Rise of the Music Room

When the pie-shaped slice of Manhattan night life known as the Village Vanguard was getting started two decades ago. it had a performer named Judith Tuvim, who later blossomed into Judy Holliday, and the occasional services of a skinny young accompanist, fresh out of Harvard, named Leonard Bernstein. Since then more green talent has ripened in the Vanguard's cellar than in any other place in town--Folk Singers Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennet. Comics Wally Cox and Roger Price, Singers Eartha Kitt and Pearl Bailey. It was the Vanguard that sent Harry Belafonte, a run-of-the-scale crooner six years ago, on his way to being the most popular balladeer of his day. But last week the venerable Vanguard reluctantly conceded that, like many another Manhattan nightclub, it had lost most of its old audience; in June it will go after a different clientele by reopening as a jazz-flavored "music room."

Sprouting in converted stores, bars, hash joints and likely hallways, the music rooms have taken away the nightclub audience, but nobody is exactly sure why. The 20% federal cabaret tax plainly had something to do with it (instrumental music only, without dancing or floor show, is not considered entertainment under the law, hence is tax-free). The Vanguard's Max Gordon (who also owns a part of Manhattan's still flourishing Blue Angel supper club) blames the shift to the suburbs: "My old customers have been lost to Great Neck." Broadway Producer Richard Kollmar once accused the LP record: "When you had the 78s, you had to get up and change the damned things every few minutes, so you got bored and went out.'' Other clubmen think that spectacular TV has satiated the public's appetite for shows, or that people simply do not dance any more (although dancing schools are jammed). Whatever the reason. Manhattan is down to two chorus lines (the Copacabana and the Latin Quarter, both of which float high on expense-account money); Chicago has only one (Chez Paree); and most other cities see big-show nightclubs only in the movies. But new music rooms are opening all the time.

Most of them are long, narrow, murky and crowded beyond what the fire laws allow. They charge no cover, and on their postage-stamp bandstands they usually offer pianists and trios (piano, bass, drums). Some really are for listening to music, some merely places to be dimly seen while the music is being played. All of them draw an audience of far more recent converts than the more venerable music spots--Nick's, Eddie Condon's, Birdland. Jimmy Ryan's.

Among Manhattan's most successful: P: Cafe Bohemia, a room in Greenwich Village that for years specialized with indifferent success in beer and sagging chorines until the late Jazzman Charlie ("Yardbird") Parker one evening offered to "do a gig" on his alto sax to square a bar debt. The Bird died before he could make good, but the Bohemia nevertheless plastered its walls with record jackets and went jazz. A favorite hangout of off-duty jazzmen, it also attracts the earnest and informed young jazz buffs in heavy spectacles and flamboyant shirts who sit for hours nursing drinks and intently following the music. After midnight, when the air is blue with smoke and the beer drinkers at the bar are vibrating with the music. visiting jazzmen are apt to move to the front of the room, pick up borrowed instruments and join in for a set.

P: The Red Carpet, on Manhattan's East 56th Street, is the sort of room that offers music only as an incidental attraction. Mirror-lined, plushly padded, it opened a year ago as a refuge for after-theater drinkers, celebrities and celebrity seekers ("The beautiful Red Carpet," says its ad. "enjoys the brilliant reputation of being 'The Place' "). The bored piano trio that alternates with the featured singer specializes in smooth-as-cream show tunes and a sleepy metronome beat. In pink satin pajamas, West Coast Pianist-Singer Kitty White pounds out a bouncing, husk-voiced version of Almost Like Being in Love, clowns through a rubber-faced Love for Sale. Her most effective number. Mountain High, Valley Low, stops the whispers and the tinkle of ice for a time before the dim red lights go up.

P:Pianist Cy Coleman's Playroom. on West 58th Street, attracts some of the jazz buffs the Bohemia gets, some of the social and theatrical crowd the East Side clubs angle for, and some neighborhood barstool habitues. Coleman. a 27-year-old former child prodigy from The Bronx, decided to launch the room chiefly because he lived up the street, wanted a nearby showcase for his piano, and was tired of working for other people. He signed up a drummer and a bass player, opened seven months ago. He plays when the urge hits him or when the unadorned, beige-upholstered room is comfortably filled. A pianist of infinitely varied beat and volume, he is as effective on lacy, lilting numbers like My One and Only Love as he is on a stomping, heavily chorded Bess, You Is My Woman Now. Early in the morning, when he is running through witty variations of old standbys. he has the small room howling requests. Pianist Coleman has his own theory about the popularity of music rooms: hi-fi has prepared people for good jazz and piano playing. "It's happening all over the city and all over the country, even in places where they've barely learned the progressive beat." he says. "They can scarcely put the pianos in fast enough."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.