These memories belong to Billy Mitchell, the resident historian and tour guide at the Apollo, the fabled Harlem institution that propelled the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, the Jackson Five and scores of others. Mr. Mitchell, 58, was a teenager when he began hanging around the Apollo’s backdoor, performing odd jobs to help support his family. Since then he has held several bona fide jobs at the theater, including his current one, since 1991.
This year the Apollo turned 75, an anniversary being honored with a big bouquet of events: a lecture series, concerts, the opening of a national tour of “Dreamgirls” in November. Mr. Mitchell will be a featured part of the revelry. This weekend, and again in October, he will host free open houses at the theater, on West 125th Street, with its red seats and sparkling Venetian crystal chandeliers. The open houses on Saturday and Sunday will include a multimedia presentation, film screenings, book signings, a panel discussion and a mock Amateur Night.
“Who would have thought that one day you would be on the stage of the Apollo?” Mr. Mitchell joked on a recent tour, escorting a group onstage for a mock amateur show. He made everyone in the group, which included a middle-aged couple from Indiana and a young one from Paris, do something: recite a poem, sing a song, dance. The Apollo’s motto, after all, is “where stars are born and legends are made.”
“The Apollo is shorthand for both American and African-American culture,” said John Breglio, producer of the new production of the musical “Dreamgirls.” “It’s the birthplace for music in this country. It resonated with us because ‘Dreamgirls’ is a snapshot of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s American music culture.”
The opening scene of “Dreamgirls,” about a girl group loosely based on the Supremes, takes place at the Apollo. The show ran on Broadway from 1981 to 1985, was revived in 1987 and made into a film in 2006 that won Jennifer Hudson an Academy Award.
As Mr. Mitchell tells the thousands of people who come from around the world for tours, the four-story former burlesque palace opened as the 125th Street Apollo Theater in 1934. The Depression had ravaged the country, and blacks were routinely denied basic rights. The Apollo was one of the first mainstream theaters to allow both black patrons and artists. And Amateur Night was a chance for black performers to show their stuff; according to the Apollo a 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald and a 19-year- old Billie Holiday were introduced that first year.
The Apollo’s stage became an international incubator of black talent, whether in jazz, blues, comedy, dance or rhythm and blues.
“In the minds of people around the world it is a place of quality and excellence, created and produced and presented by black people,” said Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “It sets a standard.”
The open houses will give visitors a taste of the tours conducted by Mr. Mitchell, whose compact 5-foot-3 frame is always dressed in an immaculate suit. Commuting from his home in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Mr. Mitchell, who offers up jokes and imitations of the stars, said he often worked seven days a week (and often does three tours a day) because no one else knows the Apollo story as he does.
