Many African American musicians who had a history with the Los Angeles jazz scene on Central Avenue took part in the University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Oral History Research project, “Central Avenue Sounds,” to capture that time period and preserve their memories. From 1989 to 1999, interviews were conducted by researcher Stephen Isoardi and included trumpeter Clora Bryant with drummers Lee Young and William “Bill” Douglass. Jazz was popular, and they performed all over Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, and one theme remains consistent in their oral histories: when playing in Glendale clubs, they did not want to wander outside into the city when they finished a gig. Bryant told Isoardi that club owners gave the names of Black performers to the police department beforehand so that if they got stopped, they could account for their presence in the otherwise all-white enclave (indicating that the interaction with police could be problematic otherwise). Bill Douglass recalled that the Melody Room (or Club) was a hotspot for musicians and white music-lovers, but Glendale was a place where “you wouldn’t dare be caught walking around the streets” at night. Because of its hostile reputation to Black people, Douglass noted that Glendale was known as “Little Mississippi,” a nickname which was confirmed by Lee Young as well. All three musicians denied having run-ins with Glendale police, but the city’s prejudiced reputation was certainly so well established that when Bryant, Young and Douglass were interviewed about that reputation forty years later, they still remembered it.