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Big Apple Jazz Blog

Lenox Lounge

WSJ – The Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem

     If you’re a hopeless romantic pining for a sepia toned, 100 year ago version of New York City you will marvel at how well-preserved Harlem still appears to be.  If coming from the laughably tall and thin sky-scraper race to the clouds on 57th Street, it’s strangely comforting to note that the buildings…

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November 12, 2020

Resurrection of our old NYC Jazz Club Bible

Some of our long-time visitors -we’ve been around since the turn of the century- have been missing our big list of NYC jazz clubs, and the content we used to include about each club. As it turns out this information was lingering somewhere in the dark web ready to be resurrected – so here it…

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December 2, 2019

The Harlem Jazz Scene – a retrospective on the day after St. Nick’s Pub fire

We woke up to the devastating news of a deadly fire last night in Harlem on the set of a Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Mann movie called Motherless Brooklyn.  With that kind of star power glaring their vision, what reporters so far have overlooked is that the charred set of this movie was in the defunct and deserted St. Nick’s Pub which closed 7 years earlier this same month. As Harlem jazz fans wake up to this news through word-of-mouth, I wanted to resurrect an article I wrote nearly 10 years ago, describing the uptown jazz scene when it was truly in it’s 21st century heyday – when St. Nick’s Pub and the Lenox Lounge were still swinging and Earl Spain was still the proprietor of the Uptown Lounge at Minton’s Playhouse.  St. Nick’s Pub…

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March 23, 2018

The Billie Holiday Zone – Harlem Singers’ Series

Fridays will never be the same.  There’s no place like Harlem and there’s no other vocalist series like this one in the clandestine Gin Fizz – a speakeasy hidden in plain sight. Tickets in cooperation with AirBnB Concerts.  Singers Showcase   March 16, 2018 at Gin Fizz Boncellia Lewis with Shareef Clayton, trumpet Hilliard Greene, bass Frank Fallon, drums Paul Odeh, keys Gin Fizz,  308 Lenox Ave. (125th / 126th Streets).  2 /3 Subway to 125th Street.  Doors: 6:30. 1st set: 7PM.   2nd set: 8:30PM   It’s almost impossible to find someone who doesn’t love Billie Holiday.  Her voice, her phrasing, her songwriting, her commanding presence, and her life story all compel us toward this devotion.  Lady Day stands alone as a figure in popular culture who has left her mark on generation after generation of artists and music lovers…

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March 7, 2018