Tampa on the Chitlin' Circuit

Tampa was one stop on the Chitlin' Circuit, and its clubs, ballroom and boarding houses clustered in the Central Avenue district.

The City of Tampa, quoting National Public Radio, defines the circuit as a group of performance venues, located mostly in the South, that were safe and acceptable places for African American musicians and entertainers to perform during Jim Crow. The city's Perry Harvey Sr. Park history says that by the 1930s Central Avenue offered everything necessary for daily life, including a thriving music scene as a stop on the circuit.

Official sources frame the era a little differently. The City of Tampa says Tampa Bay's musical history thrived during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, especially in the Central Avenue district, and that Tampa was a stop on the circuit during the 1920s and 1930s. Hillsborough County places performances by B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles and James Brown in the area between the 1930s and 1960s, and says Tampa was nicknamed the Harlem of the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

The name comes from chitlins, a pork dish eaten by the Black working class and sometimes served at Black only establishments, a Tampa panel on the circuit explained.

At a WUSF panel held at the Tampa Bay History Center on Feb. 19, a historian and professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County explained that chitterlings were made from pig intestines, according to Hillsborough County. Though not mainstream, the dish, dressed up and seasoned, was considered a soul food delicacy.

Naming the performers' network after a second tier food, the county's account of the Tampa panel continues, reflects the idea that during Jim Crow the racially segregated circuit was not valued by those outside the Black community. The county describes the network as made up of mostly Black owned music venues.

The county's write up of the Tampa panel gives the date as Feb. 19 without a year, and the page was last modified on February 10, 2026, so the event took place before that date.

The City of Tampa names the Cotton Club, Club Chiffon, Charlie Moon's Pool Hall, Johnny Gray's Bar, the Blue Room and the Apollo Ballroom as Tampa's circuit rooms.

The city's Chitlin Circuit page, which credits the Tampa Bay Times as its source, says all of these places featured local musicians and some national acts.

The spelling of the Blue Room owner differs between official pages: the city's circuit page says Watt Sanderson, while the city's park history and the county's photo caption say Watts Sanderson.

The Cotton Club had a reputation of its own. Former Florida state senator Arthenia Joyner, whose father ran the club and who considered herself a child of Central Avenue, told the panel that it was considered the premier place to go, the county reports. Men were required to wear coats and ties, the women always looked sharp, and a policy of no fighting was strictly enforced. People, she said, came dressed and ready to stroll on Central Avenue.

The City of Tampa lists Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, James Brown and Ruth Brown among the national acts that played Tampa's Central Avenue rooms.

The city's circuit page also names B.B. King and Asa Harris among those national acts, and adds that musicians featured along the Chitlin' Circuit included Tampa Red, Mahalia Jackson, Count Basie and Etta James, among many more.

For some performers Tampa was a starting point rather than a tour date. The city's Perry Harvey Sr. Park page states that Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald came through on the circuit, while Ray Charles and Cannonball Adderley started their careers on Central. At the park entrance, James Simon's sculptures of musicians, dancers and a jukebox recall that nightly music, duplicating a bygone scene of dancers enjoying a jukebox while live musicians play next door.

The rooms left strong memories in Tampa. Hillsborough County's account of the panel notes that the conversation turned to childhood memories of sneaking into a bygone Tampa performance hall to hear Ray Charles. Inside the park, the Hey Day wall of Rufus Butler Seder's LIFETILES murals shows the importance of local and national music acts in Central Avenue's history, and the city points readers to From The Scrub to the Twist, a Newspaper in Education publication produced by the Tampa Bay Times, for more on the circuit in Tampa.

Many traveling Black musicians stayed at Saunders' Boarding House, later named the Jackson House, which still stands near Tampa Union Station.

Finding a bed was one of the hardest parts of touring under segregation. At the Tampa Bay History Center panel, an author and filmmaker who had traveled the circuit as a young child with her musician father described the challenges, and sometimes dangers, Black performers faced in finding lodgings, restaurants and general services during the Jim Crow era, according to Hillsborough County.

The city's Soulwalk marker for the Jackson House says Moses and Sarah Jackson built it as a private residence in the late 1890s and converted it to a boarding house, a change that may have begun as early as 1910. It grew in importance and in size after Tampa Union Station opened less than one block away, providing accommodations for African American railroad workers and visitors at a time when, through the early 1960s, they were prohibited from staying in white hotels, motels and boarding houses. The Jackson family kept the building throughout its time as a boarding house, which ended in the 1990s, and the marker says it is the only such segregation era lodging for Black visitors to Tampa that remains standing.

Jimi Hendrix came later and to a different stage, playing two 1968 concerts at downtown Tampa's Curtis Hixon Hall rather than a Central Avenue club.

Hillsborough County records that he began his music career in Clarksville, Tennessee, toured with a variety of bands including the Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Ike and Tina Turner, and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966.

The City of Tampa's Soulwalk marker records two nights, August 18 and November 23, 1968, at Curtis Hixon Hall, which is now Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Out of the 216 concerts Hendrix played from 1967 to 1970 with the Experience, two were in Tampa, and both were near sellouts with more than 7,000 fans each night. The county says the Hillsborough County Historical Advisory Council and the founder of the University of Tampa Guitar Club erected the marker in 2019 at North Ashley Drive and East Zack Street, on the right side of Ashley Drive heading south.

The county's write up says the WUSF panel on the circuit was funded by the Arts Council of Hillsborough County through its Special Event Partnership Grant program and moderated by an NPR television and media critic.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, using the City of Tampa Chitlin Circuit, Perry Harvey Sr. Park, Jackson House and Jimi Hendrix pages and the Hillsborough County Chitlin' Circuit Chronicles and Hendrix marker pages.