Nightspots

I took a look at 52nd Street and found the Onyx Club and the Famous Door, fabled names in jazz.

[The Onyx Club, 62 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[The Famous Door, 66 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[Both clubs, c. 1939–1941. All photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives Collections.]

The name on the Onyx Club’s marquee: Kenny Watts. Patrick Burke‘s Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) notes that the Onyx Club closed in December 1939 after being picketed as unfair to union musicians,

both because the club had failed to pay union members adequately and because it was currently featuring Kenny Watts and his Kilowatts, “a non-union combination.” In September 1940, the union picketed the Swing Club at 35 West 52nd, and in October the Famous Door appeared on the “Unfair List of Local 802.” Although their recourse to the union could be helpful, it is clear that performing on 52nd Street could be a difficult way for musicians to make a living.

At the Famous Door when these photographs were taken: Ella Fitzgerald. That banner (wow) reads “First Lady of Swing.” One side says, I think, “The Tisket A Tasket Girl.” Or is it “Gal”? Fitzgerald would have been in a new role at the Famous Door, fronting a band not long after the death of drummer and bandleader Chick Webb.

Among the musicians associated with the Onxy Club, the violinist and singer Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys.

[Stuff Smith at the Onyx Club. Date unknown.]

Here are three samples of Stuff: “Onyx Club Spree” (1937), a 1965 quartet performance, and a 1957 (?) appearance with Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, and the Oscar Peterson Trio.

Look closely at the first photograph and you’ll see between the two nightspots a third, Lou Richman’s Dizzy Club. Richman was the brother of the entertainer Harry Richman. In 1936 Time mentioned the club’s seventeen-year-old female bouncer. The club would not have been named for Dizzy Gillespie — who was years away from being a personage on 52nd Street.

And Chez Lina, at 70 West 52nd (visible in the second photograph): that was a restaurant.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : The Famous Door and The Onyx Club (Wikipedia)