The mural symbolically covers a retaining wall of the I-490 highway, built in the 1970s by NYS Dept. of Transportation. Just blocks behind this wall Clarissa St. was once a central corridor of the diverse and self-sufficient Third Ward (now known as Corn Hill). The majority Black community thrived here–beginning in the 1800s and booming during the 1930s-60s–before the community was torn down in the name of so-called “urban renewal.”
VISIT THE MURAL: West Main Street between West Broad & Ford Streets beneath Rt. 490 overpass, Rochester, NY
The Pythodd Room jazz club was part of this ecosystem that included many Black-owned businesses like Vallot’s Tavern, LaRue’s, Scotty’s Drum Corps and Billiards, The Elks Club, Shep’s Paradise, repair shops, dry cleaners, salons/barbershops, grocery stores, a hotel, bookstore, funeral home, doctors, dentists, DJs and publishers. Clarissa Street was Rochester’s Broadway, Black Wall Street, and also part of the national Chitlin’ Circuit, where Black artists could safely stop for a week and play, stay, eat and connect with local artists & neighbors during a period when Jim Crow segregation and racist harassment made touring difficult.
An intergenerational team of Clarissa St. elders who loved the Pythodd co-designed the mural with Teen Empowerment youth history ambassadors and Flower City Arts Center’s Expanding the Field (ETF) youth artists, with final composition by Britton Bradford (aka Un1Sun1), and painted by homegrown mural artist Ephraim Gebre (who also painted the John Lewis and Malcolm X murals in town).
The Pythodd Room was part of the national Chitlin’ Circuit.
The photorealistic collage imagines two generations back on old Clarissa Street, performing in a “band” together–contemporary young musicians alongside internationally celebrated artists, all who came out of Rochester. As young people in the 1950s-early 1960s, these five jazz musicians launched careers playing in house bands at the Pythodd: Ron Carter (bass), Pee Wee Ellis (saxophone), Chuck Mangione (trumpet), Gap Mangione (piano), and Roy McCurdy (drums). Paul Hoeffler (jazz photographer) captured each of their images for a student project between 1958-1960 while attending RIT. At the time, all were in their teens and 20-somethings, playing at the Pythodd. Learn about their incredible careers! You will also recognize people they played and wrote with. Bios courtesy of Rochester Music Hall of Fame.
Born in Ferndale Michigan, Cellist and Double bassist Ron Carter is one of the most recorded bassists in history being heard on over 2,000 albums, numerous times on cello as well. Carter earned a full scholarship to the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1959 and becoming the first African American to play in the Rochester Philharmonic. It was at Eastman where he became disillusioned with the orchestral world and shifted his focus to jazz. The turning point came when he was 20. Leopold Stokowski, then the conductor of the Houston Symphony, had come to Rochester to guest-conduct the orchestra. Stokowski pulled Carter aside after rehearsal and told him, “I’d love to have you in my orchestra in Houston, but they’re not ready for colored people who play classical music.” The two time Grammy winner is still performing today.
Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis is an acclaimed saxophonist and composer who was the architect of James Brown’s era-defining soul classics of the late 1960s, introducing the dynamic arrangements and rhythm that would define the emerging language of funk. Ellis is considered the inventor of “funk jazz” and together with Brown is credited with giving birth to funk, melding together his jazz influence with Brown’s R&B roots. Born in Florida, Ellis’s family moved when he was a teenager to Rochester, N.Y., where he studied at Madison High School and collaborated with fellow fledgling jazz musicians (and past RMHF inductees) Chuck Mangione and Ron Carter. He was given the nickname “Pee Wee” by older jazz musicians with whom he used to jam.
A Rochester native, Roy McCurdy grew up in the Third Ward. He began playing drums at age 9 and took lessons as a teenager with Bill Street at the Eastman School of Music, and at age 17 performed with Roy Eldridge and Eddie Vinson. He played with the Jazz Brothers houseband at the Pythodd where he was inspired and influenced by many jazz greats as his circles rippled. The list of artists with whom Roy McCurdy has recorded or toured is a stunning “Who’s Who” — Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Herbie Hancock, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Nancy Wilson, and Diana Krall, as well as fellow Rochester Music Hall of Fame inductees Chuck Mangione and Gap Mangione.
Read more in Jim Allen’s 2023 cover article, “Beat Master Roy McCurdy: Innovates the Art of the Drum” in About…Time magazine (Vol. 51, Winter edition)
Chuck Mangione has been chasing the clouds away with his music for more than five decades. He’s reached fans around the world with over 30 albums, striking gold and platinum in the process and earning him 13 Grammy nominations, winning two. His “Feels So Good” album became one of the most successful jazz records ever produced and millions of people heard Chuck perform “Give It All You Got” at the closing ceremonies of the1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. From his early days playing trumpet with his brother Gap in the Jazz Brothers houseband at the Pythodd, and on through Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson and Art Blakey. it was clear that with his creative talent the sky was the limit.
Gaspare “Gap” Mangione is a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader, who was born and raised in the Northeast neighborhood of Rochester. Gap’s younger brother is Grammy-winning flugelhornist Chuck Mangione (“Feels So Good”). Gap has recorded ten solo albums and appeared on 6 of Chuck’s and other’s records. Members of a music-loving family, both Gap and Chuck took up instruments as children and 1958 they started performing together as the Jazz Brothers, eventually recording three albums. During his college days at Syracuse University, Gap was house pianist at the 1,200-seat Three Rivers Inn Theater Restaurant and played in big bands accompanying the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nat King Cole. He has also been sampled in several hip hop songs!
Beginning in the fifties, this Rochester Institute of Technology educated photographer, documented the Rochester, NY jazz scene and beyond. Famous for catching on film unscripted and behind the scene moments of all the legends from Billie Holiday to Duke Ellington and from Stan Getz to Dave Brubeck, he became an artist in his own right, as improvisational as many of his subjects. He influenced a generation of photographers that followed him. Ken Burns featured Hoeffler’s photographs through out the 2001 television documentary, “Jazz.” (Courtesy of RochesterMusic.org)
Core values that led to the Clarissa Uprooted initiative–intergenerational exchange, collaboration, and improvisation–are represented in the mural through the presence of next generation musical artists who stand in for the many talented youth who abound in Rochester and also need uplifting.
Here’s a glimpse of these 3 emerging young artists:
Nosym Tillmon is a 23-year-old Rochester native, former TE youth organizer, up & coming artist, social media influencer and radio show owner / host (Nossworld /5IVE7EVEN Radio on 104.3 WAYO FM every Sunday 6-7pm. LOCAL MUSIC ONLY!) He has been rapping for 20 years and his main goal is to build with and inspire others through his music, as well as TikToks, interviews, etc.
Naraya Lott is a sophomore at James Monroe HS, taking honors classes with a 4.0 GPA, and has participated in the Expanding the Field youth artist program at Flower City Arts Center, which helped design this Clarissa Uprooted mural. She has also helped document the process though photo and video.
Taryn “Sunchild” Highsmith is a musician, community activist, writer, curator and event promoter. She connects with her audiences not only through her musicianship as a flutist & EWI player, but emotionally, spiritually and artistically to promote love, healing and a safe space. At 25, she has already achieved several nominations and awards, including “Best Contemporary Instrumental” in Omega Psi Phi’s Talent Hunt, three years in a row; 2019 Roc Award for “Best Band,” with her group with her sister Ariana, “Daughters of ArT,” and most recently a commendation from Rochester City Council for uplifting the community with her music and community engagement, through her musical group LunaSolChild.
A goal of the mural is to celebrate this excellence and encourage and carry on the tradition of developing Black and Brown young artists and entrepreneurs. Youth and families: Explore these arts opportunities available in the City of Rochester!
MURAL PHOTO CREDITS:
Historic Pythodd players: © Paul Hoeffler/Estate of Paul Hoeffler/CTSIMAGES
Historic Black-owned businesses along Clarissa St. corridor: sourced from Third Ward Urban Renewal “Appraisal and Acquisition” Records (1968 and 1973-74), Courtesy of City of Rochester Municipal Archives and Records Center. Sheps Paradise & Elks Club images by Sharon Turner, taken at the Clarissa Street Reunion (1996). (The only 2 commercial buildings still standing). Images of youth musical artists by Jennifer Banister, Rashaad Parker, Najhay Quick.
