If His Dream Comes True, Blues Will Be Back in 5-4 Ballroom : ‘It’s a disgrace the way we gave all this music to the world and let it be taken away.’

The spirit was moving through the old 5-4 Ballroom at 54th Street and Broadway, the crowd was on its feet and soul singer “Wicked” Wilson Pickett was preaching between tunes with an assist from Los Angeles disc jockey Magnificent Montague.

“I got to sing this song,” Pickett cries out in the plaintive, melodic pulpit style of the Holiness church. “Why you got to sing it?” Montague sings back with equal feeling.

Pickett answers in classic call and response: “You made it possible for me to sing it. You told the sooooooul sisters. You told the sooooooul brothers. They got to wait . . . “

Montague: “They got to wait. . . .”

Pickett: “They got to waaaaiiiiiiittttttt. . . .”

Anticipation of Pickett’s signature tune reaches a fever pitch, and the crowd explodes when the band hits the familiar intro to his “Midnight Hour.”

That night in 1965 was a defining moment at the 5-4, the kind of spontaneous release of raw musical energy that made crowds line up around the block hoping to catch James Brown, Fats Domino, Jackie Wilson, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, the Temptations.

The music at the 5-4 ended three years later, and the grand old showplace became just another anonymous monument to urban decay for many Angelenos oblivious to its former splendor. But Cal State Dominguez Hills political science professor Oliver Wilson--who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s--wants to recapture those moments. He bought the building in 1980 and estimates that he has sunk $1.8 million into his obsession of restoring the 5-4.

En route to earning a Ph.D in political science at the Claremont Graduate Schools, Wilson made stops as a waiter, journeyman carpenter, high school principal in his native Louisiana, contractor and owner of a data processing firm. Those experiences would appear to enable a man to balance an appreciation for ideals with an abiding sense of the practical.

So why is Wilson so steadfastly pursuing what even some of his supporters call an impossible dream? And without ever having set foot inside the ballroom in its heyday?

“The 5-4 was the talk of the town when I moved here,” he said. “James Brown was here. Billy Eckstein. I kept up with who would be here. I always wanted to come, but I don’t like crowds.”

Still, his sense of history drove him to buy the building. “I had to have it because I wanted to try to preserve the history.”

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Old-timers remember when Guitar Slim played a “stomp down” blues solo while riding through the 5-4’s audience on the shoulders of his fans. And there was also the musicians union rep who tried to collect more than one bandleader thought he should get. The union man wound up with a bullet in his foot for his efforts.

“This was the spot, man,” said former bandleader Billy Diamond, whose group once included Fats Domino. “We’d drive all the way from New Orleans to play at the 5-4 Ballroom.”

Blues singer Margie Evans also remembers the 5-4’s heyday, but she, like Wilson, saw it from the outside. “I was a church woman,” she recalled, laughing. “All of the risque joints were on Broadway back then. We used to call those people ‘nothing but devils.’ ”

Bandleader Johnny Otis was one of those devils, and he remembers the 5-4 as a place where he had a chance to come in from the road and see his peers perform. “Our audiences were almost exclusively African American,” he said. “We never appreciated fully then how wonderful it was to play for . . . folks who understood the music and where the blues came from.”

Otis later converted Evans, a former schoolteacher, into a blues singer, and she now calls herself a blues ambassador.

“It’s a disgrace the way we gave all this music to the world and let it be taken away,” she said.

Evans and Diamond have joined forces with Wilson, helping to put together shows to raise money for the restoration. The ballroom reopened its first-floor “Bluesroom” in October, and events there have included a New Year’s Eve show that featured blues diva Linda Hopkins, Charles (“Merry Christmas, Baby”) Brown and Evans.

The benefits have reintroduced entertainers, elected officials and blues fans to the ballroom, helping to build what Wilson hopes will be enough momentum to finish construction on the ballroom upstairs.

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As Wilson’s construction crews did work restoring the ballroom in 1990, one of the workmen found an old admission ticket.

“It said: ‘No Negroes,’ ” Wilson said.

When the ballroom opened in 1922, the street that was later to be called Broadway was named Moneta. The whites-only policy ended in the late 1940s when blacks began moving into the area in large numbers.

In 1980, Wilson stopped by his brother’s new garment-cutting shop on Broadway with no idea that it was in the historic ballroom building. “I didn’t believe it was the 5-4 until my brother took me upstairs,” he said.

“When I saw the suspended ceiling, that was too much for me. I had to buy it. I told my brother I was going to.” He sold a residential property in Long Beach to come up with the down payment.

In the 15 years since, he has joined that stubborn league of determined individuals who have taken on other, seemingly impossible tasks in South-Central--Dolores Blunt at her Sheenway School, Marla Gibbs at her Vision Complex, and Lula Washington and her L.A. Contemporary Dance Theater.

Wilson said he tried to attract investors, but failed. But he continued to spend all the money he could borrow on the building. His vision has begun to take shape on the 12,500-square-foot second floor. Some walls have been stripped back to the original red brick, custom-built French windows enclose what would be a restaurant serving Creole food, a new kitchen has been designed, the stage has been expanded, and a rooftop terrace is in the works.

Wilson is so close to realizing his dream he can almost taste it, but the money has run out. “I can complete the remaining work in six to eight weeks,” he said, “but . . . I don’t know when I’m going to get some money.”

He recognizes the irony enveloping theaters, restaurants, clubs and hotels across the country that once were landmarks in a city’s African American community--most of them owed their prominence to racial segregation. Once racial barriers came down at facilities in white communities, the legendary places in black communities were largely abandoned.

“I thought about that,” Wilson said quietly, clearly reflecting on one of the most challenging dimensions of his dream. “But I firmly believe that notwithstanding this predisposition--this tendency on the part of black people to prefer what’s in the white areas--good music and good food will draw people regardless of race.”