CLEVELAND, Ohio -- There was just something about this dark basement club at 7500 Euclid Avenue. Yes, the sound was impeccable, the crowd well-dressed. The bands were legends in the making. 

But Cleveland's historic nightclub Leo's Casino was about more than music -- even when acts such as the Supremes were using the stage as a springboard to stardom. 

"The world felt like it was falling apart, and yet in Leo's you'd have everybody singing together -- black and white, full of love and joy for music," says Supremes singer Mary Wilson. 

Wilson recalls a show at Leo's in the summer of 1966, when "You Can't Hurry Love" was hitting the charts and the world was literally coming apart down the street.

The Motown group rode into town to play three shows at the club on July 24 -- in a Cadillac they had borrowed from Motown mogul Berry Gordy. 

"We barely knew how to drive the thing," says Wilson. "We were just young girls."

They also didn't know what to expect, given that they were rolling up just as the Hough riots that gutted the Cleveland neighborhood were winding down. The race riots and a week of arson, bombings and violence resulted in four deaths, dozens injured and 300 arrests. The episode turned America's racial divide into an open wound.

Even as it sat on the edge of Hough, Leo's seemed like the last place on Earth touched by it all -- where music played even as the fires raged. Two of the three shows went off without incident. The third was canceled only because the National Guard needed to clear the area to restore calm.

"America might have been segregated, but there were these iconic places like Leo's where people came together," says Wilson, whose earliest shows outside of Detroit took place in Cleveland. "Leo's was part of that golden moment in time where music showed Americans what we had in common."

Cleveland's musical soul 

Wilson, like everyone else interviewed for this story, looked back at the club with more than nostalgia. After all, the 700-capacity club in the basement of the old Quad Hall Hotel sat on historical, cultural and sociological fault lines that continue to underscore issues of race, the rise of music as a megabusiness and the demise of the Midwestern city. 

It also reveals Cleveland's music soul, says Greg Harris, president and CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

"The idea of an integrated audience enjoying the sound of music is a big part of Cleveland's story -- and a big reason the Rock Hall is here," says Harris. 

Of course, the case for having the glass palace in Cleveland begins with Record Rendezvous -- the Prospect Avenue record store owned by Leo Mintz that sold "race records" to whites and blacks alike. There's also the Moondog Coronation Ball on March 21, 1952, considered the first rock 'n' roll concert.

"The idea of bringing people together started with Alan Freed and Elvis Presley playing Brooklyn High School and carries through Leo's Casino," says Harris. "You look at this club and realize why the city has such a great music legacy."

In 1999, the Rock Hall designated the club as a rock 'n' roll landmark. 

"Leo's is also part of this great tradition of music fans going to clubs to see bands because they were passionate about music, even if they didn't already know the band," he adds. "That's how Cleveland developed its musical knowledge -- by going out and experiencing music."

No doubt. 

First Leo's, then the Apollo

Cleveland's claim to being the Rock 'n' Roll Capital revolves not around stars or anything remotely resembling a record industry. Rather, it comes down to its fans -- of which there seemed to be an endless supply at Leo's.

In the 1960s, the club was the go-to spot for music fans looking for the freshest sounds. It introduced Cleveland to the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles, Nina Simone and Martha and the Vandellas. 

Aretha Franklin lorded over the stage like a statue in a glittery gown. Stevie Wonder was still a kid when he performed there, which meant he needed a work permit from the city of Cleveland. Otis Redding played his last show there -- Dec. 9, 1967 -- before dying in a plane crash the following day.

In many ways, Leo's helped introduced the country to the music of Young America, says Martha Reeves, leader of the Vandellas.

"Cleveland was so close to Detroit that Leo's was the first stop for us heading out," says Reeves via phone from her home in Michigan. "But it felt like playing back home, so you would feel up close and personal and part of the audience."

Its role in the national music scene earned an induction into the nascent Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame in Detroit. 

"Berry Gordy would break artists by having them play Leo's because he felt that if you could cut it there, you could make it at the Apollo," says Lamont Robinson, CEO and founder of the R&B hall. Robinson, a Cleveland native, would go to all-ages shows when he was 6 to see his uncle, noted Cleveland R&B musician Gus Hawkins, play Leo's. 

"James Brown would take days off on a tour just so he could come the Leo's to hang out and see some music," he adds. "It was that happening."

Shows were often $2, which explains Marvin Gaye's $1,000 payday for the four-night stay. Comedians usually opened the evening, and Leo's hosted some great ones, from Redd Foxx to Flip Wilson to Dick Gregory, who called it "the most integrated nightclub in America."

Reeves recalls feeling lucky to be in the audience the night Richard Pryor opened for Martha and the Vandellas.

"I felt like I was witnessing greatness," she says. "The thing is, looking back you realize that history was being made. But at the time, it just felt like something really spiritual was going on, and you could have riots in the streets, but we were all dancing in the streets."

Life of the neighborhood

Reeves remembers something very specific about Leo's -- its owner, Leo Frank. 

"He was a generous and kind person and made you feel like you were at home," says Reeves. "It reminded me of Berry Gordy saying, 'We don't want a song that divides us, because we are all Americans.'''

While Frank, who died in 1999, is often credited for the club's pioneering role in bringing the races together in song, he was by no means a social activist. He was all about the music.

He opened the first location in 1952, at East 49th Street and Central Avenue, to bring in jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. When the club burned down 10 years later, he took on a business partner, Jules Berger, and moved into the old Quad Hall Hotel.

When it opened in 1925, Quad Hall was hailed as a Gothic masterpiece. By '62, it was just another faded hotel looking for a new lease on grandeur.

Patrons had to walk past a bar to get to Leo's, which boasted black walls, red carpets and white tables covered in white linen.

"Leo's sat in the middle of this culturally important area along Euclid Avenue that ran up to East 105th Street," says John Wilson, who performed in the club with his band Sly, Slick & Wicked. "In the 1960s, the area had all these clubs like the Versailles, the Circle Ballroom and the El Dorado, and they brought people down and, in the case of Leo's, tore down racial barriers."

For decades, the broader area was considered Cleveland's Harlem - a culturally vibrant stretch that boasted nightclubs and vaudeville and movie theaters.

For many of those years, it was anchored by Gleason's Musical Bar - a nightclub on Woodland Avenue and East 55^th Street that enjoyed a heady run from the late-1940s  until it closed in 1962. Gleason's was a forerunner to Leo's Casino in its pioneering bookings and appeal to white as well as black music fans - Alan Freed was a regular and recruited musicians -- but it also proved to be a cultural anchor and magnet for creativity in the neighborhood.

John Wilson points to these venues in much the same way contemporary urban planners have come to embrace creating entertainment districts to revive decaying downtowns in America.

"These places inspired people to play instruments and form bands and do shows and make records," says Wilson. "They kept the neighborhood vibrant and alive."

They were also integral threads in the cultural fabric that spanned the city and attracted music fans such as Mike Funtash, who regularly went to Leo's to see Smokey Robinson, the Supremes and the Temptations. 

A golden moment

"I was living in Slavic Village and working as a teletype operator, and it felt so alive and fun being at Leo's, where everybody was dressed up and being so close to these incredible performers," says Funtash, who lives in Lakewood. 

The men came in suits and ties. Women donned mink stoles, new threads and hairdos. It was a night of cocktails, cigarettes and tuneful music. 

"I still vividly remember standing at the bar as Smokey Robinson sang 'Yesterday,''' says Funtash. "The sound was so clear and the voices so beautiful that even then, you had the feeling that all these performers were all on their way up."

Most of the acts were. Within a decade, performers such as Diana Ross were playing arenas.

"I remember going to see her play the Richfield Coliseum in the 1980s, and there were thousands of people screaming," says Funtash. "I hated it. I realized that Leo's was a different era, before music became a big business -- back when you went to see groups in a club instead of squinting at some Jumbotron because they're on a stage so far away."

In many ways, Leo's was done in by the success of the stars it helped spawn. 

By the late 1960s, most of the artists who had made the place so popular had moved on to those arenas and Jumbotrons. The neighborhood, meanwhile, went in the other direction. 

"After the riots, you started seeing people leaving, and then one empty building after another," says Gus Hawkins, who played sax at Leo's in the band Sounds of Unity and Love. "By the time the clubs had all gone, I thought that the neighborhood that I knew and loved had left with them."

Leo's closed in 1972. Leo Frank died in 1999 -- two weeks after the Rock Hall erected a plaque declaring it a landmark.

The site is home to an Aldi grocery store, a reminder that, indeed, those were different times, never to be repeated.

But Leo's lives as more than merely a memory. 

"Each generation brings change and unfortunate changes to cities," says Mary Wilson. "But I look back at Leo's and remember it as a golden moment that left behind a great legacy.

"Not just in terms of playing there as some young girl with the Supremes," she adds. "Leo's showed that music is the great ambassador in bringing people together, no matter how divided we might see ourselves." 

CRADLES OF ROCK

This is the first installment in an occasional series that looks at music venues that have played a role in Cleveland's cultural fabric and established it as an important music city.