Stump the German

[Jim Page]

When I was a kid in the late 1950s/early 1960s, I was a fiend for any kind of live music. On Amelia Island, where we owned a beach house, there was quite a bit of live music, but it was strictly segregated. The yearly minstrel show was a strange holdover from long before, and all I can remember of those is the music.

Amelia Island was also home to the American Beach resort and community, which was run by and for blacks, and I would occasionally get brave enough to sneak down the beach after dark to hear the great music sometimes going on there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Beach,_Florida

Our house on Amelia Island was washed away by Hurricane Dora in September, 1964, so that was that. Luckily, we went to our family farm on the mainland to ride out the storm, or we would have been killed when the beach house collapsed.

In addition to us losing our beach house, the storm caused the Beatles to cancel their concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, to which my uncle was going to take me. They played the engagement a couple of days after the hurricane, but I was too bummed out to go.

Still have the orange ticket somewhere, and the price for the Beatles concert, which was sponsored by the WAPE am radio station, was $4.50.

--Jim