Abstract
Abstract In the 1930s and ‘40s New York’s 52nd Street was the jazz mecca. There were nightclubs and restaurants in most of the brownstones that lined the two-block strip, and most of them featured jazz groups. Willie “The Lion” Smith tells how the first jazz club on the Street got started: In those days the two long blocks on Fifty-second Street from Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue were packed with those old-fashioned brownstone houses. Damn near every one had a blind pig or speakeasy hidden away somewhere. Some of them were fancy while others were just a onetime bedroom without beds. You got the same bad whisky in them all. Several of the musicians were working in the big radio studios. They couldn’t wait to get loose from the job and run over to a speak for a taste. They made one place their second home, stashed their instruments there, took telephone calls from chicks that they didn’t dare receive at home, and even used the place for a mailing address.
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