(Menu) Creole Palace / Harlem of the West / G.A. Ramsey, Proprietor. Second & Market Streets, San Diego, California. 4pp. in decorative stiff wrappers, with a photo of Ramsey. 7.5 x 10”. Undated, circa 1936. Very rare. We could locate no other copy of any Creole menu held by any American institution.

While Los Angeles is often considered the birth-place of West Coast Black Jazz, a special place in the history books is reserved for San Diego’s Creole Palace, which opened during the Roaring Twenties as cabaret nightclub of the African-American Hotel Douglas. Founded by Black entrepreneurs and calling itself the “Harlem of the West”, the Creole offered variety shows of singing, dancing and burlesque, complete with flamboyantly-costumed showgirls, but soon became one of the first outstanding California Black Jazz clubs, attracting such prominent entertainers as Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday and Count Basie. – and later, Harold Land and Erroll Garner – and, like its New York Cotton Club counterpart, welcoming racially-integrated audiences at a time of rigid segregation.
This menu, which includes a full page of alcoholic beverages, from whiskey to cocktails, all selling for 35 cents, includes tributes to the Creole by the Mills Brothers and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and names, as its music arrangers, Joe Liggins and Ellis Walsh.