Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Harlem's Apollo Theater, NMAAHC is presenting a multi-media exhibition called Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment. Drawing on wide-ranging materials including historic photographs, costumes, musical scores, instruments and playbills, the exhibition traces the evolution of the Apollo – from its birth in 1914 as a whites-only burlesque theater to its years as a premier entertainment venue and a magnet for audiences from around the world.

James Brown at the Apollo Theater

Photo courtesy of the Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc. Photograph by Kwame Braithwaite.

The exhibition was initially on view until August 29, 2010 in the NMAAHC gallery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. It is now on a national tour and open at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit through January 2, 2011. It will then move to the Museum of the City of New York where it will be on view from January 20, 2011 through May 1, 2011.

Exhibition curators have assembled items from public and privately held collections from across the country. A companion book (Smithsonian Books) with a foreword by Smokey Robinson, Motown singer, songwriter and producer, and an introduction by NMAAHC director Lonnie Bunch, features historic photographs and essays by 23 historians, musicologists and critics including music historian Kandia Crazy Horse, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis and Robert O'Meally, founder of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University.

The exhibition curators are Dr. Tuliza Fleming of NMAAHC and Dr. Guthrie Ramsey, Jr., the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Jackson's Stage Worn Fedora, Victory Tour, 1984

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photograph by Shaan Kokin/Julien's Auctions

Nearly all forms of entertainment – comedy, dance, swing, jazz, rock 'n' roll, soul, hip hop and more – found a place on the Apollo stage. Serving as a place where African American performers could start and advance their careers, the Apollo hosted some of the best-known names in entertainment – dancers Charles "Cholly" Atkins, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson; band leaders Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington; comedians Redd Foxx and Jackie "Moms" Mabley; and musicians ranging from Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton and James Brown to Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Aretha Franklin and LL Cool J.

A short film accompanying the exhibition and narrated by actress S. Epatha Merkerson (television's "Law and Order") throws the spotlight on the Wednesday night phenomenon known as "Amateur Night at the Apollo."

Louis Armstrong's Selmer Trumpet, Paris, c. 1930

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Brought to the Apollo by entertainer Ralph Cooper in 1934, Amateur Night continues to be one of the signature events at the Apollo, confirming it as the place "Where stars are born and legends are made." Among those whose careers were launched or boosted by an appearance on the Amateur Night stage are Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Wilson Pickett, Luther Vandross, and the Jackson Five, featuring a nine-year-old Michael Jackson.

An institution like no other, the Apollo Theater has spawned and nurtured the creative genius of some of America's most famous stars of dance, comedy, and the musical genres of swing, cool jazz, bebop, rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, Latin, and hip-hop.

Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment is organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with the Apollo Theater Foundation.

The exhibition’s national tour is made possible by a generous grant from Time Warner Inc. Additional funding was provided by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The exhibition’s national tour is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).