Lighthouse Cafe
Coordinates: 33 ° 51 ′ N , 118 ° 25 ′ W
The Lighthouse Cafe is a jazz club in Hermosa Beach (30 Pier Avenue), California (south of Los Angeles ) known as one of the centers of West Coast jazz in the 1950s.
Howard Rumsey , a former Stan Kenton bassist, fell in love with the coastal town of Hermosa Beach when he was a student in 1935. Back then, the Lighthouse Cafe was a newly built Italian restaurant. From 1940 it was a bar. In 1948 Rumsey wanted to settle in Hermosa Beach and suggested to the owner of the Lighthouse Cafe, John Levine, that they put on jazz concerts there on Sunday afternoons , and he agreed, because the bar wasn't very good that day anyway ran. Since a lot of big bands broke up at that time and their musicians flocked to Los Angeles to work as studio musicians , but the unions required six months of residency, Rumsey had a wide choice. Many of the musicians coming from the east coast were like Rumsey from the Kenton Big Band, others from the bands of Woody Herman , Boyd Raeburn , Charlie Barnet or Claude Thornhill . They included Shorty Rogers , Jimmy Giuffre , Shelly Manne , Bud Shank , Maynard Ferguson , Art Pepper , Frank Rosolino , Milt Bernhart , Hampton Hawes , Frank Patchen (piano), Barney Kessel , Herb Geller , Rolf Ericson , Richie Kamuca , Sonny Clark , Russ Freeman , Pepper Adams , Claude Williamson , Lorraine Geller . Max Roach but also musicians like Chet Baker , Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis played as guests with the All-Stars. The longest members of Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars included Bob Cooper (saxophone), Conte Candoli (trumpet), Stan Levey (drums). The atmosphere among the musicians was not characterized by star attitudes and competitive thinking, but mostly friendly and relaxed.
The concerts in the Lighthouse were a complete success and particularly attracted students from the Los Angeles area, on Sundays from two in the afternoon to two in the morning (first on January 1, 1949, mostly with two guest musicians), but also during the week only mostly in a quintet instead of a sextet. The jazz competitions between college musicians organized by Rumsey during the Easter break were also popular, and Les McCann was one of the winners . Levine was delighted with the boom his bar was taking (and not having to pay a 15 percent tax that was only due on singing and dancing) that Rumsey was participating in on a commission basis. The record companies also began to be interested. The All Stars recorded twenty albums for Contemporary Records from 1952 to 1957 (and another in 1961 for Philips and some albums in the band's revival from the 1980s). According to Rumsey, the name "West Coast Jazz" was an invention of these same labels, he saw himself more in the old swing and Stan Kenton tradition, neither cool nor hot . With the interest of the record companies, the problem arose for Rumsey that many independent labels wanted to sign the musicians exclusively. When all of his musicians finally had studio contracts or their own record contracts and no new talent flowed in, he dissolved the All Stars in 1961.
The Lighthouse Cafe continued to exist as a jazz club . It became the venue for booked jazz musicians, starting right at the beginning with Cannonball Adderley . Rumsey still played in a quartet at the club on a few weekdays in the 1960s, but when Levine died in 1970 he left the Lighthouse and founded a new jazz club in nearby Redondo Beach in 1971 ( Concert by the Seas , until 1985 when he retired went). Levine's heirs sold the Lighthouse Club to Rudy Onderwyzer, who was already a co-owner of Shelly Mann's Club Shelly's Manne-Hole , who resold it in 1981. Its jazz tradition only revived in the mid-1990s. Jazz concerts are still held in the Lighthouse Cafe on Sundays (as well as Saturdays and Wednesdays).
literature
- Ted Gioia: West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945–1960 , Oxford University Press, 1992