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King, Bobby Blue Bland and others would seep down through the floorboards. Bruce Hampton recalls sneaking into The Peacock after sound check and hiding under the stage where the sounds of B.B. Before making his own mark on the Atlanta music scene with The Hampton Grease Band, an underage Col. In the '60s, a younger white audience rediscovered the blues and was eventually drawn to the club. The audience was primarily African-Americans in their mid-30s. "If you were an R&B performer and you hadn't played The Apollo or The Peacock, then you hadn't made it yet," says High. In late 1960, promoter Henry Wynne, owner of the Supersonic Attractions booking agency, bought the club and brought in headliners such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, The Supremes and Ike and Tina Turner, among others. "It was the place where every entertainer wanted to be." "It had so much prestige," says Atlanta blues great Louis "Lotsa Poppa" High, who played there regularly in the '50s. It's difficult to find a legendary blues or soul artist who didn't grace the Peacock's stage at one time or another: Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Etta James. The club was purchased in 1949 by former circus performer Carrie Cunningham, a local hotel and restaurant operator whose love for peacocks inspired her to rename the venue. The club originally opened in 1937 as The Top Hat, which hosted the major black acts of the day, including Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. In its heyday, The Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue stood firm as the crown jewel of Atlanta's rhythm and blues scene. CL could devote a whole issue to now-defunct nightspots, but here are a few too consequential to be forgotten. And for the remaining few who were able to experience these establishments, the memories provide a colorful illustration of the variety of nightlife our city hosted through the years. The big question is this: As Atlantans, what did we actually miss? A great deal, it turns out. Unfortunately, most of these clubs have fallen by the wayside. Stories of the city's bygone venues still get passed down, tales of clock-stopping musical performances and ultra-hip cultural scenes. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but Atlanta's club crowd isn't known for nesting.
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These days you'd better not blink or you'll miss the current It Bar, that one watering hole that'll flourish for a few months then suddenly dry up. It makes sense that in our city "too busy to hate," filled with transients and few who stay put, we've largely forgotten our history.