Fact #128744
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Art Griswald (blues musician) : We played with Jimmy McCracklin once out there at Hines Farm and Jimmy tells me, "You got to take it easy when you out there playing with me, cause I want people to know who the star is." I said, "Well, you may be a star in California but you're gonna have to shine to outshine me. I don't hold back when I'm playing man." And he said, "But you got to take it easy, there can't be enough room for two stars."
Roman Griswald (blues musician) : Jimmy McCracklin was out there and it was a disaster, cause they just cut everything off when they divided up Route 295 to expand the airport. There was a detour this way and a detour that way, it was horrible. You just couldn't find the place.
Eddie Kirkland (blues musician) : It got real funky out here in the sixties. They started closing the clubs down there, used to be a lot of clubs on Washington Street and up there on Dorr Street. Highway 75 come through there and it messed up all those clubs in Toledo as well as Detroit's Hastings Street area. Hines Farm was still going, but with that airport expansion, as far as Hines Farm, that was the kiss of death. That was it. No one could find the place anymore and there weren't any clubs in the city of Toledo to play. That closed the scene down.
Roman Griswald : Urban renewal come and got quite a few of them, I couldn't understand it. See, when they had the riot in Detroit, the city officials in Toledo thought that anything that happened in Detroit would happen in Toledo. So instead of the people burning it up the city officials had it tore up. They said the bars are the cause of it and then they wouldn't renew your liquor license and they'd tear it down.
Professor Easy (musician) : Now the Caucasian is liking the blues more, but when the blues players were here they wasn't too many wanted to hear it. Toledo is such a holy town, that's why they call it "Holy Toledo." They didn't want you to do shopping on a Sunday; car dealers couldn't sell cars on a Sunday. Then you got the liquor law where you can't buy liquor in some places on Sunday; they call it "Holy Toledo."
John Denver one time said he was in Toledo for a week one night. They roll up the sidewalks at I O o'clock; it's like that. We used to be able to walk downtown and go to clubs or movie houses, now there are no movie houses downtown. Teitkes, Lion Store, all these stores downtown, are gone. They got all these one-way streets down here and you get a ticket if you're driving down one of them. They tore down all the businesses and built up some houses, then some folks started getting killed.
They tried to upgrade the city with urban renewal, building up houses and stuff, and they just made more slums. Those places that they built were just thrown together. So they would have to do so much work on Dorr Street just to repair those places that they built. The city officials always had some kind of conflict going on. The African-Americans wanted to call it "King's Drive" after Martin Luther King but the city officials didn't want to do that.
All the clubs just went, the work in the area just went, the stores left and the people that used to come from Detroit, Fremont, and Cleveland didn't have no place to go anymore. They used to say "Hey let's go down to Toledo," and everything you wanted was there, but there ain't nothing there now. I think the price of everything just went up too, the water rates, the cost of electricity and the property taxes went up, and then that was that, everybody left!
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Roman Griswald (blues musician) : Jimmy McCracklin was out there and it was a disaster, cause they just cut everything off when they divided up Route 295 to expand the airport. There was a detour this way and a detour that way, it was horrible. You just couldn't find the place.
Eddie Kirkland (blues musician) : It got real funky out here in the sixties. They started closing the clubs down there, used to be a lot of clubs on Washington Street and up there on Dorr Street. Highway 75 come through there and it messed up all those clubs in Toledo as well as Detroit's Hastings Street area. Hines Farm was still going, but with that airport expansion, as far as Hines Farm, that was the kiss of death. That was it. No one could find the place anymore and there weren't any clubs in the city of Toledo to play. That closed the scene down.
Roman Griswald : Urban renewal come and got quite a few of them, I couldn't understand it. See, when they had the riot in Detroit, the city officials in Toledo thought that anything that happened in Detroit would happen in Toledo. So instead of the people burning it up the city officials had it tore up. They said the bars are the cause of it and then they wouldn't renew your liquor license and they'd tear it down.
Professor Easy (musician) : Now the Caucasian is liking the blues more, but when the blues players were here they wasn't too many wanted to hear it. Toledo is such a holy town, that's why they call it "Holy Toledo." They didn't want you to do shopping on a Sunday; car dealers couldn't sell cars on a Sunday. Then you got the liquor law where you can't buy liquor in some places on Sunday; they call it "Holy Toledo."
John Denver one time said he was in Toledo for a week one night. They roll up the sidewalks at I O o'clock; it's like that. We used to be able to walk downtown and go to clubs or movie houses, now there are no movie houses downtown. Teitkes, Lion Store, all these stores downtown, are gone. They got all these one-way streets down here and you get a ticket if you're driving down one of them. They tore down all the businesses and built up some houses, then some folks started getting killed.
They tried to upgrade the city with urban renewal, building up houses and stuff, and they just made more slums. Those places that they built were just thrown together. So they would have to do so much work on Dorr Street just to repair those places that they built. The city officials always had some kind of conflict going on. The African-Americans wanted to call it "King's Drive" after Martin Luther King but the city officials didn't want to do that.
All the clubs just went, the work in the area just went, the stores left and the people that used to come from Detroit, Fremont, and Cleveland didn't have no place to go anymore. They used to say "Hey let's go down to Toledo," and everything you wanted was there, but there ain't nothing there now. I think the price of everything just went up too, the water rates, the cost of electricity and the property taxes went up, and then that was that, everybody left!