Creating community with food and music
By Clare Reverri
Bands touring on the Chitlin’ Circuit often relied on the community for their meals, and Newton Collier experienced this when he started playing with the Sam & Dave in 1963.
The Chitlin’ Circuit was a series of venues throughout America’s east coast and Southern states where black musicians could play during segregation, and bands relied on food prepared by local women.
“On the road during the Chitlin Circuit days you have to take being a segregated America, in the South, we didn’t get to, we couldn’t go to no McDonald’s or restaurants they just had none, wasn’t really allowed to even get near those places,” Collier said.
Collier was the second horn player for Sam & Dave for 15 years, touring with the duo internationally.
“When you’re playing, maybe seven or eight shows in the run of the day, there’s maybe 30 minutes in between … to do whatever you have to do and then you’ve got to start the show again,” Collier said. “Everybody make a rush … for the basement, because they know there’s gonna be food down in the basement.”
David Davis is an associate professor of English at Mercer University and the Associate Director of the Spencer B. King, Jr., Center for Southern Studies.
“There’s often an awful lot of overlap between sharing food and sharing music,” Davis said. “Food has a very powerful symbolic resonance as a way of building small group communities.”
And the food and music communities merged together, creating a new community with an appreciation for creating food and sharing music.
“We did communal-type things, we would all eat together,” Collier said. “Food was the common denominator.”
