest son, Alvin Streeter Jr., said the opening of his mom's record shop was slightly incidental.
Mrs. Gussie is the oldest of five daughters, born in 1935 in Monroeville, Alabama. Growing up in a musically inclined family, she developed a love for the piano as a young girl and began playing in churches around the age of 10. After graduating high school, she played piano for Bethlehem Industrial Academy's music classes before studying biology at Alabama State. After taking a break from school, she moved to Pensacola, where she lived with her uncle while going to school and working part-time. Working downtown, she met her husband, Alvin Streeter Sr., whose family had various businesses throughout the city.
Around 1961, the Streeters started running a dry cleaning business together in Belmont, which their son said inadvertently led to her next business opportunity.
"There was a guy who had a small record shop and he was trying to sell, but things weren't working out for him," Streeter said. "He brought in a box of 45s and he said, 'Hey Mrs. Gussie, do you want these? I'm just trying to get rid of them, things aren't working out for me,'" the eldest Streeter son recalled. He said that, in everything she did, his mother always kept a record player and a piano around. She started playing them from behind the laundromat counter and when people were coming in to get their clothes, they asked about the records, and eventually, Mrs. Gussie started selling them.
After selling a couple hundred records within four to five days, she and her husband knew she had struck gold with another venture. At that time, retailers couldn't buy records straight from distributors but they later found a one-stop in Mobile, Alabama, which purchased from distributors and sold to individual retailers. Within four years, both businesses were extremely successful and the couple moved to a larger building down the street at 431 W. Belmont St., where her businesses remained for about 40 years. Always recognizing the demands of the neighborhood, Mrs. Gussie made use of the all-in-one space, not only providing dry cleaning services and music but also selling hair products and wigs in-store for a period of time. Eventually, Mrs. Gussie developed a relationship with Malaco Music Group in Jackson, Mississippi, making her one of the few music retailers in the country that they sold directly to at the time.
On the second floor of the building was radio station WBOP. Though it wasn't Black-owned, it was the first radio station in the city that catered to Black audiences with community news and genres like blues and gospel. From 1958 until it shut down in 1989, Black newsman and personality Robert "Cooker" Morgan worked at the station.
Abe's, Gussie's, and WBOP were a perfect trifecta for Black artists to not only tour but promote their music in the neighborhood. Mrs. Gussie sold concert tickets and hung posters at her shop to promote shows at Abe's. After performances, artists like James Brown, Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke often came into the shop, dropped off their records, and went upstairs for radio interviews.
Streeter Jr. said the appeal for his mom's store for decades was the accessibility her business provided to locals who otherwise wouldn't have been able to find Black music in stores like JCPenney's and J.J. Newberry. A lot of Black original music was covered by white artists and sold at local retailers. He explains that before his mom's store, ordering records by mail from Randy's Record Shop in Nashville, Tennessee, was the primary way residents could get Black music from the actual artist.
"We talk a lot these days about 'we need to get our own' and what we don't have. We actually had it before integration," Streeter Jr. said. "I'm not taking anything away from integration, but we had it—[not just] because we just wanted to do business and do our own thing. We had it out of necessity because we couldn't go any place else."
Growing up, Streeter and his younger brother Derek didn't realize the magnitude of their parents' business success. For them, celebrity encounters and helping out around the store were their norm. But there were some standout moments that, even as a young man. Streeter recognized were special. He recalled the atmosphere of the neighborhood the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, as people walked around the neighborhood crying when WBOP reported the news. He also recalled Michael Jackson visiting the shop while he was in town rehearsing for the Bad Tour in 1988 and witnessing Tina and Ike Turner argue outside on the corner.
As the landscape for music changed with CDs, music streaming, and retailers like Blockbuster gaining prominence, individual retailers and even artists began to struggle with their business. After Streeter's father passed in the early 2000s and Hurricane Ivan struck the city in September 2004, causing significant damage to the building, they decided to close for good.
But music continued to be a part of Mrs. Gussie's life as she only stopped playing piano at churches in the last few years. Though her shop is closed, the community continues to honor her hard work and legacy at the same building.
Five Sisters Blues Cafe
In 2010, Chef Cecil Johnson opened the soul food restaurant Five Sisters Blues Cafe in the same building as Gussie's Records, honoring his mother, four aunts, and their recipes. In 2015, Great Southern Restaurants, a network of seven restaurants in Downtown Pensacola, took over ownership. Maria Goldberg, the network's Director of Marketing, knew they wanted to revitalize the restaurant to pay homage to Gussie's and WBOP.
When it opened, the restaurant was decorated with big figures like Tina Turner and B.B. King. But they wanted to give it a more local feel and that's when Goldberg began researching the neighborhood more in depth. She met with Mrs. Gussie and Alvin who recovered some of the relics that weren't ruined from the hurricane.
"Alvin came by and had 20 of the posters that hung in the record shop," Goldberg said. "He's like 'Mom said you can have it, just give her credit.' We have some columns in the middle of the restaurant and we have those decorated with 45s of all the musicians that played in Pensacola during the Chitlin Circuit."
The menu and literature on the walls also honors WBOP and explains the story of the iconic location.
As Goldberg continued her research, Rick Outzen, publisher of Pensacola InWeekly, suggested she apply for an official Mississippi Blues Marker. The Mississippi Blues Trail was created in 2006 to track historical blues sites. Goldberg and others went before the Mississippi House of Representatives and in January 2018, the Belmont-Devilliers neighborhood was honored, making it the 203rd marker in the U.S. and only the second in the state of Florida.
"We had a dedication ceremony for the installation of it and a block party. We invited, of course, Gussie and her family and did a ribbon cutting. We were all just so proud and so happy."
