Blue Bird Inn

Last updated
Blue Bird Inn, July 2011 Gholz-bluebird-2011-wiki-share-2014.jpg
Blue Bird Inn, July 2011

The Blue Bird Inn, at 5021 Tireman, was a jazz night club in Detroit presenting music every night except Monday. An African American owned venue, by the end of the 1940s it was the most important live outlet for bop in the city. [1]

Thad Jones' composition "5021" refers to the Blue Bird's address and Tommy Flanagan placed tribute to the venue in the title track to an album with Kenny Burrell titled Beyond the Blue Bird (1990). [2]

The venue had featured live music since the 1930s, but in 1948 Phil Hill was hired to assemble a house band that could play bebop. Hill's first trio there comprised Abe Woodly on vibraphone and Art Mardigian on drums, with Hill on piano.

The following year, Hill and Mardigan were joined by Wardell Gray, James "Beans" Richardson on bass and Jack Tiant on bongos, and, as the Phil Hill Quintet, recorded a live album on July 20, 1949. [3] The following April, the Wardell Gray Quartet, with Hill, Richardson and Mardigan recorded for Prestige. [3]

In the latter half of 1949, the trio was headlined by Tate Houston, and later by Frank Foster. [4]

In the early 1950s, the Billy Mitchell Quintet, featuring Elvin Jones, replaced Hill's trio as the house band. In 1953, Miles Davis joined the band, and would return many times with his own groups. [5]

Other performers included Pepper Adams, Sonny Stitt, Ahmad Jamal, Donald Byrd, [6] Frank Gant, [6] and Curtis Fuller. [6]

In 2018, Detroit Sound Conservancy, local music preservation and advocacy nonprofit, purchased the building.

In 2020, the club was designated a local Historic District by the City of Detroit. [7]

The National Park Service conducted a study of the site and United Sound Systems in 2019 but found they were not suitable to be an affiliated area of the national park system. [8]

House bands

Led by [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dexter Gordon</span> American jazz saxophonist (1923–1990)

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wardell Gray</span> American jazz saxophonist (1921–1955)

Wardell Gray was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philly Joe Jones</span> American jazz drummer (1923–1985)

Joseph Rudolph "Philly Joe" Jones was an American jazz drummer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tadd Dameron</span> American jazz composer and pianist (1917–1965)

Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron was an American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis</span> American jazz saxophonist (1922–1986)

Edward F. Davis, known professionally as Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. It is unclear how he acquired the moniker "Lockjaw" : it is either said that it came from the title of a tune or from his way of biting hard on the saxophone mouthpiece. Other theories have been put forward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonny Clark</span> American jazz pianist (1931–63)

Conrad Yeatis "Sonny" Clark was an American jazz pianist and composer who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Farmer</span> American jazz trumpeter (1928–1999)

Arthur Stewart Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while at high school in Los Angeles. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elvin Jones</span> American jazz drummer (1927–2004)

Elvin Ray Jones was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era. Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such albums as My Favorite Things, A Love Supreme, Ascension and Live at Birdland. After 1966, Jones led his own trio, and later larger groups under the name The Elvin Jones Jazz Machine. His brothers Hank and Thad were also celebrated jazz musicians with whom he occasionally recorded. Elvin was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1995. In his The History of Jazz, jazz historian and critic Ted Gioia calls Jones "one of the most influential drummers in the history of jazz". He was also ranked at Number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pepper Adams</span> American saxophonist (1930–1986)

Park Frederick "Pepper" Adams III was an American jazz baritone saxophonist and composer. He composed 42 pieces, was the leader on eighteen albums spanning 28 years, and participated in 600 sessions as a sideman. He worked with an array of musicians, and had especially fruitful collaborations with trumpeter Donald Byrd and as a member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard McGhee</span> American jazz trumpeter (1918–1987)

Howard McGhee was one of the first American bebop jazz trumpeters, with Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Idrees Sulieman. He was known for his fast fingering and high notes. He had an influence on younger bebop trumpeters such as Fats Navarro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Foster (jazz musician)</span> American musical artist

Frank Benjamin Foster III was an American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer. Foster collaborated frequently with Count Basie and worked as a bandleader from the early 1950s. In 1998, Howard University awarded Frank Foster with the Benny Golson Jazz Master Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Morgan (musician)</span> American jazz saxophonist

Frank Morgan was a jazz saxophonist with a career spanning more than 50 years. He mainly played alto saxophone but also played soprano saxophone. He was known as a Charlie Parker successor who primarily played bebop and ballads.

William Melvin Mitchell was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.

Art Mardigian, better known as Art Mardigan, was an American jazz drummer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Jackson (musician)</span> American jazz musician (1933–1994)

Oliver Jackson, also known as Bops Junior, was an American jazz drummer.

Terry Pollard was an American jazz pianist and vibraphonist active in the Detroit jazz scene of the 1940s and 1950s. She has been described as a "major player who was inexplicably overlooked."

Isaac Day Jr., better known as Ike Day, was a Chicago-based hard bop and bebop jazz drummer.

Tate Houston was a Detroit-based American baritone and tenor saxophonist.

Ali Muhammad Jackson, also known as Ali Jackson, was a jazz bassist, composer, ethnomusicologist, actor, poet and artist.

Alvin "AJ" Jackson was a jazz bassist.

References

  1. ↑ Barry Kernfeld (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, New York & London: Macmillan, 1988 [1994], p.874
  2. ↑ Bjorn, Lars and Jim Gallert (1994) "Bebop in Detroit Nights at the Blue Bird Inn" Archived 2015-10-24 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  3. 1 2 "Wardell Gray - A Discography 1944-1955" Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  4. 1 2 Björn, Lars Olof (2001) Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60, pp. 124-6. University of Michigan Press At Google Books. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  5. ↑ Bird, Christiane (2001) The Da Capo Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S., pp. 305-6. Da Capo Press At Google Books. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Berkman, Franya J. (2010) Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane, p. 34. Wesleyan University Press At Google Books. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  7. ↑ "Final Report Blue Bird Inn Historic District" (PDF).
  8. ↑ "ParkPlanning - Detroit Sound Conservancy Reconnaissance Survey". parkplanning.nps.gov. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  9. ↑ Gitler, Ira (1985) Swing to Bop : An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s, p. 262. Oxford University Press At Google Books. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.