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The Ghost of Lester Russaw

A pioneer of Cleveland soul turns to a late career in bank-robbing.

By Jared Klaus 

The old man's hands were shaking — not with typical old-man tremors, but with fear. White heat from the July sun beamed through the front windshield of his Chrysler Sebring and rose off the parking lot in waves, as from a grill. But even dressed in a jacket and khakis, with the car's vents turned off and the windows rolled up, Lester Russaw felt a chill.

A few months earlier, he'd gone in for a doctor's visit and discovered he had prostate cancer. Just weeks later, the East Side Market, where he'd worked as a security guard, closed its doors and laid him off.

Whoever said life was too short didn't know what he was talking about. For Russaw, life had outlived its welcome.

There'd been a time — it seemed so long ago — when girls would scream for him and his band, the Coronets. At high-school dances across the country, young couples held each other close and danced the box step to "Nadine," the Coronets' hit song, which soared to No. 3 on the R&B charts in 1953.

Most of Russaw's bandmates had since withered and died, the way old men do, but this 74-year-old still had an athlete's agility. Hell, he was married to a woman 30 years younger than him. But now it seemed as if starvation and a tumor were going to have a race to the finish. Lester had decided he wasn't going out like that.

An old baseball cap cast an shadow over his light-skinned, freckled face. His hand clutched the grip of a snub-nosed pistol. He pushed open the car door and began walking toward the bank.

On a cold November morning at the Rock Hall, a group of shaggy-haired teens ogles a glass case filled with memorabilia from Modest Mouse. Visitors wander slowly, with hands clasped behind their backs, pausing here and there to admire a photo of Mick Jagger or listen to an old Beach Boys song.

But the second floor — the area dedicated to the "architects" of rock 'n' roll — is as empty as a tomb. In fact, it is a tomb. Encased in glass is an urn containing the ashes of Alan Freed, the legendary Cleveland DJ and promoter who brought black soul to suburban white kids and coined the term "rock 'n' roll."

Up here, visitors can watch a black-and-white video honoring Freed for making legends of Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. They can gaze at old studio artifacts like acetate records and salt-shaker microphones, sealed behind panes of glass.

This, it seems, is all that's left of the Cleveland Lester Russaw grew up in. On Saturday nights in the 1940s and '50s, the corner of East 55th Street and Woodland — now a boulevard for gangbangers and dope boys — was bumper-to-bumper with shiny Cadillacs and ladies, black and white, in rhinestones and swishing dresses. The soul and jazz club Gleason's hosted the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Bo Diddley. James Brown swept the floors here to earn extra bucks.

"It was one of the few spots in Cleveland at the time where the races mixed freely," says jazz historian Joe Mosbrook. "It was a happening place."Since he'd been old enough to sing, Russaw had dreamed of being one of those cool cats, living the nocturnal life of the performer. He'd watched his dad, the head porter at the Cleveland airport, shine shoes sunup to sundown, just so he, his mom, and his sister could eat. That wasn't the life for Lester.

At Thomas Edison High — now named after Martin Luther King — Russaw joined the glee club, where he met George Lewis, Sam Griggs, and Sam's brother William. The four started writing songs, practicing for passersby at the park across from Lester's house. Their harmonies were as smooth as a barbershop quartet's. They rounded out the group with a guitarist and a lead singer. With Lester singing first tenor, they crooned gospel-tinged lullabies about God and girls.

They dubbed themselves the Coronets and started singing at open-mic contests around Cleveland. They won a few talent shows and appeared once for the Orioles, a big R&B group in those days. Yet there wasn't much to set them apart from the hundreds of other black boys with a little talent and stars in their eyes.

In 1953, the Coronets pooled their money to pay for studio time. They cut a couple tracks, including "Nadine," a slow song about lost love. Then they hand-delivered a copy to the downtown office of Alan Freed.

Back then, it wasn't who you knew; it was whether you knew Freed. Before the bright-faced DJ at Cleveland's WJW-AM came around, white kids — the ones with the money to buy records — were listening to plaid-clad performers like Georgia Gibbs and Pat Boone. Then Freed, with his late-night show The Moondog Rock & Roll House Party, showed them the underground world of black music — performers like Ray Charles and Little Richard. The rest was history.

After listening to their demo, Freed decided to make the Coronets his next project. Someone from his office phoned the boys to say they had a recording date with one of the biggest R&B labels in the country: Chess Records in Chicago. No audition necessary.

Lester's niece, Mildred Cahill, remembers the day "Nadine" hit the record stands. "Everyone was so excited," says the 68-year-old, speaking with the aid of an electronic voice box due to throat cancer. "I remember my uncle took me downtown and bought me a new pair of shoes that day."

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