Online I
found links to a book by Joe Mosbrook, Cleveland Jazz History, first
published in 1993, with a second edition in 2003. I can’t attest to the
reliability of Mosbrook’s scholarship, but he supplies interesting information
about a Cleveland I hardly knew existed. In Chapter 12, “Cleveland Jazz Clubs,”
Mosbrook devotes a section to the Sky Bar (Page 126):
“Perhaps the
most popular and certainly the longest running of the many jazz clubs in the
University Circle area of Cleveland was Lindsay’s Sky Bar on Euclid Avenue near
East 105th Street.”
He quotes
the alto player, composer and arranger Willie Smith (1926-2009) as saying
Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday performed there, and adds: “Phil and Rickie
[Bash, the club’s owners] made frequent trips to New York City to scout and
hire the best acts. Among the other jazz artists who performed at the Sky Bar
were Coleman Hawkins, Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Gene
Krupa and Oscar Peterson. They were all treated as stars at Lindsay’s.”
In 1950, the
year my parents married, Cleveland’s population exceeded 900,000, making it the
seventh largest city in the U.S. Today it’s ranked 52nd. More
importantly, Cleveland was able to attract great American (and Canadian)
artists. Elsewhere in Mosbrook’s book we learn that Clifford Brown performed at
the Modern Jazz Room in Cleveland on a Sunday night, June 24, in 1956. With him
were Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Richie Powell and George Morrow. The following
night, after an “informal gig” in Philadelphia, Brown and Powell, on their way
to Chicago, were killed in an automobile accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
[Listen to Brown’s
“Joy Spring” and Tatum’s “Yesterdays.”]
2 comments:
When my father was at the Cleveland School of Art in the early 1940s, he and his buddies would go to the black clubs at 105th and Cedar to hear jazz. That was sort of daring and naughty thing you'd expect from art students. Now, I park at that same corner every day for work, and often think about Art Tatum practicing his complex runs (which they say he did, for hours at a time) in a dank, afternoon bar in that very space. (A then-unknown Elvis played his first gig north of the Mason-Dixon line in dive bar on 105th and Carnegie - 1954, I think.)
Mosbrook was a local Newscaster and a huge jazz fan. He was president of the Blues and Jazz Society. The clubs I remember as a white kid from the West side heading East was Lancers and Sir Rah’s. I saw George Benson, Earl Kluge and some others in the early 70s.
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