Springwood Avenue and the West Side Sound
Near Asbury Park, New Jersey
Cross the railroad tracks that split Asbury Park, and you reach the West Side, where most of the city's Black residents lived and where its deepest musical roots run. For decades the beating heart of this neighborhood was Springwood Avenue, a commercial and entertainment corridor roughly ten blocks long. From about nineteen ten into the nineteen sixties, it was a nationally significant stop on what performers called the Chitlin Circuit, listed in the Green Book that guided Black travelers through a segregated country.
The clubs here were the real thing. Cuba's Spanish Tavern, run by Henry and Minnie Lopez, was the strip's crown jewel. The Turf Club, the Orchid Lounge, and others drew towering talent.
Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton all performed on the West Side. A young saxophone player named Clarence Clemons worked the Turf Club before he ever crossed the tracks to join Bruce Springsteen. The Turf Club building still stands today, the last West Side music venue left, recently honored on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places, a survivor of a golden age that most of the town has forgotten.
