Singer, entrepreneur, Republican Activist: Hood has done it all his way

BY JOSEPH PICARD

It was a hot, muggy night in Valdosta, a college town in southern Georgia in the summer of 1966. Electric fans feebly churned the heavy air in the old auditorium. But the kids weren't concerned with the weather. They were dancing to the lean, grass-roots rock 'n' roll of blues guitar legend Jimmy Reed.

Reed and his band were percolating on stage. The black kids were dancing, and the white kids were dancing. Some black kids were even dancing with white kids. Everybody was having fun.

"They were having too much fun — that must have been it," said Mel Hood, 73, Neptune entrepreneur, political activist and singer, who was Reed's vocalist on that night 40 years ago.

"Someone must have decided the white kids were too close to the black kids, or that all the kids were getting too wild. But the cops started moving onto the dance floor, shoving kids, smacking them with their nightsticks. We got off the stage in a hurry. It was truly frightening," Hood said.

But Hood did not have to travel through the Deep South to confront racial hatred. He has received, over the years, a full helping of the Garden State variety.

When Hood and his wife moved to Neptune in 1963, a man used to drive by their home every day, with his kids in the car, shouting racial epithets out the window, Hood said.

"On the other hand," he recalled, "another man welcomed us to the neighborhood and asked if he could bring his children over to meet us, so they could learn that blacks are no different than whites."

The Air Force brought Hood to New Jersey, to McGuire Air Force Base in 1962. He met his future bride, Jean, married her and stayed.

He got a job with Johnson & Johnson, made some investments and, in 1972, he purchased the Wellington Lounge, in what is now Lake Como and was then South Belmar, and made it a blues and jazz club.

Soon afterward, Hood, who was born in North Carolina, saw what he'd never seen below the Mason-Dixon line — a burning cross, in the parking lot of his business.

"There were other incidents, too, but eventually people got the message that we were not leaving and things calmed down," said Hood, who changed the club's name to Jason's in 1976.

"You expected bigotry down South. You didn't think it would be as bad up North. But it was, and it's still around, although not as blatant."

Jason's became THE place on the Jersey Shore for blues and jazz. James Cotton, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Otis Rush, Grover Washington, Freddie Cole — these and other artists of similar caliber have performed at Jason's.

Darrell Bridges, 57, a performance manager and producer from New York City, met Hood over 10 years ago, when his entertainment magazine featured Jason's, and they've been friends ever since.

"He's a man of his word, a man of impeccable character," Bridges said. "He helped me make my way in business. Mel Hood is a dear friend and a mentor."

Jason's closed its doors in 2002. It was the economy after the Sept. 11 attacks, rather than domestic bigotry, that caused it.

"It was a wonderful time. I miss it," Hood said of Jason's. "But the club had its run. Sometimes, you just have to know when to get off the stage."

But Hood, a Republican all his adult life, has always been politically active and remains so. He is planning to run for the Monmouth County GOP chairmanship, which would mean a challenge to current Chairman Fredrick R. Niemann.

"When another black man asks me what have the Republicans done for blacks, I ask him to step back, be honest with himself and ask himself what the Democrats have ever done for blacks," Hood said. "Frankly, it does not matter greatly to me if blacks choose the Republicans or the Democrats. I just want them to choose a party and get involved. You cannot change things unless you are politically involved."

Thomas E. Daniels of Asbury Park, former active member of the Asbury Park/Neptune NAACP, worked with Hood during the racial turmoil following the Greekfest incidents in Belmar in the early 1990s, when black fraternity members clashed with police. Daniels, a Democrat, said Hood has always worked for equality for the races despite political affiliation.

"I respect Mel's choice of the Republican Party," Daniels said. "He's a businessman, and businessmen tend to be Republican. His heart's in the right place. He is very knowledgeable in business, in racial issues and in politics."

Hood is a member of the Neptune Planning Board, and is active in the county GOP organization and in statewide black Republican organizations.

"It's been a struggle all the way," Hood said. "But I'm still here. And I have my wife and family, my sense of humor, and my dignity."