During the segregation era, Front Church Street served the African American community as a center for daily needs and weekend life, offering doctors' offices, tailoring shops, shoe shine stands, ice cream parlors, Saturday night blues, and Sunday morning church services, while Rear Church Street was a crowded thoroughfare where African Americans shopped, socialized, dined, listened to music, and attended church. In the segregated 1950s, '60s, and earlier, attorney Carver Randle recalled Church Street as an escape valve for black residents, especially on Saturdays, when it had a festive Mardi Gras atmosphere and supported a largely self-contained community life from fun to health care. As a teenager in the 1940s, B.B. King often played for tips on the street, finding that churchgoers praised his gospel songs but tippers were more likely to pay for blues. Jones Night Spot was the area's premier blues venue, featuring performers such as Robert Nighthawk, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington before moving to Hanna Street and becoming the Club Ebony, where King often appeared after turning professional. Other Church Street establishments, including Sports Place, Stella B.'s, the Pastime Inn, the Cotton Club, the Blue Chip, the Key Hole Inn, Price Night Club, George's Lounge, and Club Chicago, also offered blues music, usually on jukeboxes and sometimes live. Guitarist David Lee Durham, who played with Bobby Whalen in the Ladies Choice Band, once had his own place on Church Street, and other local blues figures included Jerry Fair, Galean Fair, and James Earl “Blue” Franklin. A Canadian television crew filmed Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes and the Playboys performing at the Key Hole Inn in 1990. Although other notable blues musicians were born in Indianola, few played on Church Street because most left the area when young; they included Albert King, Jazz Gillum, Little Arthur Duncan, Louis Collins, Mac Collins, and songwriter Earl Randle.
