This special music city profile is an adapted transcript of the radio show, which streams here on demand.
The Durham NC Armory was built out of stone by the Works Progress Administration in the mid 1930s. After years serving the NC National Guard, it became an all-purpose civic venue in the heart of downtown. In the 1950s and 60s, it complied with Jim Crow laws by alternating between concerts and dance parties for White and Black audiences. White fans are said to have crowded into the mezzanine during some of those shows, when soul music was, for them, forbidden fruit.
The famous Durham artist Ernie Barnes used those rollicking nights as the model for the sinuous African American dancers in his great 1971 painting The Sugar Shack, which illustrated the closing credits of the TV show Good Times and the cover of Marvin Gaye’s 1976 album I Want You…