Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater was the first and truest proving grounds for young artists, because there was no real barrier between the performance and the audience’s expression of pleasure or displeasure at the performer onstage. The audience was empowered to display their distaste for a performer’s act, both vocally and even physically, with demonstrative actions like running into the aisles and shouting while pointing fingers, or—if pleased—pretending to faint with joy. The Apollo existed in the days before paneled judges would offer feedback, when even the rudest of comments from a judge seem scripted and a little too made-for-television.
At the Apollo, the audience was there to perform just as much as the person onstage. Like any good audience in a schoolyard escalation, they could dictate the arc of a night, or a whole life, right in the moment. It can be argued that no roomful of people should have this much power, but the crowd of largely Black people was there to give mostly Black performers what they needed: honesty from their kinfolk.
In a moment, I will return to foolish-ass James Brown, who stole “Baby You’re Right” from Joe Tex and so maybe it could be said that he also stole the dance moves or at least had the theft of his own dance moves coming. But now is the time to mention that when Joe Tex arrived for Amateur Night at the Apollo back in 1955, Sandman Sims was the person who had the honor of playing the role of the Executioner. The audience loved the Executioner, but performers didn’t want to see his ass while they were onstage, because if that nigga is coming out after you, that means your time is up. By the time you see the Executioner, the boos are probably so loud that the audience can’t hear whatever shoddy rendition of that thing you were doing anyway. The Executioner’s job is to cleanse the audience of whatever it was they were enduring, by running onstage and tap-dancing the performer off while the boos gave way to cheers.