How Billy Strayhorn spurred a writer to discover Pittsburgh’s rich jazz culture.
It was after 2 a.m., and Nino’s, a popular restaurant and watering hole, had closed for the night. The piano where Shirley Friedman played Broadway show tunes was silent. But the gallant bartender invited me for a nightcap at the Chief’s Cafe, a dive bar and Oakland landmark that remained open. We strolled through the summer air for half a block to Centre Avenue.
Like my youth, his name has long evaporated, but he was a friendly sort with brown hair and blue eyes. I was a doe-eyed, freshly minted college graduate who had just gotten off the 4-tomidnight shift on the PostGazette’s copy desk.
We ordered one last drink, and he slid quarters into the jukebox. All it took was a playful piano riff, followed by blaring horns, and I experienced a memorable introduction to Billy Strayhorn, one of Pittsburgh’s many musical geniuses. Later, I learned “Take the ‘A’ Train” was inspired by directions Duke Ellington gave Mr. Strayhorn so he could find the famous band leader’s Harlem apartment in New York City.
The memorable song took me back to the summer I spent as a reporting intern for a suburban newspaper outside New York City. I never took the A Train to Harlem that year, but on trips from White Plains to Manhattan, I loved feeling the commuter train’s rhythm, hearing the conductor’s accent — next stop, Botanical Gaddens — and arriving in that wonder-inducing space called Grand Central Station.
At my family’s Indianapolis home, jazz was part of the playlist, including George Gershwin, Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton. My mother loved Nat King Cole singing “When I Take My Sugar to Tea.” Hearing Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan swing through the lyrics of “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” always makes mesmile.
I worked at the college newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, as a journalism major at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. That’s where staff photographers developed their photos in the dark room while listening to “Kind of Blue,” the landmark Miles Davis recording.
But my in-depth jazz education began in Pittsburgh. At a party many super moons ago, I heard Stephane Grappelli, a legendary French musician who played the the jazz violin and recorded with gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Locally, I began following Rodney McCoy, who played an electric violin and led a band called Silk.
In the late 1980s, the best place to hear live jazz while eating succulent fried chicken was the Too Sweet Lounge in Homewood, home of the Saturday Afternoon Jazz Jam.
I thought nothing of driving anywhere to hear jazz as a newcomer to Pittsburgh. On a snowy night in Verona, at a club called Cunimondo’s Keyboard, I counted myself lucky to hear Sandra Staley. The jazz vocalist and pianist sang “Blizzard of Lies,” sending her listeners into howls of laughter with David Frishberg’s witty lyrics.
Over the airwaves, I learned more about my newfound love from Pittsburgh radio broadcasters Tony Mowod, Bob Studebaker and Evelynn Hawkins. When Evelynn played selections from “Everybody Knows Johnny Hodges,” I was so knocked out that I bought the famous saxophonist’s work instantly.
I heard Billy Eckstine during the mid-1980s, at a sleekly decorated nightclub and restaurant called Harper’s in One Oxford Centre. By then, the influential band leader and vocalist was in his 70s, but “Mr. B.” could still charm an audience and his voice was fine and mellow. Later, I learned they called him the “Sepia Sinatra” and that he taught many talented musicians and vocalists how to stand up for themselves in theirbusiness dealings.
Many lament that there are few venues now for jazz in Pittsburgh. But you can hear it at Alphabet City on the North Side, the Backstage Bar and Cabaret in the Cultural District and in the bar at Eddie V’s, a prime seafood restaurant in the Union Trust Building. And you can tune your radio to 101.1 FM.
For great acoustics, one of Pittsburgh’s best indoor venues is Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. That’s where, on a rainy night last November, I heard rousing renditions of hot gypsy jazz played in the style of Django Reinhardt. Each member of the Django Festival All-Stars band was a virtuoso, and the joy in their performances was palpable.
Also last November, an audience of young, old, Asian, black and white people gathered in Oakland’s Carnegie Music Hall for a stirring concert. Friends, family and colleagues honored the late Geri Allen, a highly gifted musician, mentor and teacher who directed the University of Pittsburgh’s Jazz Studies program.
So much reverence for this gracious woman filled the auditorium that I felt like I was in church. In a way, I was, because for me, jazz is an all-embracing sanctuary for body and soul.