Friar's Inn
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Friar's Inn
Friar's Inn (also called New Friar's Inn) was a nightclub and speakeasy in Chicago, Illinois, a famed jazz music venue in the 1920s. Though some sources refer to it casually as "Friar's Club", it was not related to the New York Friars Club. Located in a basement at 60 East Van Buren or 343 South Wabash in the Chicago Loop, the establishment was owned by Mike Fritzel and attracted gangsters as well as fans of jazz music. Among the notable bands associated with Friar's Inn were the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (originally the Friar's Society Orchestra) and the Austin High Gang (also known as the Blue Friars). Noted musicians who played at Friar's Inn included Frank Teschemacher, Bud Freeman, Steve Brown, George Brunies, Merritt Brunies, Emmett Hardy, Paul Mares, Leon Roppolo, Bee Palmer, Louis 'Lou' Black, and Mel Stitzel. Joan Crawford worked as a dancer at the Friar's Inn early in her career. See also *List of jazz clubs This is a list of notable venues where jazz music is play ...
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Nightclub
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs generally restrict access to people in terms of age, attire, personal belongings, and inappropriate behaviors. Nightclubs typically have dress codes to prohibit people wearing informal, indecent, offensive, or gang-related attire from entering. Unlike other entertainment venues, nightclubs are more likely to use bouncers to screen prospective patrons for entry. The busiest nights for a nightclub are Friday and Saturday nights. Most nightclubs cater to a particular music genre or sound for branding effects. Some nightclubs may offer food and beverages (including alcoholic beverages). History Early history In the United States, New York increasingly became the national capital for tourism and entertainment. Grand hotels were built for upsca ...
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Merritt Brunies
Merritt Brunies (December 25, 1895 - February 5, 1973), was an American jazz trombonist and cornetist. Brunies was born into a well-known musical family in New Orleans, Louisiana; among its members were George Brunies and Albert Brunies. Merritt led his own band, The Original New Orleans Jazz Band, from 1916 to 1918; this ensemble did not record, but it existed before both Jimmy Durante's New Orleans Jazz Band and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (the latter formed shortly afterward in 1916). Following this, he formed another group which played at Friar's Inn in Chicago directly after the stint by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He played regularly in New Orleans in the 1930s, and moved to Mississippi in 1946, where he played with his brothers in a Dixieland jazz band until his retirement. He died in Biloxi, Mississippi. References *Merritt Bruniesat Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more t ...
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Nightclubs In Chicago
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs generally restrict access to people in terms of age, attire, personal belongings, and inappropriate behaviors. Nightclubs typically have dress codes to prohibit people wearing informal, indecent, offensive, or gang-related attire from entering. Unlike other entertainment venues, nightclubs are more likely to use bouncers to screen prospective patrons for entry. The busiest nights for a nightclub are Friday and Saturday nights. Most nightclubs cater to a particular music genre or sound for branding effects. Some nightclubs may offer food and beverages (including alcoholic beverages). History Early history In the United States, New York increasingly became the national capital for tourism and entertainment. Grand hotels were built for upsc ...
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History Of Chicago
Chicago has played a central role in American economic, cultural and political history. Since the 1850s Chicago has been one of the dominant metropolises in the Midwestern United States, and has been the largest city in the Midwest since the 1880 census. The area's recorded history begins with the arrival of French explorers, missionaries and fur traders in the late 17th century and their interaction with the local Pottawatomie Native Americans. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was the first permanent non-indigenous settler in the area, having a house at the mouth of the Chicago River in the late 18th century. There were small settlements and a U.S. Army fort, but the soldiers and settlers were all driven off in 1812. The modern city was incorporated in 1837 by Northern businessmen and grew rapidly from real estate speculation and the realization that it had a commanding position in the emerging inland transportation network, based on lake traffic and railroads, controlling acces ...
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Jazz Clubs In Chicago
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style ...
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List Of Jazz Clubs
This is a list of notable venues where jazz music is played. It includes jazz clubs, clubs, dancehalls and historic venues such as theatres. A jazz club is a venue where the primary entertainment is the performance of live jazz music. Jazz clubs are usually a type of nightclub or bar, which is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Jazz clubs were in large rooms in the eras of Orchestral jazz and big band jazz, when bands were large and often augmented by a string section. Large rooms were also more common in the Swing era, because at that time, jazz was popular as a dance music, so the dancers needed space to move. With the transition to 1940s-era styles like Bebop and later styles such as soul jazz, small combos of musicians such as quartets and trios were mostly used, and the music became more of a music to listen to, rather than a form of dance music. As a result, smaller clubs with small stages became practical. In the 2000s, jazz clubs may be found in the basements of large ...
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Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford launched a publicity campaign and built an image as a nationally-known flapper by the end of the 1920s. By the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money. By the end of the 1930s, she was labeled "box office poison". After an absence of nearly two years fr ...
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Mel Stitzel
Mel Stitzel (January 9, 1902 – December 31, 1952) was a German-born pianist best known for his work with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a leading jazz band of the early 1920s. The leading members of the group including cornetist Paul Mares, trombonist George Brunies and clarinet player Leon Roppolo were school friends from New Orleans who recruited others such as Stitzel and drummer Gene Krupa to join their band. Stitzel also played with The Bucktown Five in the early 1920s. Background At first, the band was known as the Friar's Society Orchestra after forming to play a gig in Chicago at Friar's Inn, but changed their name to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings after their lengthy residency ended. All of the members of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings at the time of their recording session of March 1923 – Mares, Roppolo, Brunies, Stitzel, and drummer Ben Pollack – are credited as co-writers of one of the band's best-known songs: "Tin Roof Blues," which was used as the basis for "Make L ...
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Louis 'Lou' Black
Louis Thomas Black (June 8, 1901 – November 18, 1965) was one of the foremost banjo players of the Jazz Era. Born in Rock Island, Illinois, he began playing banjo during early childhood and became professional in 1917. In 1921, he joined the famous New Orleans Rhythm Kings at Friar's Inn in Chicago. With this band, he participated to the first-ever interracial recording session with pianist Jelly Roll Morton. He left the band in 1923 to play with other bands. From 1925 until 1931, he was a staff musician for radio station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. He left music in early 1930s, but began playing again in 1961. He sat in with several bands during a brief stay in New York City, then played gigs in Moline, Illinois from the fall of 1963. While recovering in a Rock Island hospital from injuries sustained in an automobile accident, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Further reading * Eugene Chadbourne, Lou Blackat Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and ...
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Bee Palmer
Beatrice C. "Bee" Palmer (11 September 1894 – 22 December 1967) was an American singer and dancer born in Chicago, Illinois. Palmer first attracted significant attention as one of the first exponents of the "shimmy" dance in the late 1910s. She was sometimes credited as the creator of the "shimmy" (although there were other claimants at the time as well). She first appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1918. She toured with an early jazz band, which included such notables as Emmett Hardy, Leon Ropollo and Santo Pecora in addition to pianist/songwriter Al Siegel (whom Palmer married). The band was called "Bee Palmer's New Orleans Rhythm Kings". With some personnel changes, the Rhythm Kings went on to even greater fame after parting ways with Palmer. In 1921, an alleged affair with boxing champ Jack Dempsey created a scandal and a lawsuit. Palmer is credited as co-composer of the pop song standard "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone". She made a few recordings which ...
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Leon Roppolo
Leon Joseph Roppolo (March 16, 1902 – October 5, 1943) was an American early jazz clarinetist, best known for his playing with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He also played saxophone and guitar. Life and career Leon Roppolo (nicknamed "Rap" and sometimes misspelled as "Rappolo") was born in Lutcher, Louisiana, United States, up-river from New Orleans. His family, of Sicilian origin, moved to the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans about 1912. His first instrument was the violin. He was a fan of the marching bands he heard in the streets of New Orleans, and wanted to play clarinet. An older relative with the same name played that instrument in Papa Jack Laine's Reliance Brass Band. Roppolo soon excelled at the clarinet, and played youthful jobs with his friends Paul Mares and George Brunies for parades, parties, and at Milneburg on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. At the age of 15 he decided to leave home to travel with the band of Bee Palmer, which soon became the nucleus for ...
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Paul Mares
Paul Mares (June 15, 1900 – August 18, 1949), was an American early dixieland jazz cornet and trumpet player, and leader of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Mares established himself as a respected bandleader over a group of wild and strong-willed musicians, as The New Orleans Rhythm Kings (N.O.R.K.) became one of the best-regarded bands in Chicago in the early 1920s. In January 1935 Mares played trumpet on, and fronted, a recording session with a band called "Paul Mares and his Friars Society Orchestra" - a name that referred to the Friar's Inn club where the N.O.R.K. had first played in Chicago. The 1935 band included the white New Orleanian and N.O.R.K. veteran Santo Pecora on trombone, the black New Orleanian Omar Simeon on clarinet, and the Chicagoan altoist Boyce Brown, as well as George Wettling on drums, Jess Stacy Jesse Alexandria Stacy (August 11, 1904 – January 1, 1995) was an American jazz pianist who gained prominence during the swing era. He is perha ...
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