At Skid Row Center, Karaoke Night Is a ‘Nice Escape’

It is 10:30 p.m. at the Central City Community Outreach Center on skid row and Ronnie Shepherd, a.k.a. Mr. Sidewalk Slim, is whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his rendition of “My Girl.”

In a silver-gray suit, a black shirt and matching handkerchief, Shepherd looks like David Ruffin of the Temptations, moves like a Temptation and sings like a Temptation.

“What is your favorite music, Mr. Shepherd?”

“Well, R & B, like David Ruffin.”

“Uhh, how would you describe your voice?”

“A second tenor, like David Ruffin.”

“What about the snazzy threads?”

“David Ruffin was always sharp.”

He is only sorry, he says after his turn, that his entire group, Mr. Sidewalk Slim and the Slimtations, is not present.

Welcome to karaoke night in downtown Los Angeles’ skid row, where the performers, who most certainly would have a right to sing the blues, prefer Frank Sinatra, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, the Beatles and just about any hard-driving R & B oldie.

The karaoke club is one of the outreach programs of the Central City Church of the Nazarene, pastored by the Rev. Scott Chamberlain. For more than a year, each Wednesday night more than 200 men, women and children have crowded into a small hall outfitted with state-of-the art karaoke equipment to sip coffee and cheer on their favorites, who seem to be anyone who’s mustered the nerve to stand up in front of them.

Like an old-fashioned revival meeting where everyone knows one another, it is one of the few safe, family-friendly distractions in this dilapidated area populated by many homeless and working poor. Most of the attendees are regulars who emerge from the streets or one of the dozens of single-room-occupancy hotels to enjoy a night’s free entertainment.

Some even fish out their finest to put on what looks like a carefully prepared show.

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Take Don Robinson, who is dressed to the nines in a white fedora, a green linen suit and a shirt of the Tom Jones variety that opens down his chest. He doesn’t have a stage name like Sidewalk Slim, but he knows how to work a crowd, putting body as well as soul into his version of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.”

“I love to perform and it makes me feel good if I can make other people feel good too,” said Robinson, 46, who has lived in a room on skid row for about six months after losing his home and falling on hard times.

Although he never sang professionally, Robinson said he used to be in a gospel group called the Prodigal Sons in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., before he moved to Los Angeles 18 years ago.

A surprising number of the karaoke performers are genuinely talented, said Glen Horton, 43, who once performed professionally with his sister, touring Europe and the United States.

“You’d be surprised at the history some of these people had before they lost their dreams and fell on hard times,” he said.

Like himself. He got involved in drugs in the early 1990s and stopped singing completely for a few years. Now, he’s getting right with God in a recovery program at the Union Rescue Mission, hoping to return soon to his family in Erie, Pa.

The karaoke nights are helping to restore him. Crooning “Try a Little Tenderness,” the song made famous by Otis Redding, Horton sounds like he ought to be on the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The phrasing is clean, the pitch perfect, the emotion intense. Everyone is on their feet.

Including Sheldon Clark. But then Clark, baby-faced with a toothy grin, breaks into a dance for just about every number. Tonight is his 21st birthday, and to celebrate, he’s singing an old hit by the Chi-Lites. The crowd shouts SHEL-DON, SHEL-DON and then breaks into an impromptu version of “Happy Birthday.”

“It’s a nice escape, isn’t it?” Edwin Mendoza, 24, tries to shout over the music. He says he’s a USC student and that he has been staying at the Russ Hotel on skid row since April and trying to get a job since January. It hasn’t been easy, though. He once served time for “inflicting bodily harm against certain people.”

“But that’s all behind you, right?”

“Oh, of course.”

“And why aren’t you singing tonight?”

“I’m a good singer but I find that I don’t have my vocal cords quite set yet.”

OK.

Everyone’s attention is diverted to Tony Stallworth, who is crouching with a white handkerchief, sounding very much like Louis Armstrong while singing “What a Wonderful World.” With his wife, Lucy, Stallworth provides the karaoke equipment and orchestrates the evening with a playbook of nearly 4,000 songs. He founded a production business that used to cater to bars. And he was once homeless himself before joining the Central City church.

“It’s not like a nightclub,” he said between numbers. “We’re careful with what music is allowed to be played, so there’s nothing with sexual or drug overtones. It’s mostly oldies, but we have inspirational and gospel music we make sure gets in.”

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Some of the best performers seem to be just walking by the hall on their way to somewhere else, when, hearing the music, they stop to participate. Or perhaps, like an Old West gunslinger, they just held back to scope out the competition before brandishing their vocal chops. Like Willie, who appears from the doorway, grabs a cordless mike and begins singing “Wind Beneath My Wings” like a pro.

He’s got a great voice, more muscles than Arnold Schwarzenegger and plenty of gold chains, and the women in the audience, especially, seem to appreciate his effort.

He ducks into the street, where Clarence Leary and Jerome Carthell are chatting and waiting for a turn. They and three other friends have formed a vocal group called, appropriately, Skid Row and hope it will be their ticket out.

Carthell, 21, has been in Los Angeles only a month and a half, landing at skid row’s Weingart Center, which provides shelter and services, after leaving his home in Muncie, Ind. to make it big in Hollywood.

“We just started singing on the corners, serenading everyone,” said Carthell, who despite his youth has a serious demeanor. “We have different circumstances, different situation, different struggles, but we want to tell everyone there’s a way out of skid row.”

It almost parallels the words of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me,” which someone is vocalizing inside: “Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow. But, if we are wise, we always know there’ll be tomorrow.”

Everyone can relate to that and the crowd is standing and swaying.