To look at the Hill district today.

One would not guess that it has a full rich black history.

And other times in other years, unique activities abounded.

Culturally, very few other black communities had anything on Pittsburgh's Hill District.

I remember walking these streets as a young teenager with a transistor radio in hand, ear plugs securely in place, with the local soul station loudly broadcasting the top 40 tune.

I guess I was typical of that day, and that age in that time was deeply enamored with music and its performers, and would go anywhere just to hear anybody play.

You see, that time when I was a teenager was not an era of great social consciousness.

I didn't realize that I was a deprived child.

A child living in a substandard neighborhood, a slum, a ghetto.

For kids like me.

It wasn't that we weren't aware of being poor, but it was part of our everyday lives.

So it really wasn't any big thing.

To us, the all encompassing concern that one big factor in our lives was music.

The people that made those wonderful sounds that we listened to each and every day.

And the all encompassing vehicle, the kind of utopian outlet for expression of that musical concern that we had was the Crawford Grill, which at that time had the reputation of being one of the finest jazz nightspots in all of these.

Saturday nights really used to be the best time when I would stand on this exact corner, just watching the crowds of people go in and out of the Grill and just really diggin on the music.

My memories are at the very early 60s, when the Crawford Grill was riding a crest of success and had a national reputation.

During those days, when stars like Johnny Lytle would play the Grill, equal numbers of blacks and whites would pack the club.

Then came the late 60s social upheaval, racial confrontations and riots with the fear that many of the Grill's white customers began to feel and the continuing deterioration of the Hill district, the image of the Grill as Pittsburgh's jazz Mecca, the home of the stars, faded.

Was 80% white.

Now we begin to feel effect here only after the death of Martin Luther King.

And then, of course, after the, the disturbance, then it began to turn in ghetto where we never thought in terms of it being a ghetto when we started here.

I would have never thought in terms of vesting what I have here, not in a ghetto, But after the death of Martin Luther King, why, you know, and these things began to happen.

White people began, stop coming in.

And not only that, we had a fine class of, Negroes that stopped coming in.

Although Robinson only alluded to the problems his club and the Hill experienced and are still experiencing, members of the community were much more graphic in their descriptions.

Well the clientele is not the same, you know, because, what do you expect on the Hill?

And, you know, they still have some pretty nice groups in there, but they're just not pulling the crowd because people are scared to come to the Hill.

And, you know, in my opinion, if they clean it up a little bit, then maybe, you know, it might change a lot of things.

It was beautiful.

90% of the clientele in there was white.

You could go in and sit down and enjoy yourself.

Your music, come out your car, be there.

You can leave it open.

Nobody bothered it.

Everything was beautiful.

Time to rise, Rover.

Look like in black.

Is nothing here but black, now they just rip everybody off.

They have to have a security cop out there on the weekends to walk you to your car and watch the car.

This is the place to go.

Its the best place on the Hill.

It's the best place in the Hill.

Do you think the white population will ever come back to the Crawford Grill?

Yes, sure.

Certainly, certainly they'll come back here.

Its bad in there.

Parking is bad, you know, and things like that.

But outside of that, it'd be all right to have to go.

It's, you know, it's a place that you can go and relax and feel comfortable in and, you know, without this, you know, the Hill District is just a dresser, you know, because we don't have any place that we can go to more or less call ourself going out to the limelight.

You know, if you want to try to get dressed up, you know, like to go somewhere, carry your lady.

I want this place.

You got to go.

Today, the Grill has fallen from its jazz pedestal.

A more common atmosphere now prevails than in the days when the Grill was indeed more than just a neighborhood hangout.

I got away from the idea of a neighborhood bar, and to get away from the neighborhood bar, we had to bring people from every area.

That is well in Allegheny County, to price dairy Ohio, with Union, everything.

And then that's when I got the idea, when I brought Sam Nowlin in as an organist.

Leroy Brown in as a five piece combo.

I brought Walt Harper in.

The careers of jazz stars like Ramsey Lewis were launched at the Grill, according to Robinson, and stars like Art Blakey, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Cal Tjader, Chet Baker, Hazel Scott and Arthur Prysock were all jazz regulars during the club's heyday.

Between New York and Chicago, the Crawford Grill was known as one of the biggest jazz houses in the country.

But without, without, without reference to that.

I think what it all represented was a system that people were free to manipulate, and as a result, we had the opportunity to succeed during that period of time.

The Crawford Grill, an institution with a rich past, the home of the stars, but an institution with a seemingly nebulous future.

But whatever happens, it will not compromise its ideology of integration.

And both father and son see a renewal of the Grills once so vital spirit in the Hill district.

I mean if we had to keep it just as a place to sell whiskey, or just a place where anybody come.

We wouldn't be interested.

We are interested in people, the type of people, the class of people that we've been accustomed to, that we've had here today.

And as long as I am his father and he's my son, I hope he maintains that same thing.