Chicago jazz mecca closes doors,

[Hardbopjazz]

Sad story in jazz.

Chicago jazz mecca closes doors, perhaps forever

CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a city that lost several beloved institutions in 2006, the sound coming out of Chicago's jazz scene is providing a year-end coda no one wants to hear.

The Jazz Showcase, this jazz-drenched city's oldest club dedicated to the musical form and the second-oldest U.S. jazz venue after New York's Village Vanguard, is closing its doors this weekend after 59 years.

A New Year's Eve "last blast" featuring saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and Henry Johnson's Organ Express will be the final show at the club, which for six decades presented artists like Charlie Parker and others working out of the tradition associated with legendary players like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins.

This fall, the club lost its lease and despite help from the city of Chicago, its owner and founder, 80-year-old Joe Segal, still has found no new digs.

The uncertainty surrounding the venerable club's future serves as a depressingly apt final note in a year that saw a number of Chicago landmarks -- including the Marshall Field's department store on State Street, the Berghoff restaurant, and the scruffy City News Service -- pass from the scene.

"It's impossible to overstate the importance of the Jazz Showcase to Chicago," said John Corbett, a Chicago jazz journalist and musician.

"We don't have the network or infrastructure of mainstream jazz clubs that a city like New York has. Which is bizarre because we have a great vibrant jazz scene. But in terms of the places where you can go see, every night, great mainstream jazz, there aren't that many."

After Sunday night, there will be one fewer. Despite three months of looking with the help of the city of Chicago, Segal, who founded the club when he was a college student after World War Two, says he's "getting tired of looking."

"No one's coming up with anything that says, 'We want you to be viable,"' Segal said. "They're introducing us to brokers. But they haven't found us anything that we can afford."

BASEMENT STORAGE

So after Sunday's 11 p.m. show, all the tables and chairs and memorabilia documenting the generations of jazz luminaries, including Parker, Diana Krall and McCoy Tyner who played there, will be moved into his son's basement.

The Showcase has called half a dozen places home over the years so few jazz fans were worried when news of the club's troubles first became public. But as the club prepares to go dark for the first time in a decade, there's growing concern it may be for keeps.

Ken Vandermark, a Chicago-based avant-garde jazz musician and winner of a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship "genius" award, fears what the scene would be like without it.

"If you look at the lineups Joe has year after year, he's bringing in some of the best players, the most creative musicians, working in that part of the field," he said.

"It would be such a huge blow if he's not able to find some place and not get some support for that. I would be really, really saddened by that."

A benefit to raise money to help Segal find a new home is planned for March. But even if he finds a new site, Segal said the reopened Showcase will be a scaled-back affair, confining its presentation of internationally known acts to the weekends, rather than the current six nights a week, and featuring more jam sessions and open mike nights.

If the Showcase doesn't reopen, there still would be jazz clubs in Chicago, which has been closely associated with jazz since Louis Armstrong recorded here with his Hot Five band in 1925. The Green Mill and Andy's, two mainstream clubs, aren't going anywhere and the Velvet Lounge, a more experimental club, has a new home after facing a situation similar to the Showcase's.

Lauren Deutsch, the executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, a non-profit group Segal helped found in 1969 to preserve the music in the face of rock 'n' roll's onslaught, is optimistic the Showcase can be saved.

"People here have a kind of cultural ownership," she said. "Does that mean they won't fall and bite the dust? No. For jazz lovers, the Showcase is an exceptionally important place and is near and dear to our hearts."

[Guest youmustbe]

Thanks for posting this. My mother worked at Marshall Field's. Before I moved to New York after graduating from High School, my Saturday routine would be; take the Congress line from Oak Park to, I forget station, meet my mother at Marshall Field's, have lunch in the cafetria, then go down Wabash to the Jazz Record Mart and talk to Bob Koester and Joe, who worked there and get the latest Blue Note.

[sheldonm]

I'll be at both shows tomorrow night.....I'm optimistic Joe and Wayne will find something! Will post photos sometime Monday!

m~

[gslade]

  sheldonm said:

I'll be at both shows tomorrow night.....I'm optimistic Joe and Wayne will find something! Will post photos sometime Monday!

m~

Sad news indeed, as culture in this country continues to die in the name $$$$$$$!

Looking forward to the photos, thanks in advance

and have a great time.

[LWayne]

I hope and pray that the Segals can find a new location for the Jazz Showcase. It has become a mecca for me on my fairly frequent business trips to Chicago as I have been there many times. I always looked forward to a show as a "reward" for a job well done.

I fear that the longer that the Showcase stays closed that this will become a permanent condition. Even if it reopens, all reports indicate that there will be no national acts during the week-precisely when I was able to enjoy a show on my jaunts. Either way, I will miss the comfort, familiarity, and atmosphere of the club as I would mourn for a departed friend.

LWayne

[Chuck Nessa]

"Between places" has been Joe's way of life.

[sal]

I feel confident that they will keep it going somehow. It may not be the same as it has been, but there will still be something. Can't see those guys doing anything else but bringing great music to Chicago.

[woofy]

I saw my first Jazz Showcase shows as a teenager at The Blackstone Hotel, starting with Art Blakey when Branford Marsalis was still with the band. I saw Blakey's bands 5 more times over a few years. Who else have I seen there?

Max Roach, Milt Jackson, The Heath Brothers, The Harper Brothers, Tony Williams, Donald Harrison, Kenny Garrett, Lee Konitz, Roy Haynes, Lou Donaldson, Jack DeJohnette, Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin together, Sonny Fortune, Scott Hamilton, John Scofield, James Moody, Dave Holland in the 1980's doing avant garde, and with his current quintet, Roy Hargrove, Joe Pass with Nils Henning Orsted Pederson, Hank Crawford, Frank Morgan, A new years show with Pepper Adams, Kenney Burrell and Wilbur Campbell. I'm sure I've forgotten to include a bunch.

Most of these performers were seen from the front row, sipping a Guiness with my foot resting against the stage, sitting about six feet from the musicians. We've been lucky to have The Showcase. I hope it will re-open...

[Shawn]

Depressing. I took a group of people there to see McCoy Tyner in 2005, I loved the vibe of the place.