ROSELAND:Frank Sinatra Slept Here

ROSELAND
Frank Sinatra Slept Here

As the story goes, a skinny, new singer with Tommy Dorsey's big band,
by the
name of Frank Sinatra, liked to relax between rehearsals by playing
baseball. When the
band was playing at Roseland Ballroom in Taunton, Massachusetts,
Sinatra often played
pick-up games in the parking lot outside the ballroom with musicians
and local residents.
Roseland Ballroom in Taunton on Route 138 was once one of New England's
hot spots
for swing bands.
"I know I caught a few sliders from him," seventy- year-old Harry Tutt
said. Tutt used to work at Roseland in the late 1930's and early 1940s.
It was the heyday of the big band era. He remembers a lean,
greasy-haired kid with sunken cheeks, puffing on a cigarette, throwing
fastballs during pick-up games outside of Roseland.
Sinatra began his career with the Harry James Band, but made his first
recordings with Dorsey's band in 1940. By the time he was playing
Roseland, he was on the
verge of becoming an entertainment phenomenon.
Tommy Dorsey was a big fan of Rose Kaplan Simone's homemade chicken
soup. Rose, the ballroom's namesake, was the person who made the
ballroom a mecca for big name stars like Dorsey, Sinatra and other big
band favorites.
She was good friends with Dorsey and enticed Dorsey to Roseland., not
only with her chicken soup, but the guarantee that fans from all over
New England would be there
to hear the orchestra. It was true. During the 1930s and 1940s,
Roseland Ballroom was a
legend for big band music lovers. Only the best big band names played
the 20,000 foot
dance floor ballroom.
Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, the Dorsey brothers;
Jimmy
and Tommy, Russ Columbo, Guy Lombardo, Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald
all
played Roseland. Rose Simone and her husband Michael hired only the
biggest and the
best of the big band names to play the venue. Lawrence Welk never
played Roseland.
Rose refused to hire him because she felt he was an unknown and
wouldn't draw a crowd.
Some of the country's greatest dance teams also came to take part in
Roseland's famous
dance contests.
Rose Kaplan Simone immigrated to Boston from Gradna, Russia as a young
girl.
Although barely making it out of the eighth grade, she didn't seem to
need an education
to become successful. She had an interest in the entertainment industry
from the start and
saved her money, working in an ladies undergarment factory, until she
had enough to buy what is now Roseland Ballroom.
Rose believed in magic and every Saturday night, Roseland Ballroom
was
transformed into a special place for Big Band magic. "Anything is
possible, if you believe
in magic," Rose was known to say.
Roseland Ballroom was built in 1924 by John Nichols on the property he
owned at the rear of his home on Bay Street, in Taunton. Rose bought
the place, then a huge old barn, at an auction in 1926 for $2,000. She
began by running a barn dance in the place. It was decorated with wild
flowers and branches from the nearby woods and there were still cows in
the next room off the dance hall floor, often mooing over the music.
Rose once raffled off a pig to help raise money to pay off the mortgage
she held on the place.
Over the next several months, the barn dances became so successful
that she was able to tear down the old barn and build a new three story
dance hall, complete with a
penthouse, where stars like the Dorsey brothers and Frank Sinatra would
while away the hours playing poker and telling stories between
shows.
Paul Whiteman's big band was the first to play at Roseland's grand
opening in
1927. Whiteman known as "The King of Jazz," and had been a famous
bandleader for
over a decade. It was Whiteman who gave the Dorsey brothers their start
as soloists with
his band. Whiteman also gave a start to a little-known crooner named
Bing Crosby.
The Roseland Ballroom of 1927 was built with elegant splendor. A
large,
revolving glass ball hung from the center of the ballroom, sending
glittering moonbeams
along the mirrored walls. There were padded booths, chandeliers,
colored lights and
potted palm trees; not to mention the 20,000 foot hard-wood dance
floor.
For the next twenty years, Roseland Ballroom became a mecca for big
bands and ballroom dancing, with patrons coming from as far away as New
York and New Jersey.
The Big Band era faded into history, shortly after World War II, and
so did
Roseland's fame and fortune. In 1947, on the day after Christmas, a
spectacular
three-alarm fire gutted the building. No band was scheduled to play
that day. A
Christmas blizzard forced Roseland to cancel all performances. The fire
started in a neon
sign that short circuited. Rose Simone, who was living in the penthouse
at the time,
barely had time to escape the explosion that engulfed the place. She
ran from the
penthouse in her bare feet through the snow. Firefighters were unable
to contain the blaze
and Roseland was reduced to a mass of smoldering ruins. The Roseland
fire made front page headlines throughout New England.
Rose rebuilt the place in 1949 this time adding a sixteen lane bowling
alley and
restaurant downstairs. It reopened for business, but by then, the glory
days of the
Big Band Era and ballroom dancing were a mere memory. The bowling alley
often did
more business than the ballroom.
In the decades that followed it was the site for a few ill-conceived
rock'n'roll
concerts, but finally even those came to an end and Roseland fell into
disrepair.
The last big name band leader to appear at Roseland was Lionel Hampton,
who played
the ballroom in 1977. When Rose's husband Michael passed away, she
spent much of her
time in seclusion, in the company of her French poodle "Squiz," which
was short for
"Exquisite." Sometimes, with "Squiz, " tucked under her arm, she would
venture down
to the ballroom ticket booth to count receipts. There wasn't much to
count.
Like the era it had become famous in, Roseland now too was just a
memory.
Roseland closed for good in 1990 following the cancellation of a
performance by the rap
group, 2 Live Crew. A melee between angry concert-goers and police led
to the
ballroom's ultimate demise.
The ballroom sat for several years like a ghostly apparition empty and
silent, as
progress passed it by and the memories of a bygone era faded away. When
Rose passed
away in 1992, the ballroom was auctioned off to pay off outstanding
debts. And then
something magical happened. "Anything is possible, if you believe in
magic."
"By right Roseland should have come down with a wrecking ball, "
Patrick
Mannion said. Mannion bought and refurbished Roseland.
"It's fantastic to see the place come alive again," Mannion said.
Mannion, a
Braintree construction contractor, bought Roseland in 1994. The nearly
20,000 foot
dance floor was completely renovated, along with the two, wall-length
bars and
overhead, glittering ballroom lights.
"I fell in love with the place as soon as I saw it," Mannion said in a
thick Irish
brogue. He originally hailed from Galway, Ireland.
"I saw so many opportunities here," he said. "I wanted to bring back
the elegance and romance of ballroom dancing and the big band era, and
this was the perfect place to do it."
"He turned it into a fairyland of dreams for those who still dream,"
Roger Thorpe, bandleader for the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, said.
Mannion held a grand opening of Roseland Ballroom on September 17,
1995 and more than 1500 people, some coming from as far away as New
Jersey, filled the
refurbished Ballroom. The capacity crowd had a chance to once again
"swing and sway,"
to Sammy Kaye's 16-piece big band orchestra led by Thorpe.
"It was everything a bandleader dreams about," Thorpe said. "I had a
great
orchestra playing behind me and over 1500 people in the audience,
dancing, clapping,
and singing."
Thorpe had been the leader of the Sammy Kaye Orchestra since 1986.
Sammy
Kaye passed away in 1987. That night in September it was as if time had
stood still and
once again Roseland Ballroom was magically transformed into its
previous renown.
Thrope and the Sammy Kaye Orchestra played the big band
crowd-pleasing
favorites, "Daddy"; "Harbor Lights" and "Another You," -- all great
standards hits for the original Sammy Kaye Orchestra. All of Sammy
Kaye's original musical arrangements
were used at the performance.
Couples at the grand reopening were elegantly dressed. Many of the
women wore glittering evening gowns, while several men were decked out
in tuxedos. Women were
given complementary roses. According to Harry Tutt, who played baseball
in the parking
lot outside Roseland with the likes of Frank Sinatra, hearing the big
band sounds once
again reverberate through Roseland brought back many fond
memories.
"One couple came here tonight all the way from Connecticut," Tutt
said.. "They
met here at the ballroom back in 1949 and two years later got married.
They heard about
the reopening on the radio and couldn't stand to miss it. "
And so, for one bright and shining night in September, Roseland
Ballroom was
back and with it came a return to magic, elegance and romance.
Somewhere, maybe the ghost of Rose Simone, her French poodle "Squiz,"
tucked under her arm ,was smiling. And seventy- year-old Harry Tutt,
decked out in a rented tuxedo confessed he had brought along his old
baseball mitt.
"Left it out in the car, just in case," he said. Just maybe, "Old Blue
Eyes," would
be back, looking for a few fellas to play a little game of pick-up
baseball again. Who
knows? Anything can happen, when you believe in magic.

Epilogue
Shortly after the Roseland Ballroom's grand opening, Patrick Mannion
was indicted in a
money laundering scheme and was forced to sell his interest in
Roseland. The September
17th grand opening was the one and only big band performance held at
the once famous
and majestic ballroom. But what a night it was.