Jazz documentary co-written by CCRI professor to screen during Black History Month
Feb. 11, 2020
An award-winning documentary on jazz music in Rhode Island co-written and directed
by Community College of Rhode Island Videographer and Film Professor Norm Grant and
filmmaker Tom Shaker will be featured as part of the CCRI’s Black History Month festivities
at all four campuses.
Grant co-wrote and co-directed “Do It, Man! The Story of The Celebrity Club,” which
premiered in 2017, with Shaker, a fellow college professor and author. The film tells
the story of Providence’s legendary Celebrity Club, which featured the top national
jazz and R&B acts throughout the 1950s and was widely considered the first interracial
nightclub in New England.
Owned by local businessman Paul Fillipi, who years later went on to open Ballard’s
Beach Resort on Block Island, the Celebrity Club hosted the likes of Louis Armstrong,
Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, uniting people of all cultures through music in
what were remembered as turbulent times for race relations in Rhode Island.
“Do It, Man!” screens for free on the following dates, times and locations during
Black History Month: February 19from 12:30–2 pm at the Liston Campus Auditorium, February
20 from 1–2:30 pm in Room 222 of the Newport County Campus, February 24 from 1–2:30
pm in Room 2344 of the Flanagan Campus, and February 25 from noon–1:30 pm in Room
1130 of the Knight Campus.
The film earned the 2018 Peter C. Rollins Award for Best Documentary Film through
the American Popular Culture Association and the 2018 Best Documentary Film award
at the Shawna Shea Film Festival. “Do It, Man!” also screened at the 2018 Rhode Island
Black Film Festival and the 2018 Miami Independent Film Festival.
“It’s nice to see it screened here,” said Grant, who laid the groundwork for the documentary
more than a decade ago with Shaker. “When you look at the news in recent years, race
is still a relevant story, so I think this story is still relevant because of that.”
Retired CCRI music professor Lloyd Kaplan approached Grant more than a decade ago
about profiling the history of jazz music in Rhode Island. Grant read Who’s Who in
Rhode Island Jazz, a book written by Kaplan and Hall of Fame bass player Bob Petteruti,
and became fascinated with the section detailing the Celebrity Club, hence the idea
to write and produce a documentary on the club’s origins. Grant and Shaker teamed
up on the project and began interviewing subjects for the film in 2005, from local
musicians to noted historians.
In addition to the music, “Do It, Man!” focuses heavily on Rhode Island’s tempestuous
race relations in the ‘50s. Black musicians were often denied access to hotels in
order to perform at local venues, Grant said, but Fillipi owned a handful of rooms
above the Celebrity Club and would allow visiting performers to stay for a week at
a time so they could play each night in front of sold-out crowds. The Celebrity Club,
located in the Randall Square section of Providence, closed in the early ‘60s after
first opening its doors in 1949, but is often credited for ushering in a wave of social
change in Rhode Island.
“If it wasn’t a turning point in race relations in the state,” Grant said, “I think
it was at least a significant step forward.”
A former award-winning photojournalist who has had his work published in the New York
Daily News, Boston Globeand USA Today, Grant worked in CCRI’s Department of Information
Technology before joining the Marketing and Communications Department. He is the college’s
chief videographer and currently teaches Foundations of Video and Audio Production,
Media and Broadcast History and Documentary Production.
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