Bronze Peacock Club

From the mid-1940s into the early 1950s the Bronze Peacock Dinner Club at 2809 Erastus Street in Fifth Ward was the nightclub of Don Robey, a promoter and businessman. In 1949 Robey started a record label, Peacock Records, from a back office in the club building. Peacock and its sister label Duke grew into a major Black-owned record company, recording rhythm and blues and gospel for a national audience. Robey took over the Duke label in the early 1950s and gained full ownership of it in 1953, the same year Peacock had its rhythm-and-blues breakthrough with Big Mama Thornton's recording of Hound Dog. Gospel was a steady part of the business: the companies recorded the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, the Sensational Nightingales, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Bells of Joy and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. After the club closed, the Erastus Street building served as the companies' headquarters, and in 1956 a full recording studio was built inside it. Before that, Peacock sessions were cut at Bill Holford's ACA studio on Westheimer Road.

In 1973 Robey, then 70, sold the Duke and Peacock holdings, including about 2,700 song copyrights, to ABC Dunhill. He died of a heart attack in 1975. The Erastus Street building had been torn down by 2017.