Thursday, January 26, 2012

What is the name of Harpo's new club?

Celia refers to the jukejoint in her letters as Harpo's. At one point she states that Harpo would cross out the names of jukejoints from old jukejoint signs he was given and replace them with his name and location so "The Lucky Star of Coalman Road" would become "Harpo's of ___ Plantation (the blanks also appear in Celia's letters)
Harpo starts building the jukejoint after Sofia leaves him. Since she had left he says he had found a knack for making money. Celia questions why he would build a bar back in the woods, but he tells her "Jukejoint 'sposed to be back in woods... the polices don't know where to look." He puts his signs up on the trees by the roadside and waits for people to come.
Business finally perks up when Shrug begins performing there every weekend "First night or two her songs come out good but a little weak, now she belt them out"
Celia describes Harpo's as

It's nice at Harpo's. Little tables all round the room with candles on them that I made, lot of little tables outside too, by the creek. Sometime I look down the path from our house and it look like a swarm of lightening bugs all in and through Sofia house.


Harpo's new club is called Harpo's jukejoint, and he builds it, getting it up and running after Sofia leaves him. This is where Shug Avery resumes her singing career, after her prolonged illness and during her initial stay at Celie and Albert's house. It is where Shug first performs "Celie's Song," the one she says that Celie scratched out of Shug's head when Shug was sick. This is also where Squeak, later called Mary Agnes, gets her start as a singer—that is, of course, after her initial fight with Sofia (when she slaps Sofia in the head for dancing with Harpo, and then Sofia punches Squeak in the mouth, knocking out two of her teeth). Harpo's Jukejoint becomes a kind of family business.

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