[Baltimore Sun] West Baltimore’s Royal Theater, a gateway to music history
Read Time:4 Minute, 23 Second
Pearl Bailey could be standing on this West Baltimore street. There’s a line forming to see Sam Cooke and the Supremes. Or you had a casual chat with Otis Redding.
“I met Dionne Warwick there. It was the only place she could be at that time,” said Milton A. Dugger Jr., as he recalled the talent and musical stardom of Pennsylvania and Lafayette avenues.
He was then a student at Booker T. Washington Junior High School. For 50 cents, he could spend his Saturday late mornings and entire afternoons at the Royal Theater, his neighborhood’s live entertainment dreamland.
Dugger describes what a Saturday in 1960 Baltimore was like for a West Baltimore teen who experienced and grew to love live, professional entertainment, only a few blocks from his Myrtle Avenue home.
“I’d start collecting tossed away glass soft drink bottles. The small ones were worth two cents. The large quart bottles you’d exchange for a nickel. Maybe I’d run a few of my neighbors’ errands for some change. Or scrub some front steps. Before long I had the 50 cents for admission to the first show,” he said.
The Royal Theater doors opened at 12:30 p.m. The new acts arrived on Fridays. There was a midnight show too, for a higher admission tab. The price of admission provided a movie and a live act that began about 75 minutes later. There was a warmup performer, followed by a featured act who typically sang five songs.
Dugger remembers how his grandmother took him to his first Royal show. He was eight or nine years old, and the featured act was Sugar Chile Robinson, a child prodigy pianist who once played for President Harry Truman in the White House. Dugger thinks it was 1952.
Soon, he was arriving with schoolmates as the Royal opened. They stayed through two complete cycles — two films and two repeated stage shows.
“Nobody told us we had to leave after the first show,” he said.
He picked a wonderful time for music and live entertainment. The opening of the old Baltimore Civic Center would soon woo many of these acts away from Pennsylvania Avenue. By 1971, the Royal was closed and demolished in the name of urban renewal. Its site is a grass playing field.
“It was not only the Royal. There was Solomon’s drug store across the street, where I bought my comic books,” he said, recalling those days. “Everyone ate at Mom’s restaurant down the street. And my favorite strictly movie theater was the Regent, up on Pennsylvania Avenue, which had one of the largest screens in the city. When the Cinemascope arrived, white audiences had to come here to see it because the other theaters had not installed the wider screens.”
He recalls the first time he went to the Royal without family supervision. The act was Sonny Til and the Orioles, a Baltimore vocal harmony act that made musical history.
“He was the man who could make love to the microphone,” said Dugger. “He was flamboyant and wore a lot of jewelry.”
Along the way, he saw Buddy Holly.
“Black Baltimore audiences accepted him,” said Dugger.
He recalled how a Chicago-based vocal ensemble, The Flamingos, won the battle of the groups show, which pitted The Dells, The Moonglows, The Cardinals, The Eldorados and The Magnificents against each other.
“That was some show,” he said.
Milton Dugger is not content to allow those good times die.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, he reassembles the type of act he enjoyed at the Royal. He stages his once-a-year event in the church basement of St. Mary of the Assumption Church on York Road in Govans. He recruits an orchestra (a rhythm section) and a headliner, his old friend Terry Johnson, who performs with a legendary doo-wop group, The Flamingos.
Johnson, who is now based in Las Vegas, is a Baltimore native who grew up on Whatcoat Street, not far from the Royal. After establishing himself in the music industry, he joined the Chicago-based Flamingos and has kept this musical entity alive.
Last year, St. Mary’s was filled with tables of folks who brought their own dinners as they were treated to the sounds of the saxophone, organ, horns and Johnson’s silky harmony. He brought the house down with his “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
Johnson also credits a fellow West Baltimore performer, Earlington Carl Tilghman, who performed as Sonny Til. Johnson formed his own group.
“We sang on street corners,” said Johnson, who recalled performing at a Baltimore talent contest. He and his group wore light blue suits, white shirts and red ties.
“Sometimes we were just trying to impress the girls,” said Johnson as he reflected on his 70 years of making people happy.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.
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