Monday, August 4, 2008

Dallas band The Happy Bullets searches for founder of Oak Cliff

By Jason Roberts of Cliff Dweller

Thomas Marsalis

“I have never been to New York, and I refuse to be stuck staring at the tombstone of some guy I know nothing about... Do not ruin this trip for me, honey.” Right now, my wife has little sympathy for the adventure I’m pitching, which is to take time out of our cross-country music tour to find the gravesite of one Thomas Lafayette Marsalis, the early developer and “Father” of our beloved Oak Cliff.

Our tour will take our independent band, the Happy Bullets, to Indianapolis, Philly, New York City and Charlottesville, Virginia. Our genre, known as Indie Pop, has been experiencing a tiny boom as of late, thanks in part to soundtracks for hip low budget films like Juno. For those unfamiliar with the style, it’s fairly simple: we try to write incredibly catchy-quirky songs, with minimal attention paid to production. We’re like the Yugo of the music world.

I became interested in finding Marsalis’s grave a few years ago when I ran across a fascinating internet bulletin board thread by a fellow CliffDweller and Dallas historian, Jim Barnes. Its title was simple, “Where did Thomas L. Marsalis go?” Over the next two years, he and several contributors went on a forensic manhunt that played out before the public, and read like a page-turning detective novel. I was riveted. The group trolled through old library records, newspapers, death certificates and court records, and disproved several published “facts” about the life and end times of T. L. Marsalis, who was a humble Mississippi boy turned self-made Dallas-development mogul.

Marsalis began develop-ing Oak Cliff in the late 1800s, after deciding that Dallas could use a Brooklyn-like neighborhood. To that end, he built homes, an elevated railway, a waterworks system, a luxurious park featuring spas, gardens, rowboats and shaded walks, and then topped it all off with an electrical power plant. Earlier in his career, Marsalis also helped create a few other little notables, including the Dallas Morning News and the Texas State Fair.

It turns out that Marsalis was not buried in the “Beautiful Suburban City of the Southwest” that he dreamed up, but instead rests over 1,500 miles away. I am determined to find him.

The rain is keeping us from staying long, but I stand quietly [at Marsalis’ grave] and sing him a few bars of the ‘Trinity River Blues,’ written by another Oak Cliff musician, T-Bone Walker. I proceed to give him the skinny on what’s been going down in the Cliff over the past hundred or so years. I think he was glad to hear we were rebuilding the streetcar line he originally completed, and I’m pretty sure I heard him spinning when I started mentioning sushi bars and vegan restaurants.

So we begin our tour and arrive at our first stop, in Indianapolis, after thirteen grueling hours on the road. Lessons learned so far: Man should not live on beef jerky and DQ blizzards alone. Upon entering the city, we immediately notice an Oak Cliff connection: an abundance of Boulevards, Drives and Parks named “Kessler.” It’s a bit disorienting given that many of the residential areas even remind me quite a bit of our own Kessler Park back home. I had read a bit about George E. Kessler, but not enough to realize that our very own local hero had been hired by the cities of Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City, among others, to create comprehensive city plans that would lay out elaborate road and park systems for them. How sad to learn that Dallas wasn’t his only lady.

Later that night, we play to a semi-packed room at a club call “Locals Only” in an area that reminds me a bit of our own Greenville Avenue, only with bicycle lanes, microbreweries, and no obnoxiously-loud Harleys. I make a mental note to bring these amenities up at my next Oak Cliff Chamber meeting. By night’s end, I will have completely lost my voice from needlessly over-extending my range on our big finale. “Way to go,” I think to myself. “It’s our first night out, and I’ve already limited my binge drinking to hot tea.” This is so not rock ‘n’ roll.

After sleeping on the floor of a local band’s apartment, we’re off to Philadelphia. To highlight our lack of geography skills, we anticipated all cities in the Northeast/Midwest to be only hours apart. This seems rational since Texas, in comparison, is about the width of the moon. Well, our naiveté would strike in the form of an 11-hour drive. By the time our van pulled onto the old cobblestone streets of downtown Philadelphia, we were ready to throw the keys into the Delaware River.

The venue we played was called the Khyber, and located only a few blocks from where the Constitution was signed. It’s amazing for us to think that our forefathers were here fighting for our nation’s independence, while the only thing we have to fight for is a good place to park an unwieldy passenger van. Everything in this town appears to be named after Benjamin Franklin: The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Ben Franklin Plumbers, and the Benjamin Franklin Soft Pretzel Company.

The crowd here is quite a bit smaller compared to Indianapolis, so morale was down by the time we took stage at 9 p.m. It’s never fun playing to a small room… the energy is just hard to muster, but we gave it all we had and then piled back into the van to chart out towards New York.

“Oak Cliff is to Dallas what Brooklyn is to New York” reads an 1890 flyer printed by the Dallas Land and Loan Company. Driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, you get a sense of perspective on what Marsalis was dreaming up. Bold is putting it lightly. From its blend of old homes to the mix of diverse cultures, there’s definitely an overlap, only we lose out in sheer scale. We’re staying in a 3-story Victorian, just off of the subway’s Q-line. Parking here makes Philly seem like a moonscape.

We’re getting closer to Marsalis and I’m starting to get excited about making the trek out to his gravesite. That night we play to a full room at an old venue on the East side of Brooklyn called Union Hall. Upstairs, there are bocce ball courts and college crowds taking in the nightlife. Downstairs is home to the musicians and the music lovers. This is by far our best show of the trip.

It’s hard to imagine what T. L. Marsalis was thinking after leaving a city where he was revered to go to this place where he must have been a minnow in a very large sea.

By 1897, Oak Cliff had already failed to meet many financial expectations due to unrealistic population projections and poor market conditions. Within a few years, Marsalis would lose a good portion of his wealth, and eventually relocate to New York City to begin a handful of other failed ventures. After this, the details of his life get spotty. Newspapers note his return to Dallas on a few occasions where he’s treated like royalty, but he never remains for long. Finally, he dies somewhere in the Northeast in relative obscurity with no published obituary. All of this is a bit strange for a man who helped change the face of Dallas.

The next morning, we make our way towards a small town called Paterson, New Jersey, on our way out of Brooklyn. Oddly, the WPA Handbook of Dallas wrongly lists Marsalis’ final resting place at Pioneers Cemetery in downtown Dallas, but thanks to some incredible sleuths at the Dallas Historical Society, the actual spot appears to be here, approximately 1500 miles away.

After driving through several winding roads and stopping at a small diner, our final destination is upon us: the Cedar Lawn Cemetery.

The notes on Marsalis’ final days are few. After a short illness, Thomas L. Marsalis passed away in a house at 454 East 31st Street in Paterson, New Jersey. The death certificate lists “lobar pneumonia” as the final cause, and he was outlived by a wife, a son and a daughter.

Our van pulls up right as a downpour begins. After a long scouring of the gravesites, we notice a large headstone labeled “Marsalis,” with three smaller stones listing “Thomas L.,” “Elizabeth J.,” and “Leila” laying flat in the grass. So here lies the “Father of Oak Cliff.” It’s a sad ending to a very long journey. The rain is keeping us from staying long, but I stand quietly and sing him a few bars of the “Trinity River Blues,” written by another Oak Cliff musician, T-Bone Walker. I proceed to give him the skinny on what’s been going down in the Cliff over the past hundred or so years. I think he was glad to hear we were rebuilding the streetcar line he originally completed, and I’m pretty sure I heard him spinning when I started mentioning sushi bars and vegan restaurants. After a few minutes, the guys honk the horn, and I trudge, rain soaked, back to the van.

After a moment of collecting my thoughts, I throw the transmission into drive, crank up the iPod, and we’re back off on our rock roadtrip, ending, finally, back in the hood I call home.

Pegasus News content partner - Cliff Dweller

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Comments

alexander troup Verified

Yes it is all true, Founders and Pioneers do end up in obscure and forgotten places, Dan Stuart who brought sports to Dallas in the 1880,s is buried in some lost grave site in New York, while Sidney Pittman.... Africian Amercian genusis and great builer in Dallas, is buried in an obscure graveyard away from the human sleeping crowd and finlly John Neely Bryan the founder of Dallas is buried in a paupers grave at an insane assylum in Austin Texas, it is sad and true the mystery of light and mystery of darkness, I wonder where Thomas Edison is buried he invented the light bulb.. until then Alexander Troup, Celeberty burial Historian.

1 year ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

alexander troup Verified

NO FRANK, I already looked into that, Edison is buried at Some Nuclear graveyard, you know platinum disk and frozen caskets, 21st century stuff, besides, who is buried in grants tomb...a.t.h.2.o

1 year ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

glo Anonymous

That was a great read!

1 year ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )