In its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the corner of Woodland and East 55th was, in the words of bluesman George Hendricks, "like another city—it was like New York." Before Leo's Casino had its storied run as a Motown stronghold on Euclid Avenue, Gleason's Musical Bar was the anchor of what some called "Cleveland's Harlem." By providing a welcoming place for black musicians to break their talent, Gleason's played an important but seldom cited role in enabling Cleveland to assume its eventual reputation as the home of rock and roll.

The jazz and blues traditions that underlay the emergence of rock and roll found expression in the American South and, as a result of the Great Migration, in northern cities as well. Into the mid-twentieth century, African American performers played the so-called Chitlin' Circuit, a series of music clubs throughout the eastern United States that provided a safe haven from Jim Crow practices. Though less known today than Leo's Casino, Gleason's Musical Bar, opened in 1942 by William "Jap" Gleason at 5219 Woodland Avenue, was one of three local clubs on the Chitlin' Circuit.

Gleason's challenged social norms by being an interracial venue. Although patrons were predominantly black, Jap Gleason never discouraged white patrons from enjoying the music. One famous white patron at Gleason's was radio personality Alan Freed, who is credited with coining the term "rock 'n' roll." In fact, Freed recruited Gleason's performers to play on the WJW radio station. Freed was also the host, coordinator, and MC of the first Moondog Coronation Ball that took place in 1952. Gleason's kickstarted a number of black artists' careers. Jap Gleason employed noted musicians like James Brown and Tiny Grimes for a time. Tiny Grimes was one of the artists billed to play the Moondog Coronation Ball.

Jap Gleason's legacy runs deeper than simply being a music venue owner. He helped set the standard for music establishments in Cleveland. Gleason's Musical Bar was a small stage that seated around 100 people. Jap Gleason did not force patrons to leave after the shows but instead encouraged them to stay as long as they felt comfortable. To Gleason it was about people enjoying the music. He also set a dress code for his patrons and musicians, requiring a high standard of dress for everyone who entered his establishment.

The intimate setting and personalized attention that Gleason showed to performers was not enough to overcome an emerging trend in the music industry, one that accompanied the growing crossover popularity of black music. Gradually promoters at bigger venues began attracting multi-act Motown revues, and the center of gravity for nightlife shifted about two miles east to the "Gold Coast" around Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street. With the club's closing in 1962, Jap Gleason entered into real estate investment until his death in 1996.

In 1964, the location of Gleason's reopened as another club called the House of Blues. This House of Blues had no connection with the former Gleason's or the current House of Blues located on Euclid Avenue at East 4th Street. By shepherding musicians through a difficult time in American history and challenging discrimination, men like Jap Gleason gave up-and-coming artists the ability to hone their music abilities so that rock and roll had a firm foundation. In that sense, the connection between Gleason's Musical Bar and the chain concert hall in the heart of downtown could not be clearer.

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For a generation in the 1940s-60s, Pla-Mor Roller Rink provided a much-needed recreational venue for all ages on the eastern end of the Cedar-Central (Fairfax) neighborhood and for a time was the only Black-owned skating rink in Cleveland. More than a place to skate, it also attracted top-billed musical acts.

On land now owned by Case Western Reserve University, Pla-Mor's location on Cedar Avenue at East 107th Street was a converted bus garage named the Coliseum, which opened in 1940. Built by the same syndicate that operated the Arena on Euclid Avenue, this multipurpose venue was intended for conventions, concerts, boxing shows, basketball games, and rollerskating. In 1942, Elmer "Al" Collins took over the "dark cavern," painted its interior, and opened the well-lighted Pla-Mor Roller Rink. He hired a full-time skating instructor and an organist to provide music for skaters. Not only did Collins enable many youths to compete in the National Roller Rink Operators Association that he founded, he also intervened in the fight against juvenile delinquency in Cedar-Central. In 1948 he even persuaded a "roving gang" that harassed the neighborhood to reconstitute as the Royal Dutchmen, a supervised social and athletic club that pledged to model constructive play for younger adolescents.

Pla-Mor hosted an array of events. Following World War II, the Negro Business Alliance of Cleveland sponsored the "Exhibit of Progress" several years in a row at the facility, drawing as many as 70,000 people to view displays and demonstrations of successful black enterprises, and in the latter half of the 1950s the Call & Post newspaper held its annual Home and Food Show there. The Future Outlook League, a civil rights organization founded in the 1930s, along with Black social organizations such as Coronet, the Ghana Club, and Les Charmantes, held lavish cabaret parties at Pla-Mor in the 1950s. Along with exhibitions and parties, the Pla-Mor ballroom attracted big-name music acts in the 1950s-60s, including Wynonie Harris, Dinah Washington, Frankie Lymon, the Marvelettes, and even B. B. King. In the late 1950s, DJs like WJMO's Ken Hawkins also spun records for dance nights.

But the Pla-Mor was best known for skating, which ranged from children's lessons to teen nights to skating shows such as those by the Roller Vanities. Racial discrimination contributed to Pla-Mor's popularity in the Black community. Although forbidden by law, segregation was common in Cleveland at mid century. From time to time, Blacks reported difficulties at Skateland, another popular roller rink at Euclid Avenue and East 90th Street. These problems seem to have escalated in the 1950s, when the adjacent Hough neighborhood transformed from 4 to 74 percent African American in only a decade. As late as 1955, after an interracial group of youth from Boys Town, Nebraska, went to Pla-Mor after exclusion from an undisclosed East Side rink, a spokesman at Skateland denied knowledge of the incident but openly admitted that the rink tried to deny African American entry except to private parties held by church or school groups. Although Skateland more openly hosted black events by the late 1950s, the Pla-Mor remained essential in the Black community.

In 1965 the Pla-Mor underwent renovation, and took the new name University Party Center. Count Basie's orchestra belted out jazz tunes at the Go-Go Girls Big Cabaret Party in June of the following year. It turned out to be the last of the storied shows at the place many still called the Pla-Mor. Just over a month later, the Hough Uprising broke out on Cleveland's East Side. The University Party Center went up in flames and, according to the Call & Post, was reduced to "twisted lengths of burned steel." Amid the chaos, the Townes family, who lived across the street, attempted to flee the danger in their 1957 Ford. When they drove through a nearby National Guard roadblock, police fired into their windshield, striking 16-year-old Diana Townes, who lost an eye. Four months later, the family's home also burned to the ground.

Today the mention of the Pla-Mor evokes bittersweet remembrances--both happy recollections of good times spent skating or dancing and sorrow for the roller rink's tragic end. Fondness for the good times led a handful of investors to reopen the former Euclid Rollerdrome as the new Pla-Mor in 2009 at 22466 Shore Center Drive in suburban Euclid, promising to keep the memory of its namesake alive.

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