The Orange Peel has earned a reputation as one of the leading music venues in the Southeast over the past two decades, but the building’s musical roots on Biltmore Ave. They date back to well before the opening of the existing club in 2002.
During a time in the 1960s and another in the 1970s, the venue housed black music clubs that brought top national and regional artists to the city and helped showcase R’s talent.
“It was electric,” says Asheville’s J. C. Martin, who led the original Orange Peel as bassist for two funk bands. “The dance floor was packed. And other people were dressed. Back then, our other people, you see, wore big hats and flashy suits.
Jim Robinson, who DJed many of the club’s shows in the 1970s, adds: “You wouldn’t walk through that front door if you weren’t dressed. You had to dress to impress.
Both clubs eventually closed their doors. And the once-bustling black business district near the building disappeared amid the urban renewal of the 1960s and 1970s, which radically reshaped Asheville’s neighborhoods. But those who don’t forget those glory days, as well as those who run The Orange Peel today: we’re determined to bring the site’s legacy of black music.
Fletcher’s James Brown (no, not that one), who sang at the Jade Club as a teenager, and Martin have folders full of photographs and clippings that they enthusiastically share with those interested in the place’s musical heritage. Robb McAdams, assistant marketing director of The Orange Peel, led efforts a few years ago to create a permanent exhibit in the club’s front gallery that would tell the story of the structure from its construction in 1946 to the day of the offering.
“Everything two miles away and everything two miles away was a thriving black network in the ’50s and ’60s, and until 1980 it disappeared,” says McAdams, pointing to Biltmore Avenue from inside the club. “That’s why we try to do things like that when we can. The call we use is the call they used at that time [in the 1970s]. We need to pay homage to that and pay homage to the Black history that’s going on in Asheville.
But McAdams and others looking to keep the story going are finding that it’s not easy. Key figures of the era, including the club’s owners and many of the musicians who played there, have died. Misguided memories and asymmetrical media policy mean that vital main points: for example, the exact date each club closed remains elusive. Often, timelines don’t match, and some first-hand accounts go unverified.
“It’s our most productive endeavor to get it right, but we’re not historians,” McAdams says. “Maybe we can pick up where we left off. “
Stax recording star Rufus Thomas spearheaded the opening of the Jade Club on Dec. 17, 1965, in a building that once housed an ice rink and bowling alley. Thomas sang his 1963 hit, “Walking the Dog,” as well as a variety of other songs.
“The smallest colorful club in the South,” as owner Jake Rusher put it, is temporarily one of the area’s favorite spots for young African-Americans (and not a few whites) looking for a night of music and dancing until 2 a. m.
“It’s something that other people were looking forward to this weekend,” says Brown, who sang at the club as a member of a vocal trio called Royal Primes. “You’d check the paper on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays to see who’s there. The stars would come and other people would have a wonderful time.
And what stars they were. From 1965 to 1968, a virtual who’s who of artists R
Numerous regional artists also took the stage.
“The Jade Club was the real historical music venue in Asheville in the 1960s,” says David Penley, who grew up around that time and offers a walking tour of the historic music scene. “I find it funny that most people don’t even mention the Jade Club when talking about the history of The Orange Peel. “
McAdams believes the ’70s edition of The Orange Peel gets more attention than the existing club that followed its name.
“Part of that mythical history of the [Jade Club] was mentally incorporated into The Orange Peel,” he says. “But it seemed like Jade Club was the missing piece of the puzzle when we put the exhibit together. “
June 2, 1946: The Biltmore Rollerdome opens
March 10, 1950: Skateland Rollerdome opens
December 7, 1962: Biltmore Lanes bowling alley opens
December 17, 1965: Jade Club opens with headliner Rufus Thomas
March 9, 1969: “Grand Reopening” of the Jade Club
May 1969: Inauguration of the Palacio de Campo.
October 1971: Café New Thing opens.
June 1973: Employment Centre for Active Youth
February 1974: Opening of the first Orange Peel
Late 1979–December 1980: U. S. Census Headquarters OperationU. S.
25 October 2002: Opening of the Orange Peel
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times Archives
The Royal Primes consisted of Brown, his cousin James Beasley, and his Stumptown neighborhood friend Larry Rice. The band made their debut at the club on December 13, 1966, making a song with music provided through the Centurians, a 4-piece incorporated local band. For the next year, the Centurians and Royal Primes served as the space band. Sometimes they headlined dance parties and other times they opened for national acts such as Milsap, the Ovations, or Garnet Mimms.
“I’m young, I’m 15,” he says Brown. De fact, we were so young that, when we weren’t singing, we intended to stay in the dressing room because they had a bar. But it didn’t last long. After a while, we have become part of the landscape.
The Royal Primes sang hits like Sam
The club’s owner, Rusher, a white businessman who also owned The Pines, a popular music venue that is part of his 8-acre Royal Pines Recreation Area, at the southern end of Sweeten Creek Road.
“That was where most of the white students, students at the school, hung out,” Brown says. “The Jade Club was most commonly the place where the black net was located. “But it’s not unusual to see white faces in the audience at the Jade Club, Brown recalls. The other blacks never attended the exhibitions at The Pines.
Joe Miller, the skill booker for both clubs, Brown said.
“Joe Miller is one of those quirky people,” recalls Martin, who played at the club. “They used to nail posters [for the next Jade Club shows] to the poles of each and every corner of the community and put them up in the stores. “
Miller booked a number at Pines and Jade Club on consecutive nights. For example, Percy Sledge, less than a year after his number one hit “When a Man Loves a Woman,” made the impression at Pines on Saturday, February 18, 1967 and at the Jade Club the following night.
The club continued to operate until the autumn of 1968, but at that time things were murky.
An October 1968 ad in the Citizen-Times promoted “Soul Nite” starring Eddie Floyd. The next time the Jade Club was talked about in the newspaper was in March 1969, when Gene Chandler (of Duke of Earl fame) and other artists gave the impression at the “Grand Reopening”. However, from May to July of the same year, several classified ads in newspapers referenced 101 Biltmore Ave. On June 23, rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, then a country star, made an impression at the club, one night after betting on a concert with Merle Haggard at City Auditorium (now Thomas Wolfe Auditorium).
According to newspaper records, the location at 101 Biltmore Avenue is home to the New Thing Coffee House as of November 1971. In June 1973, it became a youth employment center run by the National Employment Security Commission and the Neighborhood Youth Center.
By that time, the Royal Primes had disappeared.
“Vietnam destroyed us,” says Brown. I’ve come here before. Then we went out and never got together again.
Music returned to 101 Biltmore Ave. on February 10, 1974, with the opening of the original Orange Peel. It had been about five years since the Jade Club had disappeared, and music and fashion had changed. The new club had a DJ booth, hosted disco nights and funk bands with flashy costumes, elaborate soft shows, and towering afros. This is all a far cry from scenario R
“The dance floor is filled with young men dancing ‘The Bump’ or ‘The Hustle,’ a popular dance form among young people,” the Asheville Times reported in 1975.
The Orange Peel is the brainchild of Dick “Dickie” Plemmons, a former inventory car driver who later ran an automotive pet production business in South Asheville. Plemmons co-owns the club with Asheville businessman John Sronce, who owns the building.
The club’s origin story is a bit confusing, but it turns out Plemmons is looking for a booth to showcase the Innersouls, a six-piece band from Asheville that he began leading after hearing the band play at the Kitty Kat Club somewhere else. point R
“We care about our music,” says Samuel Bowman of Asheville, one of the band’s guitarists. “We never take it lightly. “
Leroy Posey, the trumpeter of Innersouls (and later Bite, Chew
The club’s owner, Dick “Dickie” Plemmons, was looking for an attractive call for his new business and someone advised The Apple Peel. Plemmons didn’t like it, Bowman says, but Posey added another fruit.
“He invented ‘The Orange Peel’ and that’s it. They all had other names before, but this club has never had another name since.
The band called Bite, Chew
Natural funk from mid-1970s BCS, down to its hot metals segment and flowing black-and-white suits with collars that looked like wings. When the members weren’t touring, they performed to giant crowds in the club’s three rooms. Carpeted stage with bleachers. ” All the bachelors in that organization were professionals,” Robinson recalled. “As musicians, they were surely excellent. “
This Asheville Times description of the band’s first performance in September 1975 offers a glimpse into that bygone era: “Young music lovers were mesmerized at the edge of the kiosk as BCS performed 3 hours of staging, employing the lights of fireplace trucks. sirens and CO2. BCS members also replaced their costumes 3 times during the show.
BCS’s repertoire included “Fire” via Ohio Players, “Getaway” via Earth, Wind
“Before, we had to walk through people, from the back dressing room to the front, where the LevelArray was,” Martin recalls. “That was the fun part. The dance floor was packed and you were treated like you were a celebrity.
In addition to BCS, The Orange Peel featured performances by regional bands from Greensboro, Richmond, Virginia, Atlanta, Winston-Salem, and other locations. It also attracted national artists such as Archie Bell.
“The Orange Peel is essentially where the Commodores got their start,” says Robinson, who was a DJ on that July 1974 show. Bowman and Martin even recall that Plemmons sold the Innersouls’ team to the Commodores after the Asheville organization disbanded.
Between sets and weekend nights, when bands weren’t playing, The Orange Peel featured music by Robinson (billed as “Little Jimmy Robinson”) and other DJs from WBMU, Asheville’s first nonprofit radio station and one of the few in the country to do so. Another popular DJ, Cleo “Mooseman” Shivers, is known for her “Orange Peel-Peel-Peel-Peel” fade routine.
“I started at The Orange Peel when Dick founded the club,” says Robinson, WBMU president and CEO. “I’m the DJ of the space and we built a DJ booth in a corner, upstairs, with 4 steps leading up to the booth and a small door so no one else could get in. On Friday and Saturday night we just walked downstairs. Lots of partying and lots of dancing.
Martin says the club functioned as a network hub for Asheville’s black population.
“Even the kids would look at their parents and look forward to the day when they were old enough to move on to The Orange Peel,” he says. “Even now [as adults] I’m told that all the time: ‘I wish I could just have passed. ‘”
But the club didn’t last long enough for that.
As with the Jade Club, it is difficult to determine the exact completion date of the original Orange Peel. The last Citizen-Times advertisement for an exhibition at the club in November 1978. A November 1979 newspaper article claimed that a transient workplace for the 1980 U. S. Census was a temporary place of employment. “The U. S. Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to open at 101 Biltmore Ave. , formerly the Orange Peel Club. “
Like so many other black clubs that once thrived in Asheville (the Kitty Kat, the Owl Lounge, the Cage, the Collegiate Club), the Orange Peel is no more.
For most of the next two decades, the building sat empty. After being an auto parts warehouse, The Orange Peel was reborn in 2002 as part of an initiative by Public Interest Projects Inc. , a downtown development company that sought it out for a concert. place again.
Since reopening, The Orange Peel has helped put Asheville on the music map by bringing in big names like Bob Dylan, Ice Cube, Lou Reed, and the Beastie Boys. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters sang the club’s praises in the pages of Rolling Stone. Alternative rock superstars the Smashing Pumpkins made national headlines through nine residencies in 2007, the band’s first in the U. S. and Canada. in the U. S. in seven years.
“Now you can go to The Orange Peel and see everybody,” Martin says. “The Smashing Pumpkins were from Europe and were only looking to play a few places in America, and The Orange Peel was one of them. “
“It’s now,” adds Bowman, the former guitarist for Innersouls.
“Yes,” agrees Martin, “and we’re the ones who built The Orange Peel. “
Editor’s note: This story was updated March 13 to reflect, as it should be, the role of Public Interest Project Inc. at the reopening of the club.
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I skated a lot there in the 1950s, when at Grace School it was fashionable for students to hold skating birthday parties and invite the whole class. I had forgotten the name “Jade Club” but in the mid-1960s, attending the concert. The Shirrells. “My boyfriend and I took our dinner dates to Buck’s Red Carpet Room before the show. In fact, we weren’t dressed in shorts, jeans, coats, and ties. Our dress code would now be called “business casual. “Although the Shirrells were definitely black, until the mid-1960s, Asheville was not very “advanced” in the realm of integration. In fact, I don’t think Jade was a predominantly black club beyond ability at the time.
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