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Topic: Jazz On The Radio / "A Night At Nick's" on Riverwalk Jazz Tomorrow

For the week beginning Thursday, June 26, public radio’s Riverwalk Jazz series will revisit the legendary jazz nightclub, Nick’s In Greenwich Village.

For almost three decades, Nick’s Steakhouse was revered as “the place” in Greenwich Village to hear classic, hot, improvised jazz. Music stands and orchestrations were banned from the stage.

Muggsy Spanier led his group there, as did Bud Freeman and Eddie Condon. Booked for a one-nighter, Benny Carter stayed for five weeks. Fats Waller would drop by to play ‘for fun,’ and so did Jack Teagarden.

Jazz pianist Johnny Varro worked at the club off and on, for more than a decade, in bands led by Phil Napoleon and Pee Wee Erwin. Varro gives a flavor of what it was like, “It was a great place. It had atmosphere. They had moose heads all over the walls. From the kitchen they’d bring out these sizzling steaks and poured brandy on the platter and the sweet smell would permeate the place.”

Nick’s Steakhouse in Greenwich Village had the ‘cream of the crop’ on the bandstand. And in the audience—the best ‘brains and brawn’ New York café society had to offer. Icons of high culture and low rubbed shoulders with students and army privates for a chance to experience cornetist Bobby Hackett with Pee Wee Russell on clarinet, the powerful sound of trumpeter Wild Bill Davison, or the swinging sophistication of Bud Freeman and his Summa Cum Laude Orchestra. Playing intermission piano, you might’ve heard stride piano man Cliff Jackson, Hank Duncan or boogie woogie master Meade Lux Lewis.

Crammed together in the smoky room, novelist John Steinbeck and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio crowded around tables next to celebrity bank-robber Willie Sutton and the hottest name in television—The Honeymooners’ Jackie Gleason.

Hopping off the subway at Sheridan Square, you crossed the street and walked straight into Nick’s front door on the corner of 10th and 7th Avenue. The pie-shaped club, lovingly created by Nick Rongetti, had a stained glass window with the letter “N” in blue and gold. Tuxedoed waiters delivered steaks to the tables, but If you did your listening at the bar, beer was only 20 cents.

Between 1937, when the club first opened its doors, until the last set with bandleader Sol Yaged in 1962, a trip to New York wasn’t complete for many fans without a visit to Nick’s. Once hooked on the informal, freewheeling style of jazz played at the club, it often became a life-long passion.

In November 1962, banjoist and entrepreneur Joel Schiavone bought Nick’s and re-opened it as Your Father’s Mustache. Your Father’s Mustache closed in 1971 and the venue went through several more reincarnations until the building was demolished in 1989.

We invited Riverwalk Jazz listeners to share their memories of Nick’s in the Village, and the phones began to ring off the hook. We heard from one man who had gotten engaged at the bar, one who was an Olympic athlete, and several who were musicians who had played at Nick’s. These listeners, and others, contribute their stories to this week’s Riverwalk Jazz broadcast as The Jim Cullum Jazz Band celebrates Nick Rongetti’s club with clarinetist Kenny Davern, pianist Dick Hyman and others.

The response to our request for stories was so great that we decided to share those that we couldn’t fit into the show into a special web presentation here

The atmosphere of Nick’s in the Village, and the exhilarating music made there, lives on, in the fond memories of fans. Tune in to Riverwalk Jazz to hear all about it, or stream the show 24/7 from our website at http://www.riverwalkjazz.org

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / Coming Up in June on Riverwalk Jazz—A Night At Nick's

Nick’s in the Village was one of the favorite haunts on the New York jazz scene in the 1930s and ‘40s. The first house band—led by Bobby Hackett—featured Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell and Zutty Singleton. Meade Lux Lewis was the intermission pianist, and you never knew who might drop by.

The Riverwalk Jazz production team is working on a radio show called A Night at Nick’s, and we’re reaching out to you for stories and memories of the music scene there. Help us paint a picture of what it looked, sounded and felt like inside. Who was playing on the bandstand? What was on the menu? And if you weren’t there yourself, do you have stories from family members who were? We’ll collect your stories and select some to put on the air and our Website.

The show is coming up soon—in June—so please email your stories to us, let us know how to contact you, and also how to pronounce your name. Send your email to Jan White at jwhite@pvpmedia.net.

Topic: What's Happening? / Free Jazz Appreciation Month Content on Riverwalk Jazz Website

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. Join the celebration by visiting the Riverwalk Jazz website at http://www.riverwalkjazz.org.

Registered users can stream the weekly program for free at the site as well as view special web content related to these JAM shows below.

Here is the link to the special content:

http://www.riverwalkjazz.org/site/PageServer?pagename=JAM08_Promo

4/3/08 Rhythm is My Business: The Life and Music of Milt Hinton

Known for his impeccable time and ability to play across genres, Milt Hinton’s career spanned more than 60 years. In this Encore Presentation, Milt ‘the Judge’ Hinton performs with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band and shares memories of his life in music, including his days on the road Cab Calloway.

4/10/08 Talking Trumpet with Clark Terry

Basie, Ellington and Tonight Show veteran, Clark Terry shares his infectious humor in conversations with host David Holt and joins The Jim Cullum Jazz Band to perform music from his lengthy career, including his famous ‘Mumbles’ routine.

4/17/08 Riverwalk Jazz Hall of Fame: Legends at The Landing

Join The Jim Cullum Jazz Band and a trio of jazz greats, Doc Cheatham, Bob Haggart, and Joe Williams, sharing their stories and music on stage at The Landing.

4/24/08 Symphony in Riffs: Celebrating Benny Carter

Musicians called him ‘the King.’ An architect of the Swing Era sound, Benny Carter talks about his life in music and performs with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band. Carter biographer and Associate Director of The Institute of Jazz Studies Rutgers, Ed Berger discusses Benny Carter’s contribution in jazz.

Topic: Players & Bands / Young Players of Note

The last round of new Riverwalk shows produced in San Antonio featured 2 20-somethings: trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg from Vancouver and clarinetist Dave Bennett from Michigan. Both are playing a lot of dates these days and they did great work for us.

See videos of the production:

Make Me One Pallet

Yellow Dog Blues

I Got Rhythm

Avalon

Topic: Jazz On The Radio / Riverwalk Jazz Features the Next Gen of Trad

1/17/07

Jazz first attracted a mass audience in the years following the First World War, almost 90 years ago. In his book “Preservation Hall,” author William Carter asks whether traditional jazz will die out with the current generation, or “or re-seed itself?”

“Riverwalk Jazz,” an hour-long weekly series devoted to pre-WWII hot jazz distributed by Public Radio International, this week features the second in a series of 3 shows showcasing 2 young rising talents.

Trumpeter Bria Skonberg appears this week. With her dazzling smile and sun-streaked hair, you might expect Bria Skonberg to be toting a surfboard down a California beach, instead of playing ‘hot jazz’ trumpet. Part of a new generation of gifted 20-something players, Bria visits the stage of The Landing to perform classic jazz repertoire with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band.

A native of British Columbia, Bria began her trumpet studies at age 11. She recently graduated with a degree in Jazz Performance from Capilano College. And during the 2007 season, she performed at over 20 traditional jazz festivals in the US and Canada, and won the coveted Kobe Award, presented at the Breda Festival in Holland.

Bria cites Louis Armstrong as her main inspiration and stylistic model. This week on Riverwalk Jazz, Bria joins Jim Cullum in the front line to pay tribute to Armstrong with tunes he made famous, “Someday You’ll Be Sorry,” “Muskrat Ramble” and “Big Butter and Egg Man.” Also on the bill, is a set devoted to pieces collected or composed by “The Father of the Blues” W.C. Handy. Bria closes things out with a spirited vocal rendition of the traditional New Orleans favorite, “Ice Cream.”

For the last three years Bria has been active as an advocate for youth musicians, working as a teacher and counselor at the Heebie Jeebies Youth Jazz Camp, Mammoth Lakes Youth Jazz Camp and the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society Youth Jazz Camp in the summer. She has begun programming, narrating and performing educational elementary school shows, and has given clinics at Sacramento State University and the University of Colorado pertaining to improvising and her experiences. She is also the leader of two classic jazz bands, Mighty Aphrodite and the 51st Eight.

Bria Skonberg is bullish on the future of classic jazz, saying she plans to use her youth and enthusiasm to bring more attention to the music she loves.

Registered users can stream weekly Riverwalk Jazz shows at www.riverwalkjazz.org