Tag: Birdland

1949: What were my influencers doing?

Last December 15th in Birdland, 1949-1965: Hard Bop Mecca, I marked the 70th anniversary of the opening of that legendary Jazz club on Manhattan’s Broadway off 52nd Street. Over the weekend I wondered what else was going on that year, but not the trivia one can learn from Wikipedia, such as:

 

    • President Harry S. Truman’s inauguration in January
    • Astronomer Fred Hoyle’s coining of “big bang” (a term of disparagement) in March
    • Hamlet’s Best Picture Oscar win later that month
    • The opening of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in February at the Morosco (six blocks south of Birdland’s near-future site)
    • The Soviet Union’s successful A-bomb test in August and Truman’s sharing that news a month later
    • Twin Communist victories: the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on the first of October and of the German Democratic Republic a week later.

World War Two was in the rearview mirror. but the Cold War with its threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction was straight ahead.

No, I was remembering what writers who influenced me over the past fifty years were doing in 1949. Most of the embedded links below will take you to posts that elaborate upon that influence. Continue reading “1949: What were my influencers doing?”

Birdland, 1949-1965: Hard Bop Mecca

As an amateur Jazz guitarist, it’s my pleasure to take a break from theology and philosophy to note the 70th anniversary of the original Birdland club. 

First, happy birthday to Barry Harris (b. 1929) and Curtis Fuller (b. 1934)! 

70 years ago, December 15, 1949, a basement Jazz club—following the Ubangi, the Ebony, and The Clique—opened as “Birdland: The Jazz Corner of the World.” Its birth coincided with the demise of  “The  Street,” i.e., the serendipitous concatenation of jazz clubs that sprung up on 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues in the wake of Prohibition. (See Patrick Burke’s scholarly Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street.  Arnold Shaw’s 52nd Street: The Street of Jazz makes an excellent companion reader.) Continue reading “Birdland, 1949-1965: Hard Bop Mecca”