City of Boston Archives
Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille was a live music venue located at 25 Essex Street in Boston, Massachusetts.
Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille was a live music venue located at 25 Essex Street in Boston, Massachusetts.
Izzy Ort's was open from 1935 to 1969. Originally it featured jazz musicians. In 1953, the owner renamed it the Golden Nugget and switched to hillbilly music, and later, rock. Musicians played on two floors: in the main room at street level, and in a room upstairs called El Tropico. Izzy Ort's was one of the first strip bars in what would later become known as Boston's Combat Zone. As a popular hangout for sailors, it was notorious among musicians for being a rough place to play. [1] Like the Silver Dollar, it was patronized by both heterosexual and gay men. [2]
The bar was owned by Isadore "Izzy" Ort (1893 - 1975), a reputed former bootlegger from New York City who moved to Boston in the early thirties. [1] Ort, who left school after the fourth grade, was known in Boston as a colorful character who settled disputes among his patrons with a metal flashlight. He also had a reputation for generosity to servicemen. Anyone in the service who was away from home on Thanksgiving or Christmas would be served a free turkey dinner at Izzy Ort's. [3] In the early 1940s, Ort bought space in the Boston Record-American for a regular column of his own, titled "I Wuz Thinkin." The column was accompanied by a picture of Ort wearing his characteristic fedora and smoking a cigar. [4]
25 Essex Street later became part of Hong Lok House, an affordable housing project for Chinatown's elderly residents in January 1982. [5]
Many notable jazz musicians played at Izzy Ort's in the 1940s and early 1950s. Quincy Jones played there in the early 1950s to help pay for school at Berklee College of Music. Although he recalled it as "a real dive," he noted that two musicians he worked with there, pianist Preston Sandiford and alto player Bunny Campbell, were influential in his musical development. [6] His friend Buddy Catlett said in a 1993 interview that Jones didn't become a good soloist until he began working at Izzy Ort's. [7]
The great baritone saxophonist, Serge Chaloff, performed there when he was just fourteen. His brother Richard Chaloff remembered: 'He didn't have a permit to work but he was pretty tall and he went down to see Izzy Ort...and played for him and Izzy liked the sax...and he hired my brother to work nights....My mother used to pray on Sundays that that he'd make it outa there....My brother sat in with bandsmen that were in their thirties and forties...and here he was fourteen, fifteen years old and he played right along with them, and he did so well that they kept him.' [8]
Alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano also played at Izzy Ort's in his youth. According to Mariano, the bar had an upstairs band, which was white, and a downstairs band, which was black. Mariano started working upstairs, but when the alto player downstairs joined the Coast Guard, the black band hired him. "That was a fantastic experience," he said, "because they were playing the music I loved - Duke Ellington, [Jimmie] Lunceford, Basie." [9]
Jazz trumpeter Ruby Braff, who considered Izzy Ort's "particularly notorious," played there as a teenager. [10] Jazz critic Nat Hentoff recalled sneaking into Izzy Ort's ("a terrible joint") as a youth to see the 15-year-old Braff perform. That night Benny Goodman, who had been playing at the RKO Theater next door, was drawn to Izzy Ort's by the sound of Braff's playing. Goodman asked Braff to join him on the road, but the boy's mother insisted he finish high school. [11]
Other musicians who played there include Sam Rivers ("You'd get the Navy and the Marines in there, and they could destroy the place in five minutes"), [1] Hal Galper ("The safest place was on the bandstand"), [12] Dick Johnson, [13] Jaki Byard, Roy Haynes, Nat Pierce, Herb Pomeroy, Dick Twardzik, and Larry Willis. [1]
Popular entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., who lived for several years in Boston's South End, reminisced years later about "hoofing and singing" at Izzy Ort's. [14]
Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante, friends of Ort's from his New York days, often dropped by to visit when they were in Boston. In 1964, evangelist Billy Graham made headlines when he addressed the crowd at Izzy Ort's, inviting them to a gospel lecture he was giving later that night at Boston Garden. [3]
Alyce Mills Johnson, a former dancer with Cab Calloway's orchestra, was Izzy Ort's first black entertainer. She worked as an emcee at Izzy Ort's from 1938 to 1941. In a 1977 interview, Johnson recalled Ort fondly, saying, "He was a fine and generous man." [15]
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Nathan Irving Hentoff was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and continued writing his music column for The Wall Street Journal, which published his works until his death. He often wrote on First Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press.
"Combat Zone" was the name given in the 1960s to the adult entertainment district in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Centered on Washington Street between Boylston Street and Kneeland Street, the area was once the site of many strip clubs, peep shows, X-rated movie theaters, and adult bookstores. It had a reputation for crime, including prostitution.
Charles Ellsworth "Pee Wee" Russell was an American jazz musician. Early in his career he played clarinet and saxophones, but he eventually focused solely on clarinet.
The Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal and bluegrass.
Toshiko Akiyoshi is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.
Serge Chaloff was an American jazz baritone saxophonist. One of bebop's earliest baritone saxophonists, Chaloff has been described as 'the most expressive and openly emotive baritone saxophonist jazz has ever witnessed' with a tone varying 'between a light but almost inaudible whisper to a great sonorous shout with the widest but most incredibly moving of vibratos.'
Sadao Watanabe is a Japanese jazz musician who plays alto saxophone and sopranino saxophone. He is known for his bossa nova recordings, although his work encompasses many styles, with collaborations from musicians all over the world.
"The Sound of Jazz" is a 1957 edition of the CBS television series The Seven Lively Arts and was one of the first major programs featuring jazz to air on American network television.
Reuben "Ruby" Braff was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist. Jack Teagarden was once asked about him on the Garry Moore television show and described Ruby as "the Ivy League Louis Armstrong".
Benjamin "Buzzy" Drootin was an American jazz drummer.
Carmine Ugo Mariano was an American jazz saxophonist who focused on the alto and soprano saxophone. He occasionally performed and recorded on flute and nadaswaram as well.
Irving Herbert Pomeroy III was an American jazz trumpeter, teacher, and the founder of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble.
Harold Galper is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator, and writer.
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus is an album by the jazz double bassist and composer Charles Mingus, recorded in October 1960 and released in December of the same year. The quartet of Mingus, multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Ted Curson, and drummer Dannie Richmond constituted Mingus' core working band at the time, and had been performing the material on this album for weeks at The Showplace in New York. To recreate this atmosphere, Mingus introduces the songs as if he were speaking to the audience, even admonishing them to not applaud or rattle their glasses. This explains why the recordings on Presents would seemingly give off the illusion of a live album, when in fact it is a studio album.
Nathaniel Pierce Blish Jr., known professionally as Nat Pierce was an American jazz pianist and prolific composer and arranger, perhaps best known for being pianist and arranger for the Woody Herman band from 1951 to 1955. Pieces by Pierce were predominantly created for use in big bands.
Wally’s Cafe, located on 427 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., originally opened across the street on January 1, 1947, by Joseph L. Walcott. Formerly Wally’s Paradise, the institution is recognized as one of Boston’s oldest and longest-operating jazz clubs. Through the 1950s, Wally’s stage offered a home to a reliable core of local jazz musicians, including the likes of Fat Man Robinson, Bunny Campbell, Art Foxall, Herbie and Roland Lee, Joe Perry, Stanley Trotman, Sabby Lewis, and Mabel Robinson. Outliving all the neighboring jazz institutions, Wally’s Cafe was given the ‘historic’ label in 1997 by the City of Boston’s Business Heritage Project for staying in business for over 25 years.
Ray Santisi was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, recording artist and educator.
Roseland-State Ballroom was once a swing-era ballroom in Boston, MA. Jazz musicians including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmy Lunceford, Artie Shaw & Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, and Charlie Barnet played in the 1930s and 1940s. Artie Shaw's band built their reputation playing Tuesdays and Saturday nights there in 1938.
