by Fern Gillespie<\/p>\n
The Apollo Theatre is entrenched in Black music culture and Brooklyn resident Billy Mitchell has witnessed that superstar history during the last 60 years. He\u2019s called \u201cMr. Apollo.\u201d A charming storyteller, his impact has earned him the official title of Apollo\u2019s Director of Tours, In House Historian and Apollo Ambassador. <\/p>\n
These roles have taken him to be featured on the 2021 Grammy Awards announcing the Best Rap Award to Beyonce and Meghan Thee Stallion, hosting the Apollo Sirius Radio Show and even personally escorting First Lady Michelle Obama on a private tour of the Apollo.<\/p>\n
Although he\u2019s been surrounded by the showbiz glitter, Mitchell never forgets his difficult childhood growing up in Mount Vernon. \u201cMy parents had 14 children. When we lived in Mount Vernon, we were the poorest family,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember in Mount Vernon, people used to point at me and my family when we walked down the street.\u201d At one point the family was homeless and he spent time in foster care. His mother moved some of the children, including Mitchell to the Bronx.<\/p>\n
In 1965 at age 15, his life changed. \u201cMy mother needed money for food so she sent to Harlem to get money from her cousin. My mother\u2019s cousin lived on 126th Street right near the back of where the Apollo Theater was located. While waiting for her I got dizzy. I thought I was going to faint because I had nothing in my stomach from that morning. <\/p>\n
The door opened an old White man asks do you want to make some money?,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI started backing up because I didn\u2019t know what this guy had on his mind. I thought I had run into a weirdo. He said \u201cI\u2019m not going to bother you, my name is Frank Schiffman and I own this theater. It\u2019s called the Apollo.\u201c<\/p>\n
Mitchell recalled being overwhelmed with excitement. He knew about the Apollo Theater. His father mother aunts and uncles all used to talk about the Apollo Theater. Schiffman told him details about running errands for the people in the theater.
\u201cI decided that while I was waiting for my mom\u2019s cousin, I\u2019d make some extra coins,\u201d he said. The man that needed help backstage was Berry Gordy. His Motown Review was its national tour. <\/p>\n
That day Mitchell ran errands for the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, the Miracles, Marvin, Gaye, Martha, Reeves and the Vandellas and Little Stevie Wonder. He begin working weekends and after school running errands for the music superstars that was gracing the stage at the Apollo from Moms Mabley to Flip Wilson to Gladys Knight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did that for a few years. I was helping my mother pay the rent and buy food,\u201d he said. \u201cJames Brown and Marvin Gaye would always give me great tips. They would always sit me down and talk about the value of education. They told me if I were to get a good education, when I got older the education would put me in the position to possibly get a good job, and I would never have to live the life that me and my family was living when I was young. I wanted it so bad. I hated being poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, Mr. Brown had me leave the theater and go back to The Bronx and get my report card and come back to the Apollo and show it to him. When he noticed that I had failed. I told him it was because kids were bothering me because I was poor. He said That\u2019s no excuse. Get your grades up. or don\u2019t come back anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perseverance prevailed for him. When he graduated from Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, Mitchell was on the honor roll. Both Marvin Gaye and James Brown gave him money to go to school. Mitchell used that money to study business at the New York Institute of Credit. He became a credit analyst and collection manager. He worked on Wall Street, in banks and for manufacturers in the fashion industry.<\/p>\n
In 1982, Inner City Broadcasting Corp, the home of WBLS and WLIB, purchased the Apollo Theatre under the direction of chairman Percy Sutton. In 1984, Mitchell returned to the Apollo to work part time as an usher at the theater. \u201cMr. Sutton liked the way that I handled myself and the way that I spoke,\u201d he recalled. \u201cMr. Sutton said because of my financial background, he offered me a job managing the Apollo Store.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Apollo ownership changed hands and the Apollo became a nonprofit in 1991. Mitchell became an independent producer, doing special events at the theater. By 1992 he returned to the Apollo full-time to do group sales for Amateur Night.
\u201cI always want to remind people that the reason why we were there because it was Percy Sutton\u2019s idea. Percy Sutton, Hal Jackson and The Apollo Theater Business Group they all put their money together and an opened up the theater. Had it not been for Percy Sutton and his vision we would not be there right now. \u201c<\/p>\n
During the Obama Presidency, the First Lady had heard about Mitchell\u2019s marvelous tours. \u201cMichelle Obama was coming New York with her mother, her daughters and some friends. She wanted to do a tour of the Apollo with this man called Mr. Apollo. That day, the Secret Service were all over the place. <\/p>\n
They made everybody stay in their Apollo offices, including the president of the Apollo. The only one allowed to be around Mrs. Obama was myself giving the tour,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m talking to her, and we\u2019re dancing on the stage doing Temptations moves. Her daughters Malia and Sasha were their dance. <\/p>\n
They could dance and were killing it. After the tour, Mrs. Obama had said something to me that people had said for a long time. I just thought they were being kind. But she said. \u201cPeople know you, but do they know that you were in foster care, homeless? You need to write your book you need to write your autobiography so people would know more about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michelle Obama became the inspiration for his autobiography They Call Me Mr. Apollo: My Journey from Running Errands for the Stars to Help Run One of the Most Famous Theaters in the World. Mitchell\u2019s career also spans acting with National Black Theatre and the Frank Silvera Writer\u2019s Workshop. He even had a speaking role in Spike Lee\u2019s Malcolm X starring Mitchell\u2019s childhood friend Denzel Washington, who were friends since being 10 year-olds in Mount Vernon.
Since 1980, he\u2019s lived in Brooklyn. For many years in East New York and for the last 17 years in Canarsie. He\u2019s been married 40 years to his wife Barbara, who grew up in Brownsville.<\/p>\n
Billy Mitchell is an important part of the Apollo legacy. He was mentored by Apollo legends Ralph Cooper, James Brown and Howard \u201cSandman\u201d Sims. All had their funerals on the Apollo stage and Mitchell was a pallbearer. \u201cMy wife has been instructed that I want my funeral at the Apollo,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I want my spirit to stay in that building.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Fern Gillespie The Apollo Theatre is entrenched in Black music culture and Brooklyn resident Billy Mitchell has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-211608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}