{"id":3741,"date":"1950-01-01T19:56:18","date_gmt":"1950-01-01T19:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/?p=3741"},"modified":"2016-02-08T18:41:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:41:45","slug":"ann-out-on-the-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/1950\/01\/01\/ann-out-on-the-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Stepping Out On the Town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though Peoria had a reputation as the &#8220;land of the rube and the boob,&#8221; it actually had a sophisticated nightlife for a city of its size.<\/p>\n<p>In this photo Richard&#8217;s stepmother Ann (second from left) and a friend (far-right) are stepping out on the town, pictured here with two performers: saxophonist Vi Burnside (far-left) and trumpeter Tiny Davis (second from right). Both Burnside and Davis had been members of the pathbreaking big band the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first all-female integrated band in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Trumpeter Davis, whom Louis Armstrong admired, was a pioneer in multiple senses of the term. Not only was she a crucial member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, but also she was an openly gay performer at a time when very few gay musicians, much less gay jazz musicians, were open about their sexual identity. With her longtime companion Ruby Lucas Phelan, she operated &#8220;Tiny and Ruby&#8217;s Gay Spot,&#8221; a gay bar in postwar Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>The photograph suggests how, in some of Peoria&#8217;s nightclubs, the line between the &#8220;gay&#8221; world and the &#8220;straight&#8221; world was not so fiercely policed and was sometimes blurred. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/view-archive-by-place\/harolds-club\/\">Harold&#8217;s Club<\/a>, where Richard Pryor got his first gig as a paid entertainer, was also known as a venue that welcomed and even fostered\u00a0a broad range\u00a0of sexual expression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though Peoria had a reputation as the &#8220;land of the rube and the boob,&#8221; it actually had a sophisticated nightlife for a city of its size. In this photo Richard&#8217;s stepmother Ann (second [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[387,337,232,393,351,63,21,46,18],"tags":[268,288,287,52,286,285],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pryor-family-album","category-sophisticated-lady","category-the-pryors-and-peoria-between-two-worlds","category-richards-father-and-stepmother","category-6-the-pryor-family-in-the-mix","category-ann-pryor","category-family-affairs","category-featured-document","category-sin-city","tag-ann-pryor-2","tag-gay-life","tag-jazz-musicians","tag-nightclub","tag-tiny-davis","tag-vi-burnside"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6868,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions\/6868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}