Gee-Haw Stables

Gee-Haw Stables (aka Mercedes' Gee-Haw Riding Academy) was a Harlem jazz club at 160 West 132nd Street, between 7th (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Boulevard) & Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard). The club flourished from June 1940 to about 1945.

History

Gee-Haw Stables, named because a sculpted horse's head graced the entrance, was a tiny after-hours club where the action started around 7 pm and would often go until noon.[1] In 1941, the club was owned and operated by Johnny Bradford (born 1911), who, that same year, married Una Mae Carlisle[2] At the time of their marriage, Bradford lived at 35 West 110th Street, and Carlisle lived at the Hotel Theresa.

In 1964 the Gee-Haw location was a Gulf Gas Station.

Other clubs managed by Bradford

Bradford later managed other clubs in Harlem, including:

  1. Jimmy's Famous Chicken Shack, 763 St. Nicholas Avenue (between 148th and 149th Streets), Manhattan (Sugar Hill neighborhood), opened in 1937 as Jimmy Brown's Chicken Shack at 763 St. Nicholas Avenue; Bradford became the host of Jimmie's in 1949, when it was owned by Jimmy Bacon (né James Bacon; born 1915 Georgia); the lower level of 763 St. Nicholas Avenue, once called a parlor level, is currently a small Senegalese restaurant, "Tsion Cafe & Bakery"; 763 St. Nicholas, in the 1920s and 1930s was a funeral parlor – "Charles M. Jerolomon Parlors."
  2. The Barnyard (1953)

References
  1. Living with Jazz: A reader edited by Sheldon Meyer, by Dan Morgenstern; Shelden Meyer, ed., Pantheon Books (2004), pg. 540; OCLC 54487411)
  2. "Singer Weds Night Club Owner," New York Age, September 27, 1941, pg. 4, col. 1
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