Most ardent KC rock fans have heard about the 1967 concert The Who played at Shawnee Mission South High School.
But did you know Chuck Berry headlined a private casino-night party staged by the Kehilath Israel Synagogue Sisterhood in 1956?
It’s true, thanks to the late booking agent and KI Synagogue member Allan Bell.
If you Google “inventor of rock and roll,” Chuck Berry’s name and face pop up. Bell had a relationship with Berry and/or his manager, and booked him around town several times, apparently starting with the private party on April 8, 1956.
I’ve just managed to put this all together thanks to the digitization of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle archives, which went live earlier in 2022.
From 1994 to 2010, I served as The Chronicle’s editor. In 2008, while perusing the bound volume for another purpose, I noticed the item with Berry’s photo in the April 6, 1956, edition. At that time, I ran an item in my “Listening Post” column, asking if readers had any memory of the event, but no one replied — not even Bell, who died in 2020.
I never forgot the unlikely event. But between 2010, when I started my research for the Kansas City Rock History Project, and now, I had no way to search online for the evidence.
Using the Chronicle archives’ search function, I found two news items and one ad in the March 30 and April 6, 1956, editions relating to Berry’s appearance at “Club El Cashback.”
This apparently was a play on the name of the El Casbah room at the Bellerive Hotel, 214 E. Armour Blvd., where Jewish (and other) social events were often held.
The March 30 item announces an “original cabaret show … at the Synagogue auditorium, 6339 Rockhill Road. … A charge of 50 cents per person will be made.”
“Mrs. David Schifman and Mrs. Ben Ruben, co-chairmen, announce the following acts:
“Eddie Baker and his orchestra; Chuck Berry, prominent singer and author of the hit ‘Maybeline’ …”
The ad in the following week’s edition says Club El-Cashback will have a “STAR STUDDED FLOOR SHOW … Featuring Acts from the POPULAR ORCHID ROOM,” while the news item on the opposite page has Berry’s photo and says “Chuck Berry from the Orchid Room — popular vocalist and recording artist, will appear at the K.I. Sisterhood ‘El Cashback,’ to be held at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 8.”
When I interviewed him, Bell played up his connection to the fabled Orchid Room, citing friendship with the musicians he met there as the genesis of his booking-agent career when he was but a teenager. He was a middleman and got a cut of the fees when he arranged side gigs for Orestie “Rusty” Tucker and the house band from the Orchid Room, the epicenter of rhythm & blues in KC.
What solidifies this for me (as confirmed by a search of Star archives) is that Chuck Berry played his first KC gig at the Orchid Room on Friday and Saturday of the weekend in question. (See ad from Star)
Bell did not book acts into the Orchid Room, so it appears that he glommed onto that gig for his synagogue’s casino night.
It’s rather amazing, and not only in retrospect, because Berry, while obviously not the Hall of Famer he would become, did have a No. 1 R&B / No. 5 pop hit the year before with “Maybellene.”
His second single, “No Money Down,” released in January 1956, made No. 8 on the R&B chart. But Berry’s career really took off when he recorded “Roll Over Beethoven” for Chess Records in Chicago just 11 days after the synagogue gig. “Beethoven” peaked at #2 R&B / #29 pop, and was followed that same year by “Too Much Monkey Business” and “You Can’t Catch Me.”
Just weeks after his synagogue gig, Berry returned to KC to headline its largest venue, Municipal Auditorium.
In an ad for the July 29, 1956, show there, Berry was listed next-to-last among the “Top Record Stars of 1956,” after Cathy Carr (who?), Carl Perkins, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers and Della Reese, among others.
One year after “Club El-Cashback,” Berry was fifth on the bill for promoter Irvin Feld’s “Biggest Show of Stars 1957” at the auditorium, going on before LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter, Bill Doggett and Fats Domino.
On Nov. 27, 1958, Chuck Berry topped the bill for a “Thanksgiving Dance” at Municipal Auditorium that also featured Bo Diddley.
Of course, Berry had a checkered touring career, and he didn’t always headline auditoriums. As Bell mentions in the video linked above, he also booked Chuck into Rose Mary’s Lounge, 3229 Troost Ave., in the mid-60s.
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