Hot From Harlem

The origins of the musical revue can be traced to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The revue takes its name from the French word for “review.” Travelling performers created shows that reviewed local events and politics. As the form evolved, it incorporated vaudeville, burlesque, cabaret and theatrical extravaganzas such as the Ziegfeld Follies. Some celebrated a particular theme—for example, Country and Western “Opry-style” revues.

Montréal was a regular stop on the circuit for touring Harlem revues. In the 1940s and 1950s it was Canada’s largest city and was often described as “wide open” because of its alcohol, casinos, nightclubs and bordellos. The city had become a vibrant and welcoming destination, especially through the Prohibition years.

Rockhead’s Paradise was established by Rufus Rockhead, a Jamaican immigrant who arrived in Montréal in 1916. After work in a munitions factory and service with the Canadian Forestry Corps in France, he returned to Montréal and became a Canadian Pacific Railway porter out of Windsor Station—one of the few decent jobs then available to an adult Black man.

A born entrepreneur, Rockhead saved enough from railway work—and perhaps some smuggling during American Prohibition—to purchase an old hotel in Little Burgundy. He opened Rockhead’s Paradise Café in 1931.

Despite racism and harassment, Rockhead became a successful impresario and supporter of Black performers for the next 45 years. Famous for greeting patrons with a fresh rose on his lapel, he is commemorated today by Montréal’s Rue Rufus-Rockhead.

Read Rufus Rockhead’s full story at Parks Canada.

A postcard and photographs from the early 1950s take us inside Rockhead’s Paradise—“Montréal’s Smartest Coloured Nite Club.” The stereoscopic photographs were taken by an anonymous American tourist from Rhode Island in 1952.

We see the long bar, happy patrons and, in one photograph, the back of Lord Caresser—“King of the Calypso Singers”—as he performs. The images also show that while the performers were Black, the audience was mixed. All were welcome at Rockhead’s.

Café St Michel truly took off in 1947 when the Louis Metcalf International Band became its house band. Metcalf was an accomplished trumpeter who had played with Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and Fletcher Henderson in the 1920s and 1930s. He had also brought his own Harlem revue to Montréal several times during the 1930s.

Musicians visited Café St Michel after their own uptown performances to sit in with the International Band. As revue music morphed into jazz and bebop in the small hours, the late Saturday sessions became known as the Sunday Morning Breakfast Dance.

The band earned growing acclaim for its jazz prowess and pioneering bebop. That new style was popular with younger patrons but sometimes conflicted with the band’s primary duty: accompanying the revue’s wide range of performers. The tension contributed to Metcalf’s departure in 1949.

Metcalf recorded only one vinyl album, for Spivey in 1966. Its personnel were different and it came two decades after Café St Michel, but it remains the best recorded example of his work.

Metcalf and two fellow band members were arrested in November 1950 for marijuana possession. Rather than face a $200 fine and a possible six-month prison sentence, he returned to the United States.

The early 1950s brought changes to Montréal nightlife. Nightclubs lost popularity and faced increasing scrutiny, raids, liquor violations and complaints about after-hours noise. Café St Michel closed in 1953 after a thirteen-year run.

The Black Orchid Casino was located above Dunn’s Delicatessen. The room opened in January 1958 as the jazz club Birdland, then became the more eclectic Black Orchid Casino in June. It hosted the Creole Beige Revue and Idlewild Revue between 1959 and 1962.

Like many Montréal clubs, the Black Orchid was targeted by police raids and accusations of liquor infractions. That pressure, together with waning interest in cabaret, led to its closure in 1965.

Any look at Montréal nightlife of the 1940s and 1950s would be incomplete without two noteworthy characters—worlds apart, yet connected.

Lili St. Cyr (1917–1999) was the stage name of Marie Frances Van Schaack. After years of ballet lessons, she joined a chorus line at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood. She quickly discovered that she could earn more performing sans habille, and developed acts built around props such as a bathtub, vanities and mirrors.

St. Cyr worked at Montréal’s Gayety Theatre from 1944 to 1951. Wildly popular with audiences, she outraged the clergy and Public Morality Committee. She was charged—and acquitted—of “immoral, obscene and indecent behaviour.” The Gayety closed in 1953 under sustained police attention.