He began selling refreshments to workers at the nearby Magnolia Housing Project,[1][2] and then expanded his premises to include a bar and hotel, which opened as the Dew Drop Inn in April 1939.

[3][4] Nicknamed "the Groove Room", the Dew Drop Inn was reported in October 1945 by the Louisiana Weekly to be "New Orleans' swankiest nightclub",[5] and began featuring visiting musicians such as Joe Turner, the Sweethearts of Rhythm, Amos Milburn, Lollypop Jones, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter, Chubby Newsom, The Ravens, Big Maybelle, and Cecil Gant.

[3][4][6] In November 1952, Frank Painia, together with Hollywood film actor Zachary Scott and his friends, were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, following a complaint to the New Orleans Police Department that "Negroes and whites were being served together," which was technically illegal at the time.

[7] The club continued to attract star performers in the 1950s and 1960s, including Ray Charles, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, and Little Richard, who wrote a song, "Dew Drop Inn", about the venue.

[9][10] A campaign to raise $3.5 million to restore the Dew Drop Inn as a nightclub-hotel-restaurant and training center was started by Painia's grandson Kenneth Jackson in 2015 with support from Harmony Neighborhood Development and the Tulane School of Architecture.