Examiner.com

Forty-eight years ago this year the Brooklyn Paramount closed its doors.

The theatre, in a sense, actually still exists today, but not as a theatre. It is known as Long Island University. The university bought the theatre in 1960, and converted its insides into a gymnasium in 1962. Today that gym houses the university’s basketball team, the Brooklyn Kings.

With the rapidity of gentrification in this borough (and elsewhere) these days, it is indeed noteworthy to recall what made certain landmarks and structures important in the first place. Demolition and reconstruction is happening at an alarming rate, even with the economy lying on its back in the fetal position, kicking anemically. Although the selling of the Paramount took place years ago, it is important to remember why it is a significant part of Brooklyn’s history.

Put up in 1928, the Paramount was built by Paramount Pictures, back in the days when motion picture companies constructed theatres for showing their product, which were the films they made. The Brooklyn Paramount was built for talking pictures originally, and is recognized as being one of the first, if not the first to do that. Many vaudeville acts performed at the theatre, and audiences saw the likes of Sophie Tucker, Mae West, Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby and others during this early period in Brooklyn.

Many people are not aware that years later, jazz was the big draw to the theatre. Many top-notch jazz acts graced the stage of the Brooklyn Paramount. Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Gene Krupa and Ella Fitzgerald are just a few of the artists who performed there, before tastes changed the name of the game.

For it was rock ‘n’ roll, the hard-driving, hip shaking rebellious making scene of rock ‘n’ roll that gave the Brooklyn Paramount the reputation that baby boomers remember. When music was all Patti Page and Pat Boone calm and safe in the early 1950s, similar to the stuff that oozes out of today’s TV shows like American Idol and Glee, here come black folks and some whites, diggin’ the scene and carrying on, bringing some of the most exciting bucket sweating rock ‘n’ roll on the planet. It is important to remember that the acts coming out of the late 1950s and early ‘60s were like a second level of rock ‘n’ roll. Louis Jordan and the earlier first level, tended to be more raw, sexual and terrifying to the white parents of teens then.

The Brooklyn Paramount had Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Coasters, Fats Domino, Jackie Wilson and many many others rockin’ and rollin’ the Brooklyn crowd (and of course, other kids from other areas). During these shows, DeKalb and Flatbush Avenues (the location of the theatre) would be flooded with streams and streams of hyper happy super excited fun seeking kids, waiting to have their socks and shoes knocked off with body-shaking hip snaking rock ‘n’ roll music.

Gone are the days, in every respect.