Blue Bird Inn
The Blue Bird Inn is a Detroit jazz club that was best known in the hard bop era during the 1950s.
The jazz club Blue Bird Inn (5021 Tireman Street), run by Clarence Eddins († 1992) and located in the western part of Detroit, had been a music venue since the 1930s, but it was not until 1948 that the owners turned it into a modern jazz venue when the Pianist Phil Hill was hired as a resident musician. He brought bebop musicians, vibraphonist Abe Woodly and drummer Art Mardigian into his band . The Phil Hill combo accompanied tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray in 1949 (with whom an album was recorded for Prestige Records the following year ). The Tommy Flanagan / Frank Foster Quartet played there in early 1950 .
In the following years musicians such as Yusef Lateef , Pepper Adams , Donald Byrd , Frank Gant , Thad Jones , Ernie Farrow , Bernard McKinney , Barry Harris , Elvin Jones and later Joe Henderson performed here . Charlie Parker joined them at jam sessions ; Miles Davis played here for the first time in 1953 and later returned regularly. Hill's house band was replaced in the early 1950s by the Billy Mitchell quintet , in which Elvin Jones played with his brother Thad. In 1953, Clarence Eddins took over the club from the DuBois family who had previously run it. At the end of the 1950s, the Blue Bird became the venue for nationally known artists such as Horace Silver , Art Blakey , Jimmy Smith , but above all former Detroiters such as Sonny Stitt , Thad Jones and Milt Jackson . Music events continued to be held at the Blue Bird Inn from the 1960s to the early 1970s , but awareness declined noticeably. Then the Blue Bird Inn will continue to operate as a bar without any events taking place there; Jazz has been played there again since 2019.
Thad Jones dedicated his composition 5021 to the club ; Tommy Flanagan Beyond the Bluebird , the title track of his Timeless album of the same name (1990) with Kenny Burrell , George Mraz and Lewis Nash .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Blue Bird Inn
- ↑ a b c Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert: Bebop in Detroit Nights at the Bluebird Inn ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Detroit music: the ultimate sightseer's guide ( Memento of March 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Franya J. Berkman: Monument Eternal. The Music of Alice Coltrane . University Press, Middletown, Conn. 2010, ISBN 978-0-8195-6924-0
- ^ Detroit jazz club Blue Bird Inn gets a new lease on life
Coordinates: 42 ° 21 '9.7 " N , 83 ° 7' 10.4" W.