It’s Showtime! 10 most defining moments of the Apollo!

By Welcome to Harlem on Feb 21, 2011

Harlem's history

On Tuesday, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Shaped American Entertainment” opens at the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibit contains artifacts from the venerable theater’s history, including James Brown’s jumpsuits and Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. To mark the occasion, The Post asked Apollo experts to curate the venue’s 10 greatest moments.

“Jazz a la Carte” opens the Apollo, Jan. 26, 1934

The Apollo was built in 1914 as a 1,400-seat burlesque house for whites only. When Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia cracked down on indecent dancing, the Apollo’s owners started booking black performers and allowing black patrons. “It was during the Harlem Renaissance, and theater owners were vying to see who could bring the best ‘colored’ show to the theater,” says Apollo historian Billy Mitchell. The shift also took advantage of the neighborhood’s changing demographics; Harlem’s African-American population tripled from 1910 to 1930. That first show featured jazz musician Benny Carter and a chorus line called the “Gorgeous Hot Steppers.”

Ella Fitzgerald wins Amateur Night, Nov. 21, 1934

A then-17-year-old Fitzgerald had signed up for the weekly show as a dancer on a dare. But when she discovered she was set to go on after the Edwards Sisters, a pair of dancing siblings, Fitzgerald got stage fright and tried backing out.

“I looked out and saw all those people and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do out here?’ ”

Fitzgerald told the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. “I was real thin, skinny legs, and everybody started laughing, saying, ‘What is she gonna do?’ I couldn’t think of nothing else, so I tried to sing ‘The Object of My Affection.’ ” Fitzgerald would go on to perform more than 30 times at the theater between 1935 and 1959.

Sidney Poitier stars in “The Detective Story,” summer 1951

The first dramatic play to hit the Apollo’s stage starred the then-little-known Poitier. The actor landed the role in between working construction jobs and running a 127th Street soul-food joint. The show flopped and the reviews were unkind. “The goatee, which he sports apparently to add years to his youthful countenance, makes him look like a be-bop musician rather than a gumshoe,” Variety wrote.

The Motortown Revue rolls into town, December 1962

The names on the bill read like a who’s who of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops and a 12-year-old Stevie Wonder all visited the theater as part of a 10-night run showcasing Berry Gordy’s Motown label. “I saw that show,” Mitchell says. “Stevie was 12. Oh, man, I couldn’t believe this kid could play the organ, the harmonica, the drums and sing. That’s why they called him a wonder kid.”

Tito Puente takes the stage for the first time, June 12, 1953

“If you ask people if there was Latin music in the early years of the Apollo, they’d probably say no, because that is not what people think of as Apollo music,” says Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director of the Smithsonian’s African American History and Culture Museum. But even in its earliest days as a burlesque theater, the Apollo held weekly all-Spanish matinee shows, catering to the people in nearby Spanish Harlem. When Cuban and other Latin music exploded in the ’50s, Apollo owner Frank Schiffman began booking regular acts. “When he brought Latin music in, he brought those at the top of the genre, so Tito Puente, Graciela Perez-Grillo, Celia Cruz,” Conwill says.

Puente and his band appeared for the first time in June 1953 (for $2,700), and Schiffman tersely recorded his impression on an index card: “Puente is a very cooperative person. No drawing power.”

The Jackson 5 wins Amateur Night, August 1967

The band, fronted by 9-year-old Michael, electrified the crowd and took home the prize that night. “I saw that show, and I tell you, before the kids even left the theater that night, word had spread all over Harlem that these kids were tearing the Apollo up,” Mitchell says. “There was that notion that the Apollo was the tastemaker,” says Conwill.

The Apollo reopens, Dec. 24, 1983

The theater was shuttered in January 1976 after an incident a month earlier when a man was shot and killed at a Smokey Robinson concert. It briefly reopened in 1978, but closed again the following year. Inner City Broadcasting bought it for $220,000 in the early ’80s, and the theater again reopened with a 1983 Christmas Eve Amateur Night show. “That was a big moment,” Mitchell says. “No one thought it would open again. It delighted the entire community.”

The Juice Crew All-Stars show, Nov. 18, 1988

Dozens of artists from the so-called Golden Age of Rap hit the stage at the Apollo. Run-DMC played as part of the 1987 season of “It’s Showtime at the Apollo.” Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Doug E. Fresh also rocked the theater. But few shows better epitomized the MC culture of the late ’80s than the Juice Crew All-Stars, a collective of hip-hop musicians who came out of a Queens housing project. The show featured Big Daddy Kane, Roxanne Shanté, Marley Marl, Kool G. Rap and Biz Markie, who led the crowd in a chant of “Leave the crack alone.”

Paul McCartney rocks the stage for the first time, Dec. 13, 2010

Legend has it that when The Beatles first arrived in America in 1964, they asked the cab driver to take them straight to the Apollo. Nearly 50 years later, McCartney would get his chance to play there. During his show, he told the audience, “I want to take a moment. I just want to just soak in the Apollo. This is very special . . . the holy grail.”

James Brown records his “Live at the Apollo” album, Oct. 24, 1962

The Godfather of Soul had the idea to release a live album, but his record company wasn’t on board, so Brown spent $5,700 of his own money ($70,000 in today’s dollars) to record his shows. The album would go on to spend 66 weeks on the charts.

Legend has it that Brown performed during Amateur Night a decade earlier — and lost. “People didn’t like the type of clothing he had on,” Mitchell says. “He was from Georgia, so he didn’t look like a New Yorker. He borrowed clothes from a stagehand so he could go out there and be more acceptable.”