I moved to Chicago during the summer of 1961 to resume my undergraduate education at Roosevelt University. I barely had time to set up my room in the basement of my cousin’s duplex apartment building in the 7200 block of S. Perry Ave. when I was drawn into the rich mixture of art and politics that would characterize my life in Chicago for the next decade.
My cousin-in-law had quit his job working in advertising at Ebony magazine to lead the effort to raise funds to produce Oscar Brown Jr.’s musical Kicks and Co. (1961). The musical’s protagonist, Mr. Kicks, was a trickster/devil character in a Black community as well as a favorite in Oscar Brown Jr.’s nightclub routine, which combined original songs, folk tales, and commentary. My cousins, who were high school buddies of Brown, were all in helping to make this enterprise a success.
Accepting needed funding but bad artistic advice from Bob Nemiroff, husband of Lorraine Hansberry, Brown was replaced as Mr. Kicks by Burgess Meredith. The cognitive dissonance was such that the play, which opened at McCormick Place, never made it to the desired run in New York City. I still have a copy of the prospectus and memories of assurances that the recouping of my modest investment was a certainty and that a percentage of the proceeds from a lengthy run in New York was quite likely. Having rejected an offer to invest in a newly formed record company that became Motown, Kicks and Co. was at least as reasonable if not as lucrative.
To read the rest of the memoir, purchase a copy of CR 62.4/63.1/2.