By David Sherman
of The Gazette

     Rufus Rockhead is in a wheel chair in the St. Anne de Bellevue Veterans Hospital. Twice a day, a nurse helps him walk the narrow corridor. On good days he will remember his son and some of his friends. On other days he will remember no one at all.

     Fifty years ago, Rufus Rockhead opened a tavern on St. Antoine and Mountain St. Blacks weren't supposed to get liquor licences, but Rockhead had no patience for fumbling bureaucrats and their redneck hospitality. He had friends and he got the licence anyways. Three years later he parlayed the tavern into Rockhead's Paradise.

City celebrated

     Doctors wouldn't let Rufus Rockhead celebrate his golden anniversary Thursday night, but the city celebrated for him a half-century of entertainment and heart.
     "Rufus Rockhead is just like old man river," says a friend. "He just keeps rollin' along."
     Rockhead's is not simply a nightclub, the last of the species thumbing its nose at impending extinction. Rockhead's was a monument of dignity amongst the squalor of St. Henri. The brick building and the red neon sign that screamed "PARADISE" offered a haven for the dispossessed and maybe a job for when the railroad laid you off or hadn't chose to hire you in the first place. There was no "step 'n' fetch it" in the double-tiered club at the top of the narrow stairs, no "Uncle Toms" on stage kowtowing to the whites in their furs and black ties that had come slumming to see the acts none of the white clubs would book.
     Jamaican-born Rockhead, always in a red tie, his neck wrapped in the cherished detachable collars he bought at one store and one store only, wouldn't have any of that nonsense.
     And to the overly rowdy, he was there in a flash, a carnation always pinned to his lapel.
     "Young man, lower your voice. This is Rockhead's."

No vacations

     Says Kenny, "He hated the word vacation. Never took one. If employees even talked about it, he'd get crazy."
     It was White money perhaps that built Paradise, money from Montreal's fashionable people--but it was the inestimable pride of Rufus Rockhead that controlled it.
     The club attracted celebrities from around the world, athletes, writers, anyone curious about Montreal's institution that prospered from the wrong side of the tracks.
     Even during the war, soldiers fighting overseas would tell the guy in the next foxhole, "If you ever get to Canada, go to Rockhead's. "
     On Thursday night it attracted the old friends and a mixture of regulars, at $7 a head, to pay their respects to the house that Rockhead built.

Still asking

     Over 25 years ago, when Bernier didn't have a job, Rufus hired him. When he didn't do the job properly, he fired him.
     "He said to me one day when I came to work, 'You see that big guy at the end of the bar. Give him your doorman's cap,' Bernier remembers chuckling. "When Rockhead fired you, you couldn't get mad because you knew he fired you for a reason "
     "It was like the underground railroad, except it was called the "Chitlin' Circuit" and attracted talent like Nipsy Russell, Buster Brown, Redd Fox, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, who would play in the White clubs uptown but would drop into Rockhead's and "really play. " BR>      "...Black entertainers like Louis Armstrong and Pearl Bailey who didn't play the club inevitably dropped in to pay their respects.
     But Rockhead wouldn't have anyone in Paradise he wouldn't have in his home. If you came here and started trouble, you'd never get back in."

Must be good

     Musicians that didn't suit his ears were dispatched in similar fashion, with curt, "You're good--But not good enough for Rockhead's" or a simple slap on the back and a "You're finished."
     Either way, the group was paid for the entire week.
     Rockhead ruled his castle with the power of the flower, his impeccable self-esteem unreproachable.
     There were never any bouncers, says Bernier. When there was trouble he knew one word and he said it quick--Police. He didn't care who you were or what you were--Police.
     "He fears no man. The underworld, muscle, no one. He defended himself with his personality. He'd let the joint burn down before he'd make a payoff."
 
     He never had stomach for dirty politics. In 1952, Duplessis revoked his licence for not observing closing hours. Other clubs paid and stayed open. Not Rockhead's.
     For nine years, says Bernier, while cobwebs draped his chandeliers and dust settled on his 75-foot bar, the longest in the country, Rockhead stayed in his tavern. On sunny days, he would sit by himself on the curb.
     Recalls Bernier, "He didn't cry to a soul."
     He waited. When the Liberals came to power in 1961, he got his licence back.