I Played Here
Overtown was once Miami’s musical epicenter—home to legendary venues like the Harlem Square Club, the Knightbeat, and the Mary Elizabeth Hotel. In their heyday, these stages launched the careers of Sam Cooke, Betty Wright, and countless others. Today, the buildings are gone—or hidden beneath I-95 ramps and parking lots—yet the echoes of those performances live on in the artists who played them.
In I Played Here, I photograph the musicians in those very spots, turning vacant lots and weathered façades into living stages. Each portrait is an environmental study of sound and place: the play of light against a crumbling corner of the Mary Elizabeth Hotel, a singer framed by the chain-link gates of the old Harlem Square Club, a tenor silhouetted beneath the bullet-scarred walls of the Knightbeat. These images are as much about the space as they are about the people—and how memory can fill an empty lot with music.
Many of the legends I’ve worked with have passed on—Bobby Stringer, Mel Dancy, Reese “Demp” George Lane and others who carry Overtown’s stories in their names. Their absence makes these portraits all the more urgent: a final image in the places where they first found their voice.
Interviews
Complementing the portraits are candid interviews in which the musicians reflect on the magic of those early performances—remembering the first time they heard their own voice fill a room, the thrill of urgent rehearsals and late-night jam sessions, and the friendships born out of shared stages. Their stories are as vivid as the images themselves—watch the full interviews
Historic Timeline
Overtown: The “Harlem of the South”
In the decades following World War II, Miami’s historic Black neighborhood of Overtown—often called “Colored Town”—blossomed into a cultural epicenter. Along 7th Avenue and Northwest Second Avenue, venues like the Mary Elizabeth Hotel, the Cotton Club, and the Lyric Theater hosted touring jazz greats and local house bands night after night. Club owners from Bill Moore to “Big” George Lane booked legends such as Duke Ellington, B.B. King and Ray Charles alongside hometown heroes Bobby Stringer, Mel Dancy and Reese, forging a vibrant circuit that drew Black patrons from across South Florida and beyond.
1950s: Jazz, Blues and Gospel Take Center Stage
The 1950s saw Overtown’s dance halls pulse with big-band swing and the raw emotion of the blues. Gritty, acoustic guitar–driven sets gave way to electrified R&B as amplified sound systems arrived. At the same time, gospel quartets poured out sanctified harmonies in storefronts and hotel lounges, their influence seeping into secular music. Photographers later captured the interplay of street life and the neon glow of club marquees—images that now serve as poignant reminders of a community thriving despite segregation.
1960s: Soul, Civil Rights and the Harlem Square Club
As the Civil Rights Movement swept the South, Overtown’s stages became more than entertainment—they were platforms for expression and solidarity. On December 7, 1963, Sam Cooke’s incendiary performance at the Harlem Square Club transcended mere showmanship; his gospel roots and impassioned delivery anticipated the soul anthems that would rally a generation. Meanwhile, southern recording hubs—from Stax Records in Memphis to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals—channeled that same spirit, producing tracks like Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” and Aretha Franklin’s early hits that echoed far beyond their home communities.
1970s: Funk, Disco and a Shifting Soundscape
The 1970s ushered in funk’s syncopated grooves and disco’s dance-floor liberation. Acts like Parliament-Funkadelic mined psychedelia and social commentary in extended jams, while local Miami bands infused Caribbean rhythms into soul, foreshadowing later crossovers. Clubs along 7th Avenue adapted—sometimes rebranding as discotheques to cater to a new generation—yet the neighborhood’s footprint began to shrink under mounting development pressures. Beyond Miami, southern artists such as Curtis Mayfield (“Superfly”) and the Staple Singers continued to soundtrack urban life with messages of resilience and hope.
1980s: Decline, Displacement and the Birth of New Genres
The construction of I-95 in the late ’60s and early ’70s had already carved through Overtown, and by the 1980s the once-bustling corridors lay fractured. Yet from this upheaval emerged fresh forms: Miami Bass pioneers experimented with Roland 808s and call-and-response hooks in Liberty City and beyond, laying groundwork for southern hip-hop’s rise. Simultaneously, cities across the Deep South—Atlanta, New Orleans, Jackson—began nurturing early rap scenes, drawing on soul’s storytelling and funk’s rhythmic drive to birth a genre that would redefine Black music worldwide.
A Living Legacy
From the jazz clubs of the 1950s to the bass-driven tracks of the 1980s, the story of Black music in Overtown and the American South is one of innovation born from adversity. Though many of the artists, venues and neighbors have passed on, their spirits resonate in every vinyl groove, every echo of a stage long silent, and in the photographs that now stand in the very spaces where legends once performed. This project preserves those memories—capturing the resilience, creativity and community that shaped a soundtrack no highway could erase.
FAQ
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You can catch One Night Stand at the Hampton Art Lovers—details and tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hampton-art-lovers-presents-one-night-stand-tickets-1144443815259?aff=ebdsoporgprofile.
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The show marries environmental portraits with first-person stories: large-scale images of Overtown musicians shot in the very spaces their clubs once occupied, accompanied by concise video interviews. You’ll wander through haunting vacant-lot backdrops of the Knightbeat, Mary Elizabeth Hotel and Harlem Square Club, then listen as artists recall their first nights on those stages—bringing the vanished soundscape of 1960s Miami vividly back to life.
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Among the legends captured here are Bobby Stringer, Mel Dancy, Reese “Demp” George Lane and others—many of whom have since passed on. Their portraits serve as both tribute and testimony, preserving the memories of artists who shaped Miami’s musical soul long before I-95 carved through their neighborhood. This exhibit ensures their voices and their history remain visible—and audible—for generations to come.
Exhibit
“I Played Here – One Night Stand,” presented by Hampton Art Lovers and curated by Chris Norwood, transforms the Historic Ward Rooming House into a living memorial to Overtown’s musical heyday. Norwood’s keen eye for storytelling animates each large-scale portrait, placing the very musicians who once lit up venues like the Harlem Square Club back into the spaces they helped define. Built in 1916 at 249 NW 9th Street, the Ward Rooming House originally served Black performers and travelers shut out by segregation, positioning it at the literal and cultural heart of Miami’s postwar music scene. Today, its weathered brick facade and airy loft galleries resonate with echoes of gospel quartets, jazz ensembles, and soul singers, as Hampton Art Lovers honors this storied landmark by reuniting past and present in a single, unforgettable “one-night stand.”
Gallery Info
Historic Ward Rooming House
249 NW 9th Street
Miami, FL, 33136
Hampton Art Lovers
Artist Statement
I’ve spent my career chasing light and story, but with I Played Here – One Night Stand, the light isn’t just on my subjects—it’s on the spaces and memories they carry. These portraits bring musicians back to the rooms and street corners where they once ignited Overtown’s legendary music circuit—places that time, progress, and the highway have all but erased.
Each image results from conversations: gathering oral histories, poring over faded programs, flipping through battered newspaper clippings. Then I return to the exact spot—an empty lot once home to the Harlem Square Club, a hallway where gospel quartets harmonized before sunrise, a narrow stairwell that led to jazz sets at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel—and reanimate it. I light my subject as if the house lights had never dimmed, capturing their presence and the space’s poignant absence.
Working alongside Chris Norwood and Hampton Art Lovers at the Historic Ward Rooming House—a 1916 landmark that once sheltered the very artists denied entry elsewhere—I’m reminded how art can stitch together past and present. My photographs are both elegy and celebration: elegy for venues bulldozed by I-95, for musicians now gone; celebration of the resilience, inventiveness and sheer joy that pulsed through Overtown’s “Harlem of the South.”
This project asks us to look twice—not only at the faces before us but also at the ground beneath our feet. History isn’t only written in archives; it’s embedded in walls, pavement cracks, and the soulful voices that still echo in our collective imagination.
