Read A Vintage Article About Café BohemiaA June 13, 1956 Village Voice article describes the club’s origins as a jazz spot:
“First Birthday for Jazz Club That Started ‘by Accident’”What Jimmy Garofolo, 42, knew about progressive jazz one year ago wouldn’t have filled a single bar – of music. What he’s learned since, however, was filling his bar – the Cafe Bohemia – every night last week, when the nightspot celebrated its first anniversary as a jazz club.
Seating only 100, the tiny Barrow Street club has become the only place in America with a policy of “progressive jazz only.”
“No rock ‘n roll, no vocalists, no big bands, no nuttin’ except small jazz combos,” Garofolo told The Voice Sunday [June 10, 1956]. “Once Birdland and Basin Street were the mecca of all true jazzmen; now a lot of them won’t go on the road until they’ve played the Bohemia, too. We’re a small place and we’ve given many a new outfit their first chance.”
Half a dozen LP record albums have been cut on the premises during the past 12 months, and their covers, along with others, line the walls in symmetrical rows. They include covers by the Bohemia’s two current stars – Miles Davis and Teddy Charles.
The fact that the Bohemia ever turned into a jazz club in the first place is almost accidental. Owner Garofolo, a lifelong Villager who lives across the street from his bar, explains: “For six years I tried to make the place pay, first as a bar and restaurant, then with girly shows, and then with various acts. One night I had to throw out a character who’d been drinking brandy alexanders without any money to pay for them. The next thing I knew, he was back offering to play a few weeks here to pay off his obligation – and because he wanted a regular home base from which to play when he was between engagements.
Guess Who? “Somebody told me his name was Charlie Parker and he was a saxophonist. I was pretty naive about jazz at the time and I didn’t know him from beans, but it turned out he was a big man in the jazz world.
“When I put out signs announcing he was going to play, I had a stream of people coming in wanting to know if the great Charley Parker was going to play here. It was the way they said ‘here’ that got me.”
The great Charley Parker never did get around to playing the Bohemia; he died before his engagement came up. But his prestige had done the trick – jazzophiles have jammed the place ever since.
According to Panken’s 2005 Downbeat article, Charley Parker began frequenting the Bohemia because he was staying at the apartment of poet
Ted Joans, across the street. Joans is said to have coined “Bird lives!”, the phrase that caught on after Parker’s death in 1955. Joans also wrote the poem
“Jazz Is My Religion.”***
Now a local bar, this place used to be Cafe Bohemia. Cannonball Adderley made his New York debut here. He was 26 years old at the time, just left a job teaching high schools in Florida, and come to get his Masters degree at NYU. In his first night in New York, him and his brother, Nat Adderley, went down to Cafe Bohemia and played through a couple of tunes. Oscar Pettiford and Charlie Rouse were there that night, and were so impressed by the two brothers that they gave the them both jobs two nights later. The two would go on to record some of the most important jazz albums in history.
~ chasingred- TOUR OF NEW YORK'S JAZZ HISTORY, PART 1
vol 1
This post is a rip of a CD reissue of two LPs collecting together the music performed by a Murray led quartet at a Manhattan club on New Year's eve in 1977. You can almost smell the seafood in the club's name! It re-unites the rhythm section of Hopkins and Wilson from Murray's earlier India Navigation recording from eighteen months before, and adds Lester Bowie.
Bowie is the link between the three most powerful groupings of musicians who came together in New York in the late 1970s to transform the established free jazz movement into the new music scene. Bowie had been active in both St Lois and Chicago in the collectives that became BAG and AACM respectively, and here in New York he is one of the earliest to play with musicians, who like Murray had come from LA. Inspired by the Black Arts movement and the idea of musical collectives they had nurtured these ideas in major black communities in the US, but ultimately moved to new York, often after sojourns in Europe.
Bob Cummins was one of those jazz lovers and small-scale entrepreneurs who captured much of the vibrant energy of the scene on his India Navigation label in the 1970s. He seemed to earn his living as a lawyer, and spent it on recording live performances in the lofts and small venues, and then releasing the recordings. He died in September 2000, but small bursts of CD reissues seem to appear from time to time. Not sure why and how, but I'm always glad of the opportunity to listen to more. This one seems to be out of print as far as I can tell. It was certainly hard to find a copy when it was first re-released.
I haven't got the original vinyl LPs, but the CD liner notes say there's nearly seven minutes taken off 'Santa Barbara And Crenshaw Follies', and by my calculations there's possibly over two minutes less on 'For Walter Norris' if the timings on LP and CD can be believed (they can't usually). The CD notes also talk about an unreleased track. many of these tracks were staples of Murray's repertoire, and you get the usual personal dedications, rich textures and sometimes inspired themes. I'm very fond of this recording. I hope you enjoy it too.
HotBeatJazz 10' Series - Billie Holiday & Stan Getz - Billie And Stan 10'LP Dale LP 25 (1951)
Live at the Open Door in Greenwich Village, N. Y. C., Sunday, July 26, 1953
The Jazz Crusaders Live Newport & Pacific Jazz Festivals – The Festival Album 1966
Recorded live at The Lighthouse, Hermosa Beach, California on January 14-16, 1966.
The Jazz Crusaders - Lighthouse '68 (1968)
Guess Who? “Somebody told me his name was Charlie Parker and he was a saxophonist. I was pretty naive about jazz at the time and I didn’t know him from beans, but it turned out he was a big man in the jazz world.
Recorded live at the Cafe Bohemia in New York City on May 31, 1956
Recorded live at Yoshi's, Oakland, California from December 15-17, 2000.
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett Trio - At The Deer Head Inn (1994) {ECM 1531}
Live in Greenwich Village: The Complete Impulse Sessions (2 CDs)
