52nd Street Jazz Clubs

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Night view from 6th Avenue to 52nd Street (May 1948). Photography by William P. Gottlieb .

The legendary jazz clubs on 52nd Street were a mecca for jazz, especially bebop , in New York City from the 1930s to 1950s , so that at that time it was also called Swing Street , The Street that never sleeps or Street of Jazz - sometimes it was enough Instruct the taxi driver to drive to The Street .

Importance of 52nd Street

Announcement for the Erroll Garner Trio with JC Heard and Oscar Pettiford at the Three Deuces , around July 1948.
Photography by William P. Gottlieb

52nd Street is in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan south of Central Park . Most of the jazz clubs were there between 5th and 7th Avenues ( West 52nd Street ), which cut the street perpendicular, near Broadway . Jazz was played here as early as the 1920s, at the time of Prohibition , when the street was full of whisper bars ( speakeasies ). After the Depression , more and more jazz clubs opened here in the 1930s, which then sprang up from the ground from the mid-1940s, especially in the heyday of bebop. Numerous jazz musicians who had previously played on the nearby Broadway or in other clubs (the CBS studio was also nearby, as well as the Radio City Music Hall ) then came together here in the clubs to play together until the early hours of the morning. George Wein reports how, as a 14-year-old jazz fan from Boston, he went to the clubs on 52nd street at night with $ 15 in his pocket and, for the price of one dollar for a ginger ale, listened to the musicians, often with little audience, what the musicians did but didn't bother:
“It was the greatest feeling you could have, especially at three in the morning. Half asleep and then awake again. You were alone except for maybe three or four couples and meant the musicians were playing for you. ”
The musicians moved from one club to another and felt like they were in a brotherhood where they could play and hear the whole history of jazz on one street (according to Shelly Manne ). The nearby bar Charlie's Tavern was a popular meeting place for musicians and at the same time a job exchange .

52nd Street also became known nationwide through live broadcasts from the clubs of radio disc jockey Symphony Sid . Today there is nothing left of it. Most of the jazz clubs disappeared by the late 1960s (the last in 1968), and the street is now home to banks and shops. The decline began in the late 1940s when more and more strip bars opened there.

In the 1950s, only a few jazz clubs in Midtown Manhattan were able to last longer, especially Birdland , the Royal Roost south of 52nd Street on Broadway (founded in 1945, known for the performances of Miles Davis in 1948 with the Birth of the Cool -Musicians), the Embers (161st East 54th Street, where pianists like Marian McPartland played and was the meeting place of many Broadway stars) and the Basin Street (Broadway corner on 51st Street, later called Basin Street East after the move ). From the 1960s onwards, the jazz clubs were concentrated in Greenwich Village ( Village Vanguard , Five Spot , The Village Gate , Jazz Gallery ).

Description of the clubs

Wilbur De Paris in front of the Onyx, July 1947. Photo: Gottlieb

52nd Street jazz clubs included:

The musicians Phil Moore (far left) and Art Tatum (far right) are standing in the entrance of the Downbeat
Photo: William P. Gottlieb
  • Downbeat , 66th West 52nd Street (until 1948), founded in 1944 by Morris Levy (previously the Yacht Club was there). Dizzy Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins played here regularly . Next u. a. Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan , Art Tatum, Lester Young . In 1948 the club became a strip club. In 1952 a club of the same name opened on West 54th Street. It existed until 1954 and presented a. a. Mary Lou Williams . In the late 1960s there was a jazz club of the same name at 42 Lexington Avenue. Street, where from 1970 only rock was played. In 1993 a jazz club of this name was opened for the fourth time.
  • Three Deuces , 72 West 52nd Street. It existed from 1937 to 1950 when it became a strip club. Known for the bebop musicians playing there such as Charlie Parker , but also musicians such as Art Tatum, George Shearing , Ben Webster , Erroll Garner , Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart and Ella Fitzgerald performed there. Managers were u. a. Sammy Kay and Irving Alexander. It was right across from Jimmy Ryan’s .
  • Harlem Uproar House , founded in 1937. In the 1930s, u. a. the bands of Lucky Millinder , Coleman Hawkins, Mezz Mezzrow .
  • Yacht club
  • Jimmy Ryan’s , founded in 1940 by Jimmy Ryan and often frequented by the beboppers, but also by New Orleans jazz musicians. The jam sessions on Sunday afternoons were well attended when the musicians stood in line (musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Bobby Hackett , James P. Johnson , Hot Lips Page or Roy Eldridge ). After Ryan's death in 1963, it was just called Ryan’s . Reopened at a different location, Roy Eldridge and Dixieland musician Max Kaminsky played there regularly in the 1970s , until the club had to give way to a hotel there in the mid-1980s.
  • The Famous Door , 35th West 52nd Street (1935/6), then 66th West (1937-1943), 201st West (November 1943 - early 1944), 56th West (1947-1950). Founded in 1935, jointly financed and a. by Glenn Miller , the pianist Lennie Hayton (who directed it, future husband of Lena Horne ) and Jimmy Dorsey as a meeting place for musicians after their club appearances and named after an autograph door near the bar. In the 1930s, big bands (like Louis Prima at the opening) and Dixieland musicians played here . B. Red Norvo , Bunny Berigan , Teddy Wilson , Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith . The club closed in May 1936 and reopened in December 1937. Especially big bands ( Count Basie 1938, Benny Carter , Woody Herman , Andy Kirk , Charlie Barnet 1939) played here afterwards, but also z. B. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (after he next moved in 1943), Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Art Tatum, Red Allen , Jack Teagarden , Ben Webster. It became a strip club in 1950, but there was also a jazz club of that name on 52nd Street in the 1960s. Later there were clubs called Famous Door in other cities in the United States , e.g. B. in New Orleans (where the Dukes of Dixieland played ). Harry Lim named his New York jazz record label after the club in the early 1970s.
  • The (original) Birdland is on Broadway almost on the corner of 52nd Street.
  • Spotlite Club , 56th West 52nd Street. It existed from December 1944 to 1947 and was under the direction of Clark Monroe, who previously ran Clark Monroe's Uptown House in Harlem. Here u played a. Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie Big Band , Charlie Parker, Bud Powell , Hot Lips Page.
Abe Most (left) with Pete Ponti, Sid Jacobs and Jimmy Norton, Hickory House, New York, circa June 1947.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .
  • Hickory House , 144 West 52nd Street, founded by John Popkin in 1933, closed in 1968. Here u played a. Regularly Marian McPartland in the 1950s and Mary Lou Williams in the 1960s, but also Duke Ellington , Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman , Jutta Hipp and many others. A steak restaurant (around 380 seats, 60 at the bar) with a circular bar, in the middle of which the jazz musicians played.
  • Kelly's Stable , 141 West 51st Street (until 1940), 137 West 52nd Street (1940-1947). Here Coleman Hawkins developed his interpretation of " Body and Soul " in 1939 . The club's name comes from a well-known nightclub (headed by Bert Kelly) in Chicago in the 1920s . The club was founded by Ralph Watkins in the 1930s (he sold the club in 1947 after co- founding the Royal Roost ). The club was also known for its All Star Jam sessions.
  • Tondelayo's

Thelonious Monk immortalized the street in his composition 52nd Street Theme in 1944 . Billy Joel released an album called 52nd Street in 1978 .

literature

  • Arnold Shaw: 52nd Street- the Street of Jazz , da Capo 1971, 1988, ISBN 0-306-80068-3
  • Barry Dean Kernfeld: New Grove Dictionary of Jazz , Vol. 3 (Article Nightclubs)
  • Dizzy Gillespie: To be ... or not to bop , Hannibal 1988 (autobiography)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ which had its first origins "uptown" in Harlem , see Minton's Playhouse
  2. ↑ Dan Morgenstern reports in Ken Burns, Geoffrey Ward Jazz , Econ Verlag, p. 224, that as early as 1947 he saw signs of decline such as an increasing number of strip bars
  3. ↑ Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)