[Dixielandjazz] A Night At Nick's on Riverwalk Jazz

[Don Mopsick]

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, a nightclub that gave work to many
young musicians. 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 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 beginning tomorrow at
http://www.riverwalkjazz.org.

There is a forum topic for this show at
http://forums.riverwalkjazz.org/phpBB2/

mopo