- IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Green Acres Home for the Elderly and Convalescent today replaces Peyton Place, a once popular party spot and home of Merritone Music from 1968 to 1972.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
APPROXIMATELY one third of the way up the mostly gentle slope from Manor Park to Stony Hill there is a left hook in the road, sudden, sharp and twisting like the vicious, neck-snapping punch of an expert boxer.
The focal point of many a push cart derby on the way down, those pushing pedals too close to the floorboards of iron chariots on the way up have an out if they are going too fast to take the curve - a dash across the broad road into the haven of a gas station, hoping that no one is hurtling down, of course.
Nearly 40 years ago, there were many youngsters who gleefully went across that deep bend, but not for gas. They were headed for the building behind, to fill up on music and stimulating conversation.
They were going to Peyton Place, the home of the Blake brothers-operated Merritone Music from 1968 to 1972.
ENTERTAINMENT PLACE
Winston Blake of Merritone said, "We decided to call it Peyton Place because of the very popular TV soap. The whole idea of the place was that so many things would occur that it would be an entertainment Peyton Place."
And that it was - and more, as some refurbishing was done to the former Mac's Midway before Peyton Place was opened. Kingston Hireage supplied drinks, as well as tables and chairs, for the standard Friday and Saturday, as well as some Sundays, parties.
With an expansive wooden dance floor and a verandah on two sides of the upper floor of the one-storey building, Peyton Place was tailor-made for dancing and for 'cooling out'.
Zack Harrison, a Peyton Place regular, said, "Many romances were born right there on the verandah and blossomed, some even into marriage. Inside there was a smooth, capacious dance floor, so those youngsters who went there to show off their dancing had room."
SELECTOR'S PARADISE
It was also a selector's paradise, as Winston Blake said "We were up on a platform, looking down." At that time, he and Trevor Blake were the spinners on Merritone.
However, with Black Power shoving its clenched fist into the Jamaican consciousness and socialism practically on the horizon a decade after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Peyton Place was also an intellectual cauldron.
"It was where we had the greatest discussions. All the exponents of the various things would meet there,' Blake said. "All ideas would contend at a place of entertainment."
As he put it, "One corner would be dealing with discussion, on the verandah was romance, then there was the dance floor."
The dress, of course, reflected the era.
"In the Black Power/African retention of the times, the hairstyle of choice was the Afro. People were discerning on rediscovering the beauty of the natural hair, men and women. Men wore dashikis, women wore dresses of African style material. Instead of gold and silver chains, we would wear African beads and it was sandals instead of straight shoes," Harrison said of the more 'conscious'.
He noted that 'hot hops' were a favourite drink, that being a hot Red Stripe in the tall bottle.
MANY LANDMARKS
Peyton Place saw many landmarks at home and abroad, including the change from British to Jamaican currency in 1969, as well as Neil Armstrong's "small step" on the moon. Winston Blake pointed out a social landmark as well.
"We were really breaking the tradition of people going to a dance. It was still the band days, of VIP, Glass Bucket, Sombrero. You would put on your jacket and go to listen to a band," Blake said, describing a format where there was dancing, a show, then dancing again.
"We captured that college crowd and the downtown crowd, because we played all the lanes downtown, so we brought uptown downtown and downtown uptown to live under one musical roof," he said.
As Harrison put it, Peyton Place was "classless and colourless".
Under that roof, the sound system ruled, although there were a couple dates with bands. Entertainers did come to perform, though.
"It was an era when the sound system was really important in terms of breaking records, and especially local records," Winston Blake said, as radio would not give Jamaican music much airtime. "Beverly's would give us all their music and Toots, the Gaylads and so on would come to perform on tracks. The artiste would appear at Peyton Place, along with the record," he said, naming producers such as Bunny Lee, Clancy Eccles, Phil Pratt, Lee Perry, Rupee Edwards and Derrick Harriott among those who would operate in this way.
"We were like the radio station for all these producers," Blake said. "The radio stations were not giving them enough play to 'eat a food'. Once a record broke at Peyton Place, radio was under pressure to play it."
He pointed out that that was the era when "reggae was just coming up. It was just going from rock steady into reggae".
'DANCING WAS GOD'
There was another kind of pressure at Peyton Place, though, where Harrison said, "You came to meet and greet and, above all, to dance". And woe be unto he or she who could not do the moves.
"You came to learn to dance," Harrison said. "One of the principal dances was the African Twist."
Then, there were moves like the Shake-Boogaloo, the Shing-a-Ling and the Madison. Among the good movers were Peter Vassell, Lenie Lawrence, Jerry Small, Flo O'Connor, Pauline Bloomfield and Avril Crawford.
"Peyton was at a time when dancing was God. Dancing reigned supreme," Winston Blake said, describing "total discrimination against non-dancers". "It wasn't about sex, it was dancing. Your masculinity came out in how well you could dance."
Among the more memorable sessions put on at Peyton Place was a farewell for disc jock Jeff Dixon, who was returning to the U.S. after an impressive stint on radio. He would come back to Jamaica as Free I, only to be killed along with Peter Tosh in 1987.
CAME TO AN END
Ironically, the music, moves and musings came to an end at Peyton Place in great part because of the camaraderie that existed.
"It was definitely a place that pedestrians could not come. That helped kill it in the long run. You definitely had to have a ride to go there," Winston Blake said.
"In the latter years, when we started to lose business, people who took cabs and had them return for them would get rides and when the taxis returned, they would be gone. The atmosphere was so friendly that people would not want to leave anyone behind," he said.
Transportation woes began and Peyton Place came to an end in 1972.
The building was again closed up for some time and is now open again.
It is now white, though, unlike the grey walls and green roof that were Peyton Place's colours. There is no longer an open verandah where laughter and love 'take breeze' and the floors that were once traversed by the fleet-footed young are now surfaces for less sure steps.
That building behind the gas station across the sharp hook at Red Gal Ring, Stony Hill Road, is now the Green Acres Home for the Elderly and Convalescent.
