Amateur Night In New York: Triumph and Terror at the Apollo

From the moment he rolled out of bed, Arthur Johnson found himself locked in silent combat with a sense of escalating dread. Over breakfast and as he walked to work through Brooklyn's shattered Brownsville section, the power of positive thinking had kept the terror at bay: tonight he'd be making his singing debut at Harlem's Apollo Theater, and that was obviously something to worry about. But the venue shouldn't matter to a real pro, he told himself over and over. If a man hits the right notes in the shower, he can do the same thing in front of 1,500 people. Tonight was amateur night, his first public step on the road to fame.

At first, the strategy worked well enough. But then, as the subway rattled north toward Harlem, Arthur's demons returned. Even above the racket of the wheels, he could hear them sniggering at his fantasies of stardom, playing good cop-bad cop with his head. One voice demanded to be told where he found the gumption to strut his meager stuff before the same footlights that had illuminated the talents of Ella Fitzgerald, Gladys Knight and Michael Jackson. A second and more kindly presence kept urging him to wriggle off the hook. The next stop would be his last chance to walk across the platform and jump the first train home. "Save yourself," the voice said, reminding him yet again that the Wednesday crowd at the Apollo was the meanest, most capricious mob since the days of Nero's circus and the Christian martyrs. Arthur refused to listen, finding within his 22-year-old heart a last, untapped reservoir of ambition to carry him out into the whirl of 125th Street.

Bright and unblinking, the marquee rose above the horizon of the subway staircase: TOMORROW'S STARS TODAY -- RALPH COOPER PRESENTS AMATEUR NIGHT AT THE APOLLO. Tomorrow's stars! He liked the sound of it. He pushed the stage- door buzzer and stepped into another world.

As Arthur followed the doorman's directions down a maze of passageways to the basement waiting room, another of the evening's aspiring showstoppers fell in behind. It would have been hard to find two folks more different. Where Johnson looked like a jockey in an oversize sweater, New Arrival Steve Cruz was packed into a double-breasted, knife-sharp example of the dry cleaner's art. Their attitudes too were poles apart.

"Whatever happens tonight, that's fine with me," Cruz remarked while they were waiting. "Three hundred and sixty-five days of the year I'm plain old Steve Cruz, the guy who drives his truck up to construction sites. But tonight I'm going to be the One and Only Steve Cruz, Live at the Apollo. Winning would be nice, but being out there and singing, that's good enough for me."

For anyone with dreams not daubed in greasepaint, the Apollo's peculiar magic can be a little hard to fathom. That night's first-place winner -- an honor determined solely by the applause -- would pocket just $200. And, of course, there is that infamous Apollo audience, an orchestra and two balconies bursting with folks who give no quarter. Ella Fitzgerald's hazing is a legend. She managed no more than a few off-key notes before Master of Ceremonies Ralph Cooper came out to save her. Stilling the jeers, he won her a reprieve and she started again. On the second try, she brought down the house.