This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
{ The apollo kid}


from Harlem, dressed like Michael Jack- son, twitches and twirls. A dance troupe from Japan does impossible contor- tions. A 25-year-old music graduate student from London lugs in her cello. Trying to hear himself in the rising


din, a thin young man in black slacks and a black T-shirt restlessly picks stac- cato scales on his unplugged electric guitar. His iridescent gray sport coat hangs nearby. His black fedora is on the floor beside his guitar case. He is Nathan Foley, 16, of Rockville,


a junior at Montgomery Blair High School. Foley has been making history at the


Apollo. He has finished first on Amateur Night seven straight times over two years. This has never been done in the theater’s 76-year history, according to producers and resident historian Billy Mitchell. On this October Wednesday, Foley’s


eighth appearance, he is competing for “Super Top Dog,” the best of the best of 2010. First prize is $10,000. There is no second prize. “If I have the resources after tonight,


I’m definitely getting a new guitar,” Foley says to his guitar teacher, Eric Ul- reich of the Levine School of Music. Foley pays for all his equipment out


of savings from infrequent gigs. But for Foley, it’s not all about the money. The Apollo is not an end; it is a hallowed gateway to a seemingly limitless future.


on a Wednesday night in november 1934, a nervous 17-year-old girl with skinny legs stood in the wings waiting to go on. Ella Fitzgerald had signed up to


compete as a dancer. When she saw that an act ahead of her consisted of two sisters known as the best child dancers in town, she decided to sing. She was frozen with stage fright. The stage man- ager hissed, “Do something!” “I looked and saw all those people,


and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do out here?’ ” Fitzgerald recalled in a 1989 interview with the Smith- sonian Institution, quoted in “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American En- tertainment,” published this year. “Everybody started laughing, saying,


‘What is she gonna do?’ ” Fitzgerald con- tinued. “I couldn’t think of nothing else to do, so I tried to sing ‘The Object of My Affection.’ ” A voice in the audience hollered,


“Hey, that little girl can sing!” Fitzgerald won the competition,


landed a place in Chick Webb’s band, and became the “First Lady of Song.” That first year of Amateur Night


was a good one. Pearl Bailey also was discovered. The Apollo had just opened in what


had been a whites-only burlesque the- ater. The Apollo catered to all races. Amateur Night was a canny strategy to fill seats midweek and give the com- munity a sense of ownership. For black performers, the Apollo became the most prestigious destination on a circuit with the Howard Theatre in Washington, the Royal in Baltimore, the Uptown in Phil- adelphia and the Regal in Chicago. Financial woes in the late 1970s


forced the theater to close for several years. Now operated by the nonprofit


Apollo Theater Foundation, it continues to present professional performances along with the Wednesday amateurs. To get on Amateur Night, perform-


ers have just 90 seconds to impress the talent scouts. Foley, then 13, auditioned in early 2008 during a regional tryout at the Warner Theatre in Washington. He threw together a medley of instrumental excerpts from “Soul Man,” “Affirmation” (inspired by George Benson’s version) and another he can no longer remember. It was quite a riffy mashup. The


Apollo scouts were dumbstruck. “There was this awkward silence


after I played,” Foley recalls. “They said, ‘Uh, how many songs was that?’ ” He was urged to start over and play


just one. He tore into “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. The Apollo people let him jam for


well over 90 seconds. “I played the beginning, I played the


verse, then I played the solo,” Foley re- calls. “That was my blow-away song. I learned that when I was 10.”


nathan is the youngest of Maurice and Sandy Foley’s three children. He


20 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | January 1, 2010


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158