Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 16, 1993 TAG: 9309160058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
They relish in booing - in bringing on the Sandman.
The villainous Sandman. They call him the Executioner.
He means the hook. Failure.
Fresh blood.
This is New York City. The Apollo Theatre.
There isn't a tougher audience anywhere.
Performers know this, yet they go anyway.
Just like a group of Roanoke performers and a singer from Lynchburg who went to the Apollo recently to brave the famous theatre's Amateur Night - and to take on the blood-suckers who flock there every Wednesday to feed.
Going in, they knew just how harsh the Apollo can be. They knew who lurked in the shadows, ready to strike. They knew the risks.
But that didn't stop them, just as it never stopped Ella Fitzgerald or James Brown or Michael Jackson - performers who all stood up to the Sandman and proved the risk of humiliation was worth taking.
Why couldn't the next Godfather of Soul come from Virginia? Off of a chartered bus, no less. In Roanoke and Lynchburg, they set their expectations high.
At the same time, privately and not-so-privately, they prepared themselves for the hungry Apollo audience. Virginia? Where's that?
Booooo!
Their eyes harbored fear not even sunglasses could hide.
The journey started early, at 4 a.m. on a Wednesday in the parking lot of Hills department store on Hershberger Road - the same spot where the trip would end a grueling 30 hours later.
Sherman Clements sat sleepily by himself, knowing all eyes would be on him soon enough. He had been up all night - unable to sleep from excitement and anxiety. The idle of the chartered bus hummed to him like a lullaby.
From across the aisle, David Gregory teased Clements about his nerves. You're gonna open your mouth to sing and nothing is gonna come out. You're gonna freeze. The needling continued all day.
Around his neck, Clements wore a wood emblem with the letters, R.A.W. Ready and Willing. Clements, 29, boasted he was both.
The emblem also advertised the name of the band, Ready and Willing, that Clements would front as lead singer on the Apollo stage.
Clements, his needling friend, Gregory, and band mates, Darryl Davis, Steven Ross, Todd Gregory and Reggie Woodson won their seats to New York back in July.
Their group finished among the Top 5 in a talent contest held at William Fleming High School in Roanoke. A talent agency hired by the Apollo sponsored the show.
Winners earned a chance to play Amateur Night - a Wednesday tradition in New York dating back more than half a century, the place where many of America's best black entertainers started.
Besides Ready and Willing, other Roanoke performers that earned a spot on the Apollo bill included DeAnna McGhee-Morgan, Enjoli Evans and a second group, Much Too Much.
Lynchburg was represented by Sebrena Hood-Hall.
Only Enjoli Evans and the members of Ready and Willing and Much Too Much rode the bus chartered by the talent agency.
DeAnna McGhee-Morgan and her husband drove up on their own. Sebrena Hood-Hall was envied by all. She chartered her own bus and filled it with friends, family and other hometown boosters.
Ammunition to counter the Sandman.
Nothing matched the cool of Enjoli Evans.
Maybe it was her age. At 10 years old, maybe she was too young to understand just what it means to play the Apollo, and just how rabid a New York audience can get.
Or maybe it was her grandmother's lucky dime.
The dime, which has been in the family for years, was supposed to be tucked away safely to give Enjoli an extra edge. It wasn't until she reached the Apollo that she discovered she mistakenly had left the coin at home.
Would this loom as a bad omen? Who could predict.
Enjoli remained the essence of calm.
Maybe performing just runs in the family.
Enjoli's grandmother, Sarah Evans, lived a musical childhood as a girl growing up in rural Henry County. Every morning, she awoke to the gospel singing of her mother echoing through the farmhouse, like a chorus of angels led by Mahalia Jackson.
Then at night, Evans tuned her radio to faint broadcasts from the Apollo. Etta James was her favorite, and Evans dreamed of becoming a great blues singer. She pictured herself standing on the Apollo stage, the toast of Harlem.
But the blues were forbidden.
Her father, a preacher, and her mother, who led the church choir, made themselves clear. If Evans joined any bands playing the devil's music, she wouldn't be welcome at home.
So, despite offers, Evans stayed home.
At 22, she married and moved to Roanoke to raise a family with her husband. Still, she sometimes wonders what might have happened had she pursued the blues instead.
To her granddaughter, Evans offered encouragement. She gave Enjoli her lucky dime. She shared her own story. "She's got a better chance than I did," Evans said.
Evans couldn't make the trip to see Enjoli perform. She left that to Enjoli's other grandmother, Carol Helms. Instead, Evans stayed home and cared for her ailing husband and his brother.
She waited by the telephone and prayed.
At stake was a return trip to the Apollo.
Amateur Night competition is a kind of musical playoffs, where the top finishers advance to other Amateur Nights until eventually the final winner gets a record contract.
Audience response determines everything. Judge and jury.
Showing weakness is death. Fear is worse.
Anthony Roseboro talked about it like an old pro, having lived through the Apollo experience before.
In 1989, Roseboro played Amateur Night with a group he formed with some classmates at William Fleming. The group, F.B.I., won the trip after placing in a talent contest in Richmond.
Roseboro - then just 18 years old - said he was terrified. "I thought I was going to throw up. I thought I was going to have diarrhea in my pants."
Coming from Roanoke made it even harder. Other amateur performers ribbed them. "You all are a bunch of country boys. They're gonna laugh you off the stage."
New York seemed like a different planet, he said.
But F.B.I. placed 2nd, earning the group a return trip. On the second try, the group placed a respectable fifth.
Now 22, Roseboro has overcome his terror.
"The fear is gone. Now I'm like, New York, bring it on."
He viewed his third Apollo appearance more as business. Fronting a new group, Much Too Much, with his 16-year-old twin brothers, Derek and Dion, he hoped to land a record deal.
"We're going for exposure," he said.
Roseboro wrote an original song for them to perform, "I Like It," which he described as "hip-hop smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal."
Coming in with something original would be a risky move for Amateur Night, however, where most performers stick to the hits of the day.
"I Like It."
Roseboro was confident New York would like it, too.
The 7:30 curtain call suddenly seemed so close as the bus rolled down 125th Street - 12 hours after leaving Roanoke and after picking up other performers in Richmond and Washington.
Harlem, like all of New York, bustled with activity. People and street merchants, food vendors and taxis filled the streets and sidewalks.
Among the buzz, the Apollo goes less noticed than Roanoke's Grandin Theatre along Grandin Road. From the outside, the Apollo doesn't appear much larger than the Grandin, either.
But inside, the plush lobby, the double balcony and the dozens of framed pictures of stars, ranging from Billie Holiday to Miles Davis to Aretha Franklin, established a keen distinction.
The Apollo smells of legends and ghosts and dreams.
The stage crew quickly went to work on the weary travelers from down South, barking instructions and rushing them through a hasty sound check. Welcome to New York City.
Sherman Clements felt in awe - and scared out of his mind.
"I'm sweating," he said, as he waited for Ready and Willing's sound check and rubbed his neck trying to ease the tension.
Clements told himself "to sing to the ladies." That had always worked for him in the past. "If everything goes right, I think we'll blow the roof off."
If not, he said it wouldn't be the end of the world. The important thing, really, was playing the Apollo, not winning or losing. Nothing could take that away.
For any critics back home, he readied a response.
"Yeah, we got booed, but where were you?"
Backstage, the dressing room area bustled to match the Harlem street scene outside. The rooms were cramped and stuffy and the air was rich with sound.
From the stage, the Apollo band ran through a final rehearsal. From the dressing rooms, singers warmed up their voices. The sound of dancing feet echoed off the walls.
Anthony Roseboro and his brothers huddled and prayed aloud.
But Sebrena Hood-Hall was missing.
She apparently was late arriving from Lynchburg and missed her sound check. Now, with curtain call only 30 minutes away, she would have to take the stage cold.
DeAnna McGhee-Morgan, on the other hand, had arrived three hours before. She sucked on lemon wedges and cough drops and wondered where her husband would be sitting in the audience.
They are newlyweds. "When he smiles, that's when I'll know I'm doing good," she said.
The performers are called to the Green Room, Apollo purgatory, where amateurs must wait for their turns on stage, and where they must return - in triumph or defeat - after the Apollo finishes with them.
A television monitor showing the stage blinked in the corner. A schedule posted on the wall listed when each act was slated to go on stage. Nobody wanted to go first. But Ready and Willing got the call.
In the auditorium, people filed into their seats. How many would they hook tonight? Just off the stage, the Sandman suited up in his crazy clothes and rainbow wig. He clutched a broom.
How many dreams would he shatter?
Who would hear the Executioner's song?
"We love New York!"
Sherman Clements greeted the Apollo audience as the band kicked into the song, "Games" by Chuckie Booker. The crowd waited patiently, giving Clements and company a fair listen.
Clements didn't freeze, as his friend had teased.
But on the chorus, the group's harmonies went wrong.
A few boos rose up above the drive of the beat. Then more boos. Boos on top of boos. It turned quickly. A siren roared.
The call of the Sandman.
Back in the Green Room, the other performers clapped politely for the group when it arrived back downstairs. David Gregory shook his head, shell-shocked, and only needed one word to describe the experience.
"Rough."
Yet, the group members agreed later, they would come back again, even knowing beforehand that they would get booed again. "I ain't upset over it," Reggie Woodson said. "It was just an honor to be out on that stage."
One down, four to go.
Next up came Anthony Roseboro and his brothers, dressed sharp, in matching bold yellow suits that their mother sewed for them. "You can't look like a nerd," Roseboro explained.
Again, the Apollo gave them a chance.
The twins hit the stage first, stepping and dancing in unity. The novelty of twin brothers and the sharp clothes held off the boos.
Roseboro came out equally strong. "Say Much Too Much! Say Much Too Much!" he rapped as his brothers danced and the music throbbed.
It wasn't enough. Maybe because of the unfamiliar song, maybe because they were country boys, whatever the reason, there would be no record deal this night. Only boos. Crescendos of boos.
Disappointed but not dejected, Roseboro took the bloodletting in stride. That's the Apollo. "It doesn't make me feel less of myself as an entertainer," he said.
New York. Bring it on again.
"I'll be back, that's all I can say."
Sandman 2, Roanoke 0.
The Star City would walk away unscathed only once.
"Bring it home Dee," shouted Sherman Clements when DeAnna McGhee-Morgan was called to the stage. If she got booed, then Roanoke's hopes would rest solely on Enjoli Evans - a hard spot for a fifth-grader.
McGhee-Morgan wasn't concerned.
"I didn't worry about being booed. I was just worried about whether I was going to win or not."
She sang "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston and never spotted her husband's smile in the crowd. But she didn't need it.
She had Eva instead. Eva is the Apollo barometer, a front-row fixture that the crowd looks to to either lead the cheers - or the feeding frenzy.
Eva gave her a standing ovation. "She was smiling and clapping and saying, `Go ahead, girl!' So, I knew I must have been doing good," McGhee-Morgan said.
Bring it home, indeed. Nobody uttered a boo.
Sebrena Hood-Hall fared even better.
She sang "I'll Always Love You" by Whitney Houston and brought down the house.
Of course, it helps when you pack the house, too. But the wild reception she received came from much more the 45 or so supporters she carried from home. She was a sensation.
Maybe arriving late was the way to go, after all.
Or maybe it was the way she carried herself. She had what they call presence, like she belonged on the Apollo stage, like she was just as famous as Whitney Houston.
Either way, not only did Eva give her a standing ovation, everybody gave her a standing ovation. Clearly, Hood-Hall stood out as the show's runaway winner.
Afterward, in the Green Room, she basked in the moment and thanked God. She hoped this wasn't the end. "I hope I'm taking a step here," she said.
Virginia? Where's that?
Oh, yeah. It surrounds Lynchburg.
In the end, it was young blood they craved most.
Ten-year-old blood.
They rejoiced in it, unashamed, with venom fresh on their lips. This was the essence of Amateur Night, the true nature of the beast.
Somewhere, the Sandman howled with delight - while tough little Enjoli Evans broke down and cried in her grandmother's comforting arms. Ten-year-old tears.
It was the song that failed her. "I Love Your Smile" by Shanice Moore. Enjoli picked a song meant for a woman to sing, not a young girl.
Her voice just wasn't strong enough or mature enough to carry such a song. She should have picked a song better suited for her tender voice.
Worse, she got rattled.
When the boos started drowning out her singing, Enjoli sensed the end was coming. She could see the Sandman waiting in the wings. She kept looking over at him.
The crowd could see she was frightened.
The boos came louder and louder and louder. Finally, the music stopped and the siren wailed. Enjoli hurried to place the microphone back on its stand. The Sandman started out.
In panic, she dropped the microphone. It landed with a resounding thud that cut through the sound of the siren and the boos.
Then Enjoli fled and the audience roared.
But sometimes even the beast has a heart. Even in New York.
In a rare display of mercy, the Apollo offered Enjoli a chance to come back and try again - only she would have to pick a different song, something more suited for her.
Enjoli accepted.
And somewhere, the Sandman smelled fresh blood.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***