‘The Chitlin’ Circuit’ by Preston Lauterbach, about pre-rock black music.

The fancy name for them is chitterlings: the intestines of hogs — the leavings, after all the prime meat has been carved away — cooked and served as an essential ingredient of soul food. In addition to their important culinary function, they gave their name to an equally important American musical phenomenon: the “chitlin’ circuit,” which flourished throughout the South for about two decades beginning in the late 1930s. The circuit first provided venues in big cities and minuscule crossroads for black-run dance bands — the most famous, and the best, being Jimmie Lunceford’s — and then venues for the pioneers in what was first known as the blues, then as rhythm and blues, then as rock and roll: B.B. King, Joe Turner, Wynonie Harris, T-Bone Walker, Little Richard, James Brown, Ray Charles, et al.

The chitlin’ circuit was more than just music — it nurtured comedians and was championed in the plays of August Wilson — but Preston Lauterbach’s focus is on “how the chitlin’ circuit for live music developed from the late 1930s and nurtured rock ’n’ roll from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s.” Lauterbach, a freelance writer based in Memphis, got more than he bargained for when he decided to write a book about it:

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‘The Chitlin' Circuit: And the Road to Rock 'n' Roll’ by Preston Lauterbach (Norton. 338 pp. $26.95)

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“The chitlin’ circuit story that unfolded through old newspapers, interviews with aged jitterbugs, torn scrapbooks, and city directories crossed unexpected backroads: the numbers racket, hair straighteners, multiple murders, human catastrophe, commercial sex, bootlegging, international scandal, female impersonation, and a real female who could screw a light bulb into herself — and turn it on. . . . These are the intertwined stories of booking agents, show promoters, and nightclub owners, the moguls who controlled wealth throughout the black music business. Until records eclipsed live shows as the top moneymakers, new sounds grew on the road and in nightclubs, through the dance business rather than in the recording studio. Though the moguls’ names are not recognized among the important producers of American culture, their numbers rackets, dice parlors, dance halls, and bootleg liquor and prostitution rings financed the artistic development of breakthrough performers.”

Though the circuit operated primarily in the South, its origins were in neighborhoods known as “Bronzevilles”: “black towns within white cities throughout the segregated North.” Lauterbach gives particular attention to the Bronzeville in Indianapolis, presided over by Denver Ferguson, the prosperous operator of a numbers game, whose other holdings included “a busy printing shop, a service uniform factory, and bits of real estate, including the Sunset Terrace and Sunset Cafe.” At the end of 1941, he and his brother Sea incorporated a company “to engage in the business of booking agent, promoter, sponsor and artists’ representative for bands, orchestras, shows, revues, sporting, theatrical and athletic acts, concerts, games, contests, dances, shows, and all other kinds of amusement enterprises.”