Knight Beat at the Sir John Hotel

The Sir John Hotel was originally built as the Lord Calvert Hotel in 1951, and was home to the popular nightclub Knight Beat. The Knight Beat was an essential stop on the Chitlin Circuit, the parallel music world that many black artists traveled in the days of segregation. The hotel’s bustling pool was a popular hangout for visiting artists and prominent Black leaders, and the scene of Muhammad Ali’s most famous posed photo. Flip Schulke took the striking underwater photo of Ali with fists raised at the Sir John Hotel.

“And so he does. Killens put Overtown on the national map as one the hottest black entertainment pockets in the country during the 1950s and ’60s. Back then, he brought in legends like Dinah Washington, Count Basie and Sammy Davis Jr., who performed nightly in clubs like the Sir John Hotel’s Knight Beat, which he managed.

Back in those days, Killens was known as “Miami’s Mr. Entertainment” His domain included Overtown’s hot spots: Harlem Square, the Island Club and Mary Elizabeth’s Hotel Fiesta Club. And the names were big: Mary Wells, Sam and Dave, Hot Papa Turner, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank DuBoise. Black performers would play at whites-only stages in Miami Beach, then drive across the bay to play Overtown. Often they saved their funkiest sets for those late-night gigs with Clyde; the audiences were often anything but segregated, whites knowing that Overtown was were the real shows were happening.

The clubs were filled nightly with both whites and blacks who did dances like the Madison, the Hully Gully and the Chicken Scratch “like they had rehearsed it the night before. It was just something to see, a hundred of them on the dance floor.” The next day, from 3 to 6 p.m., the neighborhood kids were let in. For a dollar, they’d get dancers, comedians and a singer.”

”The local talent was so amazing,” says Ellis, the jazz musician. “It was like a big pot that was simmering, and anybody could come and bring their bit. It made a hell of a meal.”

Overtown was an essential stop on the Chitlin Circuit, the parallel music world that many black artists traveled in the days of segregation. But it was also close to Miami Beach, where local musicians and national stars like Lena Horne, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and Aretha Franklin entertained at white hotels.

Blacks, even if they were stars, weren’t allowed to spend the night in those hotels. So after the show, they would take their talented selves, and often their white fans, back across the railroad tracks to Overtown.”

Sources: 

//randompixels.blogspot.com/2009/07/overtowns-mr-entertainment.html

//digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/kil5427.0220.088marc_record_interviewee_process.html

//www.henrystonemusic.com/benny-latimore-aka-latimore-talks-miami-soul-i-lived-overtown-at-the-sir-john-hotel/

//www.tapatalk.com/groups/limestonelounge/sir-john-s-knightbeat-hotel-club-t372.html

//www.miaminewtimes.com/news/muhammad-ali-once-made-miami-the-center-of-the-boxing-universe-8501771

//miamiarchives.blogspot.com/2013/06/1963-newspaper-ad-for-clyde-killens.html