Since propping open its doors in 1989, in a storefront space in the storied Brockman Gallery complex in Leimert Park Village, the World Stage has honored its promise. The venue serves as a neighborhood hearth, nexus, and laboratory for Black creativity rooted in West Coast jazz sounds and traditions. Founded and run in its early years by poet and activist Kamau Daáood and drummer Billy Higgins, with the support of pianist Horace Tapscott, the World Stage has given birth to several generations of musicians who have taken the thread of Black L.A.’s creative history and embroidered upon its lineage—from hard bop to free jazz to freestyle and hip-hop and territories beyond. Still hosting a full roster of performances and workshops, the Stage moved into a new space in 2016, just across the street from its original location on Degnan Boulevard. To capture the impact of this institution, Alta Journal spoke with longtime World Stage habitués Steven L. Isoardi, Darryl Moore, and Billy Childs.
This article appears in Issue 34 of Alta Journal.
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Interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Steven L. Isoardi
Editor of Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott and coeditor of Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles
The first time I went to the World Stage is vivid in my mind because I met my hero.
I was studying saxophone. My teacher mentioned to me that there were things going on in Leimert Park Village. This was the early ’90s; I was working with the UCLA Oral History Program on Central Avenue Sounds. As I started researching, putting lists of interviews together, I learned that the pianist Horace Tapscott [founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra] had grown up near Central Avenue. I researched him, his artistry and activism. I really became a fan, and he agreed to get together at the World Stage.
It wasn’t long after we met that I began this great oral history interview with Horace. The Central Avenue Sounds project changed my life and led to so many other things. It’s ongoing. Doors open in front of people. You have to choose whether you walk through or not.
Another memorable instance at the Stage was in 2006. It was a Saturday, and Jeannette [my wife] and I were getting ready for a screening of her documentary, Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central Los Angeles, at the jazz coffeehouse Fifth Street Dick’s. At one point, I took a walk down the block by the Stage, and there is a tall man out front who waves me over. Then he yells to—as it turns out—his brother Shams. And he—Ernest—says, “Shams! It’s Steve Isoardi!” They recognized me from the author photo in my book The Dark Tree, about Horace and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra.
It was Ernest and Ray Straughter, the Straughter brothers. They were two of the most key people in Horace’s ensemble in the ’60s and ’70s. And I had never met them. They were gone when I was doing all the interviews for The Dark Tree, and we couldn’t find them! All of a sudden, they reappear in the Village. They were rehearsing for a performance that night at the Stage.
After the screening, pretty much everybody gravitates down to the Stage to see the Straughter brothers’ band because they’re back after years off the scene. The Straughter brothers are burning, and the Stage is packed. You could fit maybe 50 people in the Stage’s initial location. But so many more would always come and listen on the sidewalk.
At one point, Ray launches into the tenor solo, as only he can. And partway into it, everybody hears the sound of another tenor saxophone joining in from outside in the street. People are going, “What?” And the guy—whoever it is out there—is really good and just keeps playing. This guy walks into the Stage. It’s the great Azar Lawrence, who had last played with the Straughter brothers in the Arkestra in the early ’70s.
He gets on the bandstand with them and carries on through the set, all of them playing together. They played two sets. Azar was blowing so wonderfully. They were jazz. The audience was jazz.
Darryl Moore, a.k.a. JMD
(Jamm Messenger Divine)
Drummer, composer, producer, and engineer with roots in jazz, R&B, and soul. Founder and leader of the Underground Railroad Band
Some backstory: I’m a product of Central Avenue. Both sets of grandparents lived in the neighborhood. Whatever musicians were in town might do a matinee, so you could see Billie Holiday singing at the Lincoln Theatre in between the movies or Earl Hines playing at the Dunbar Hotel down the street. My parents went to Jefferson High along with all the great jazz players that came from there—Roy Ayers, Dexter Gordon, and on and on. Music was all around. All kinds of it. The good thing about school back then is that a music teacher would put an instrument in your hand. I was always beating on pots and pans as a small child. My mother got my drum kit out of the Blue Chip Stamps catalog: blue sparkle drums with clear drumheads.
In high school, we’d sneak out to jazz clubs. I always had a little bit of a mustache. That would get me in. We’d go to places like the Baked Potato to see Patrice Rushen with her band: Harvey Mason on drums, Bill Summers on percussion, Lee Ritenour on guitar, Ernie Watts on saxophone. They were all great. All above my head. The owner, Don Randi, knew we were underage and would make us buy a potato: “You guys sit back here.” Way away from the stage. “You buy a dang potato and don’t make no trouble!”
In the ’80s, when I started trying to be a jazz musician, I went to different places. One of them was an after-hours club, the Blue Jay, on Adams and Hauser. That’s where all the guys would go after gigs. I saw Art Blakey there. You had to know the knock. A little door slid open, and a guard would look you up and down. If he was cool with you, he let you in. The club was open from 2:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. They even had an escape door to get out in case the place was raided.
If you were young, they wouldn’t let you play until the very end. You get there at 2:30 a.m., but you got to watch all the greats and the real cats play first. Shit. I never got on the drums until about five in the morning! I saw Clora Bryant, Jay McShann, Boogie Daniels.
In Leimert in the ’80s, there was a scene going on at Artworks 4. That was Carl Burnett’s place. He was the drummer who played with Freddie Hubbard. Burnett also played with Vince Guaraldi on all that Charlie Brown stuff. He later got into Islam and became an imam. He was our first real mentor, giving me and a lot of cats a place to play.
Burnett had a nice little stage and a piano. So when he hung it up after about four years, he gave Billy Higgins the literal stage that he had. We helped him get the stage over to the World Stage.
So much magic happened. There were several special evenings at the Stage because of Billy Higgins. He could call a giant who was in town to play [at another local club] to show up unannounced, in the middle of the day. So sometimes in the afternoon, your phone would ring: “Oh, Herbie [Hancock]’s gonna be at the Stage!”
I’ve seen Elvin Jones at the Stage. I’ve seen Joe Henderson, Charles Lloyd, and Ray Drummond. But you know, even with all of these great people who’ve come, the most learning that all of us got was when the gig is over, everybody’s packed up, and you’re sitting with Billy. Nobody’s playing. He’s just talking, telling you the most incredible stories and giving you the most incredible insight. Talking until about four in the morning. I went to the College of Billy. It’s like a fountain of knowledge that’s coming out. You don’t ask the water to turn on and off.
Billy Childs
L.A.-native jazz pianist, composer, and arranger recognized for his unique hybrid of jazz, classical, and chamber music. Six-time Grammy Award winner
The gig had to be, like, the late ’90s. It was a big event with [drummer] Elvin Jones. Got there early, parked my car. There used to be a rib joint right behind the World Stage. Phillips. The best ribs in the entire country, in my opinion. You would stand in line, and it was no-nonsense. There was no decor or anything. I remember everybody was starving, waiting to play at the World Stage, but I had the foresight to buy some ribs. And I came back with the ribs, and I was sitting with Elvin Jones, and I said, “Man, these ribs are incredible!” And he says, “Don’t tantalize me, motherfucker!”
They had an old piano, you know, and the sound system was iffy, but the crowd was always totally with you. Kind of a little storefront place, but it has a magic to it. Kamau was like the conceptual leader. Back then, that whole Leimert Park area was interconnected. Bursting with Black creativity. You had Eso Won Books there. You had Lucy Florence Coffee House. KAOS Network on the corner. And, of course, Marla Gibbs’s Vision Theatre. Every Saturday, I’d go to the Village, and we’d play at Fifth Street Dick’s, a little upstairs joint. I had a guy to cart my Rhodes [electric piano] up there, and then we would be the house band for all these rappers that would come and improvise. One time, Chick Corea came by, and then Bennie Maupin. It was a scene.
The World Stage always fostered young groups that went on to become names—like Black Note and B-Sharp.
The World Stage is significant because it is Black-founded and it’s a jazz club in Los Angeles. It’s a symbol of Black art. Billy Higgins has been part of my jazz upbringing in L.A. since I was a young person. The very first jazz gig I ever played was with Billy, around 1976. [Bassist] Herbie Lewis hired me. I’ll never forget: It was at a flower shop in Pasadena. I arrived, and there he was, the great Billy Higgins, unloading his drums, saying hello. He was a great, kind person, every time I interacted with him. A patron saint of Los Angeles.•
Lynell George is an award-winning Los Angeles–based journalist and essayist. She has been a staff writer for both L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in various news outlets including the New York Times; Smithsonian; Vibe; Boom: A Journal of California Preservation; Sierra; Essence; and Ms. She was selected to be a University of Southern California Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism fellow in 2013 and received the Huntington Library’s Alan Jutzi Fellowship for her studies of California writer Octavia E. Butler in 2017. She is the recipient of a 2017 Grammy Award for her liner notes for Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go. George is the author of three books of nonfiction: No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday); After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame (Angel City Press); and her most recent book, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler (Angel City Press), published in 2020, which was a Hugo Award finalist in the Best Related Work category in 2021.
