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Akron shoeshiner Rollin R. Smith became entertainer of kings
By Mark J. Price
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Monday, Aug 03, 2009
Earning $1 a week at Ben Sears' barbershop on East Market Street near Akron City Hospital, he polished and buffed shoes until they gleamed.
Businessmen could not have guessed that the affable teenager who hunched over their oxfords was destined for greatness. The job required him to look down, but it did not keep him down.
Someday, he would perform before kings.
Smith, the son of Isham and Elmira ''Ella'' Smith, was born in Akron in 1899. He and his older brother, Clyde, grew up in the family's home at 723 Hazel St. Their father, who worked for 25 years as an Akron janitor, was born a slave in Kentucky.
While a student at Fraunfelter Elementary and Central High School, Smith displayed a rare gift for music in pageants and recitals. He mastered multiple instruments, including piano, saxophone, oboe and bassoon, and sang in a beautiful baritone.
During World War I, he shined shoes at the barbershop and found similar work downtown at the Petot Shoe Co. and Hanover Shoe Store, both on South Main Street.
Smith might have spent the rest of his life looking at shoes if he hadn't put together a jazz band to play at Goodyear Hall during lunch hours.
''Back in those days, there was little blacks could do to make a living but play music,'' he told an interviewer years later. ''But to do it well, you had to love what you were doing. And I did.''
Convinced that he could be a professional entertainer, Smith moved to New York in 1922. He found the Harlem Renaissance in full bloom — and things began to happen fast.
As a sax player, Smith joined Sam Wooding and His Orchestra, landed a regular gig at the Nest Club and backed up Harlem jazz queen Florence Mills in the Plantation Revue at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway.
He mingled and performed with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Fats Waller in such venues as the Cotton Club, Apollo Theatre and Savoy Ballroom.
Smith cut a 1923 record, Jazzin' Babies Blues, with trumpeter Johnny Dunn's Original Jazz Hounds on the Columbia label. The next thing he knew, he was headed overseas.
With Will Vodery's Orchestra, Smith followed Mills to London, where she starred in Dover Street to Dixie, a musical revue that ran for 108 performances. Smith played before English royalty, including the Duke of Windsor, Duke of York, Duke of Kent and Duke of Gloucester.
The Akron musician reveled in Europe's jazz scene, touring Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Rumania (now Romania), Hungary, Denmark and Sweden. Smith learned to speak seven languages fluently — and sing in 15 — and appeared before most of the continent's royal crowns.
''The peculiarity of it is the fact that Europe was introduced to jazz years ago, but the foreign orchestras and people are just beginning to grasp it,'' Smith told the Beacon Journal during a late 1920s visit to Akron. ''The nobility must take to a thing first and then the rest follow.
''King Alphonso and Queen Victoria of Spain are both lovers of jazz. . . . The late King Ferdinand of Rumania was a charming gentleman and he thought jazz was wonderful, as did Madam Melba, the French prima donna.''
One of Smith's claims to fame was taking over the lead role of Joe from Jules Bledsoe in the original 1927-29 Broadway production of Show Boat. Night after night, he sang Ol' Man River at the Ziegfeld Theatre. He also appeared in the Broadway cast of Blackbirds of 1929, which featured the classic I Can't Give You Anything But Love.
Fronting a band called Rollin Smith's Rascals, he recorded the 1931 songs Kickin' the Gong Around and Tiger Rag on the Perfect label. His next band, Rollin Smith's Melodians, released I Ain't Got Nobody and Some of These Days on Victor in 1932.
For the rest of the decade, Smith alternated between New York and Paris, appearing in jazz clubs and radio programs and sending checks home to his widowed mother in Akron.
He was playing an engagement in Copenhagen in 1940 when Germany invaded France. The Nazis confiscated his belongings and detained him in Denmark before letting him return to the United States.
In 1944, Smith co-headlined at the Akron Armory in Victory Bandwagon, a campaign tour for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which also featured folk singer Woody Guthrie and actor Will Geer, the future TV patriarch of The Waltons. Smith sang The Star-Spangled Banner, Without a Song and Ol' Man River.
''His artistry, which first showed itself in cultural pursuits in Akron; his winsome personality, rich in the finest human traits; his character, staunch and unshakable; his heart filled with and reflecting mankind's richest aspirations; all this he owes to Akron,'' the Beacon Journal noted. ''All this he brings back to Akron enriched and enhanced through contact with millions of people the world over whose admiration, respect and loyalty he gained as their artist.''
In 1946, Smith returned to Broadway as Chief Lockit in Beggar's Holiday, a Duke Ellington musical starring Zero Mostel. Following World War II, he toured Europe with one of the many competing versions of the Ink Spots. His travels took him to Iran, China and Japan.
Smith accepted a job in the 1970s at the New York Department of Cultural Affairs. For a decade, he gave concerts three times a week in senior centers and retirement homes.
He occasionally visited Akron to see family, including cousins Ella Coker, Marie Harris, Lillian Watters, Rollin Clayton, Paul Jackson Sr., Clarence Coker Jr., Juanita Watkins and Warren Clayton.
''I would like one day when I settle down to own a Hammond organ so I can play soft melodic music when I'm in the mood,'' he said in 1975.
He never did retire.
After eight decades of entertaining, Rollin R. Smith suffered a fatal heart attack Jan. 19, 1985, in New York. He was 85.
He came home to the city whose shoes he once shined.
At Glendale Cemetery in Akron, a headstone in Section 36, Lot 212, bears a simple epitaph:
Rollin R. Smith
1899-1985
Entertainer of Kings.
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send e-mail to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Posted 05:52 AM, 08/03/2009
Dear Mark:
Thank you so much for your stories about the history of Akron and its citizens. Your writing is wonderful and you give such details about things that I have often never heard. Keep up the fine work!
Leesburg, FL
Posted 07:17 AM, 08/03/2009
Wonderful story. I lived in Akron for 35 yrs. but have resided in FL for the past 6 years. I read the BJ online everyday & love to read the stories of Akron's history.
Akron, OH
Posted 08:02 AM, 08/03/2009
That is so cool. I think we should name a new school after him - one where kids take intensive language instruction.
akron, oh
Posted 09:44 AM, 08/03/2009
BRAVO! These are GOOD NEWS stories that can inspire...This stuff should be in the local history curiculum of APS...WestHill is right. Why isn't there at least a park or music/arts festival named after this guy? There ought to be a collaborative project between the ABJ/University/APS/ASPL/county/cities to "dig" these folks up historically. I'm guessing there are many such inspiring GOOD NEWS stories waiting for the light of day. The requirement should be that they spent formative time in Summit County.
LORD KNOWS we need all the good news we can get; even if it's historical. Who knows what seeds can be planted in young minds - IF THEY ONLY KNEW?
Akron, OH
Posted 01:25 PM, 08/03/2009
What great inspiration! Mark Price's Monday Akron history columns are not to be missed. Keep 'em coming!
akron, oh
Posted 09:35 AM, 08/04/2009
hope akron will produce more like him.
