Hosea’s Place, sixty-five miles southwest of New Orleans, lies in the peaceful country town of Thibodaux, Louisiana. Nestled on Bayou Lafourche, it’s been a center for sugar refining and the oil field supply business.

However, with those industries in steady decline, many of Thibodaux’s residents struggle to make ends meet and the town looks a little frayed around the edges.

While at first glance Thibodaux and New Orleans appear to be very different, they share a common thread: music. Over the past century there has been a constant interaction of musicians between the two centers.

During the classic period of New Orleans rhythm and blues, the tie that bound the two cities was especially strong, primarily because of the renowned Sugar Bowl night spot. The club was somewhat of a satellite New Orleans’ Dew Drop Inn, as it featured many New Orleans artists and the same national acts that played on La Salle Street.

The Sugar Bowl was owned by the late Hosea (pronounced Hose-E) Hill, a shrewd businessman who enjoyed sharp clothes, a drink with friends. gambling, baseball, the company of a’ beautiful woman and especially, good music.

“Anything worthwhile that came to Thibodaux, Hosea Hill brought it here,” said his son Thurston Hill, who worked for his father for many years and still lives in Thibodaux with his wife Beatrice, who ran the Sugar Bowl’s bar. “He was the most important and respected black man in Thibodaux. If you needed a favor, a loan or a job, you came to see my daddy.”

Hosea Hill was born in 1907 at Chackbay, six miles from Thibodaux. Hill’s family owned land in the area which they farmed. Hill’s mother was an entrepreneur and she used some of the profits from the sugarcane harvest to open a cafe in Thibodaux which was located on the corner of 10th and Narrow Streets.

“People called it the Bucket of Blood,” said Thurston. “Somebody was always getting cut in there during a fight. But it was a popular place and my grandmother made a lot of money there. She set my daddy up in business.”

In 1932, Hosea Hill rented a building near his mother’s cafe and opened a bar appropriately called the Sugar Bowl. Open 14 hours a day, the bar catered to cane scrapers and roughnecks in search of a drink, a good time and a crap game.

After surviving the depression and World War II, the Sugar Bowl thrived in the post-War economy. In addition to offering games of chance and liquor, Hill added music to the Sugar Bowl’s list of attractions. Although he, could neither sing or play an instrument, Hill formed a band.called Hosea Hill’s Serenaders which acted as the Sugar Bowl’s house band.

A crack band that featured Thibodaux’s best musicians, Hill began booking the Serenaders into the surrounding small towns and New Orleans on nights when, they didn’t play at the Sugar Bowl. He also began hiring New Orleans acts like Fats Domino and Lloyd Price.

Around 1952, Hill saw that he could make more money by moving to a larger location that would hold more people and attract R&B artists of higher stature. “The building on Narrow had got too small,” said Thurston Hill. “It could only hold a couple of hundred people. He bought an apartment building on Lagarde Street and tore the downstairs our. He built a bar, cafe, kitchen and dance hall. The dance hall had two balconies and could hold 800 to 900 people. He had entertainment every weekend and place stayed packed.”

By being in similar businesses, Hill became acquainted with Frank Painia who owned the Dew Drop. “Frank and Hosea were best friends and business partners,” said Beatrice Hill. “The Sugar Bowl didn’t have the big floor shows with the dancers and female impersonators like the Dew Drop, but they booked a lot of the same singers and musicians. We’d visit the Dew Drop a lot and Frank treated us like we owned the place.”

Hill and Painia often booked acts together. By offering an artist a guarantee of multiple nights of work, they could get a lower per night price. When an artist wasn’t appearing at the Dew Drop and the Sugar Bowl, Painia and Hill would also book them into other dubs in the surrounding area.

Together they also put a lot of New Orleans artists on the road, perhaps the most famous, being Guitar Slim. “Frank introduced ‘Slim to Hosea,” said Beatrice. “I think Frank was going to lose his booking license and he asked Hosea to take Slim over. Slim moved to Thibodaux and stayed at the Sugar Bowl Hill had apartments on top of the dub]”

“The first time I saw Slim I was in high’ school still living in Labadieville. I had a girlfriend that lived in Freetown and I walked seven miles to go visit her. She was the niece of man who owned a club there and Slim just loved her. When I got to her house, Slim was up in a tree outside her house plucking on his guitar trying to impress her. He stayed up there all day.”

Hill had his hands full with the alcohol-fueled guitarist but he made a great deal of money with Slim, especially after “The Things I Used to Do” became a hit in 1954. “Slim went around the country for three years behind ‘The Things I Used To Do’ and every date was booked out of Thibodaux,” said Thurston. “If Slim would have cut more records I think he would have stayed popular longer. Slim was a guy who never took care of himself. He would get his uniform (stage clothes) wringing wet and then go outside in the cold. That’s how he got sick. Pneumonia and port wine killed Slim.

When Slim died unexpectedly in 1959, Hill covered the expenses of the funeral and burial. Slim’s death deeply affected Hill who carne to regard Slim as part of his family.

Nevertheless, at the funeral Hill provided a moment of humor. “In the front pews of the church were five or six women and a bunch of kids,” said Thurston. “They was all fussing. The women all claimed Slim was their husband and the daddy of their children.” Hosea called all the women to the back of the church and said, ‘Ladies, the undertaker hasn’t been paid yet and he needs some money from Slim’s wife or he can’t bury him.”’

At that point it got real quiet and none of them claimed Slim as their husband. During the early 1960s, the Sugar Bowl flourished, booking acts like Carol Fran, James Davis, Lee Dorsey, Nappy Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, Hank Ballard and many others.

When a big act like Lloyd Price or James Brown came to Thibodaux, Hill booked them at Stark Field, thus producing Thibodaux’s first integrated events. He also booked Sam Cooke into the Morgan City Auditorium. For the Cooke date he had to change the advertising placards to read “concert” rather than “dance” because the city fathers didn’t want blacks and whites twisting the night away together.

Beatrice says the most popular attraction at the Sugar Bowl during that era was Ray Charles. “Ray Charles played the Sugar Bowl four times a year. I remember the first time he played we had a flood and there was water in the Sugar Bowl. The barmaids were trying to sweep the water out to get the place ready when people started arriving. The people coming in was so anxious to see Ray Charles that some of them grabbed mops and brooms to help us out.”

By the late 1960s, Hill had taken on other business ventures (including owning and driving school buses) and could no longer be the hands-on owner of the Sugar Bowl. “It had got run down and police told Hosea to dean the place up,” said Beatrice. “Hosea got me and Thurston to turn it around.

We worked there a year cleaning and fixing the place up. We ran off the deadbeats and the business started running pretty good again. Then Hosea’s second wife decided she wanted to take it over. She got rid of us and it started going down again. The place burnt down around 1969. I think because of bad wiring. Hosea always had his friends do jackleg repairs around the place and it caught fire one night.”

Hill barely missed a beat as he set up a temporary Sugar Bowl at his apartment which was in the building next to the Sugar Bowl. “Hosea rebuilt the dub in about six months,” said Beatrice. “But he had to borrow money build it. He didn’t have insurance on the old building and he lost everything.”

Unfortunately, the “new” Sugar Bowl couldn’t replace the “old” one. It didn’t help that Hill was diagnosed with cancer and that his second wife, a school teacher, had no idea how to run a club. Hill continued to book bands though, even from his hospital bed. “Daddy booked the first show at the Thibodaux Civic Center in 1973,”