About this listing
Historic jazz club, home of the famous Zebra Room
Place Details
Borough : Manhattan
Neighborhood : Central Harlem
Place Matters Profile
By Nina Moffitt
The Lenox Lounge is an historic bar and jazz club in Harlem where you can drink, dine and hear straight-ahead jazz players, young and old, playing from swing to modern and bebop jazz in the famous "Zebra Room."
The Lenox Lounge
The Lenox Lounge is located on Lenox Avenue between 124th and 125th streets, right outside the 125th St. subway station. You can’t miss its name on the front of the building, in large block letters brightly illuminated at night. Standing outside, you can look through big glass windows into the front bar and see Harlem locals chatting and drinking after work. When you walk through the bar to the back, you will be asked to pay a cover ($10-20, depending on the day and performance) to enter the famous "Zebra Room" where live music is played nightly.
Push through the Zebra Room's early 1940s swinging glass-and-wood double doors, and you will be enclosed in a beautiful room famous for its
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By Nina Moffitt
The Lenox Lounge is an historic bar and jazz club in Harlem where you can drink, dine and hear straight-ahead jazz players, young and old, playing from swing to modern and bebop jazz in the famous "Zebra Room."
The Lenox Lounge
The Lenox Lounge is located on Lenox Avenue between 124th and 125th streets, right outside the 125th St. subway station. You can’t miss its name on the front of the building, in large block letters brightly illuminated at night. Standing outside, you can look through big glass windows into the front bar and see Harlem locals chatting and drinking after work. When you walk through the bar to the back, you will be asked to pay a cover ($10-20, depending on the day and performance) to enter the famous "Zebra Room" where live music is played nightly.
Push through the Zebra Room's early 1940s swinging glass-and-wood double doors, and you will be enclosed in a beautiful room famous for its Art Deco interior. Black leather banquettes wrap themselves around curving zebra-print walls, with a few cozy tables in the center. Space for the band is to the right. The performances are intimate, for the band plays directly in front of the tables, and every seat in the room is privileged with a good view and sound. If you choose to sit in the first banquette to your left, next to the band, you will be occupying the 'Billie Holiday booth,' a space that was once reserved weekly for the singer herself. You may feel as though you've actually stepped into the 1940s, an important part of the appeal of the Lounge.
The Zebra Room is open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday after 5pm, and for lunch during the week from 11-2 pm, catering to a Southern and Creole palate. Music can be heard every day of the week. Friday and Saturday nights host top-flight headliners such as the Louis Hayes Quartet, composer Bill Lee, Benny Powell Quartet, and the Houston Person Quartet. Sunday night is the Vocal Jazz Open Mic Night hosted by the Lafayette Harris trio, and Monday nights Patience Higgins and the Sugar Hill Quartet hold a late night jam session, a tradition of the past three years.
A Landmark of Harlem History
Lenox Avenue was a main thoroughfare for Harlem's African American community in the early decades of the twentieth century, its growth spurred by the creation of the Lenox Avenue subway line. Many of the city's great entertainment spots took root on Lenox between 115th and 145th streets. The Lenox Lounge owes its name to its location on 125th and Lenox Avenue, the center of the entertainment stretch. The lounge was a hot spot for after-hours jam sessions, boasting performances by legends such as Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. The bar is said to also have been a gathering space for luminaries such as Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and a young Malcolm X.
Alvin Reed Sr. has owned the Lenox Lounge since 1988, when he purchased it from Dominic Greco. The Grecos owned the Lounge from the beginning, passing it down through the generations. Built in 1939, the family couldn't open the club until 1942, stalled, Reed says, by a nasty dispute over its zebra print décor (real zebra skin that covered the walls). Another club, El Morocco, claimed exclusive rights to the look, sparking a fight that was exacerbated, Reid claims, by the underworld connections of both club owners.
Mr. Reed was born in 1939 in Richmond, Virginia. He arrived in New York in 1945 when he was six years old, and he grew up in Harlem on 133rd St. "I was raised in Harlem, I knew what the club was about, and what Harlem was to New York City. Harlem was the nightlife of New York City! Back in the 20s and 30s and 40s, If you wanted to come out and have a good time, this is where you came. I mean, it had all the good clubs, you know, Savoy, Smalls, Cotton Club, the Red Rooster, Lenox Lounge, Showman’s, yeah, Count Basie's, on every corner! Aw, that was a good day. Everybody made money and people went bar hopping from one place to the other, with cars triple parked...."
Around the age of 18 he visited the Lenox Lounge and remembers thinking that the atmosphere was mature and elegant. Too mature for him, he says, because the crowd was composed of older adults in their 30's and 40's. It was always that way, he adds. He also recalls it being a largely white audience -- a characteristic that didn't change until later, he thinks perhaps the 1960s -- which he attributes not to enforced segregation but to class. He explains: "At the grand opening, a bottle of beer was fifteen cents! That was like, pshh...five cents more than any other place! Ah, they must have been crazy. Fifteen cents for a bottle of beer! Ten cents everywhere else.... It was called the 'bar of the elite.' Ed Sullivan, and Walter Winchell, I don’t know if you’re familiar with those people...Big time guys like that came up here. It was mostly white folks...I mean, unless you were a black celebrity, you couldn't [come in]. He adds that women couldn’t come in unescorted at the time, for it would have been considered prostitution.
In the 1940s, bebop was born, and the Lenox Lounge became a venue for late night jam sessions. "It started over there in Mint's Playhouse. That's where bebop jazz got started." Reid explains that because it was difficult to be hired in the large swing orchestras popular in the 1930s for dance halls, young jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker came up with a formula for smaller bands, or combos, that would give each musician more singular attention and more gigs.
For those unfamiliar with the classic structure of the small jazz combo, the formula originally included a rhythm section, drums, and a chordal instrument such as the guitar or piano, with one or more horn players to act as soloists. "Disregarding elaborate big band arrangements central to the swing era style, bebop musicians streamlined their bands with four to six musicians, creating a vehicle specifically designed for exploring the improvisational elements of music." (Verve Jazz History- Bebop). The soloist would play the tune of the song, or the chorus, once through entirely, and then each member of the band would have an opportunity to solo extensively in the middle of the song.
In the late 1940s, this newfound freedom of improvisation and a focus on the individual helped create the jam session. The Lenox Lounge was one of many venues in the city where musicians would gather late at night after their gigs and improvise with each other throughout the night. At this time, Billie Holiday attended sessions regularly to sing, sitting between sets in her reserved booth, and John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and other great musicians would come to play. Those were the glory days of jazz, when innovations were being made every night. Jazz was mainstream, African American music and dance had become a New York fascination, and the culture born in Harlem was strong and proud. These days were also the glory days of the Lenox Lounge.
A Restoration
When Mr. Reed purchased the Lounge in 1988, Harlem barely resembled the entertainment metropolis of its younger days. The neighborhood was besieged with a host of social and economic problems, and the Lounge had lost much of its appeal and its live music scene. "I took it on as a challenge," Reid says, referring to the Lounge’s restoration, both physical and conceptual.
When Mr. Reed first purchased the Lenox Lounge in the late 1980s, the bar served only as a nightclub for dancing and drinking, with a live DJ, but no live music. In 1999, he decided to restore the Lounge as a jazz venue. He closed for renovation from September 1999 to March 2000 -- the only time the club closed in its entire history. Mr. Reed worked very closely with Yui + Bloch Design of Maryland to ensure that the original Art Deco interior and the aesthetic of the entire Lounge was restored to a T.
The changes strove not to alter the historic character of the place. Several coats of tobacco grime were scrubbed off the mirrors behind the bar, the kitchen rearranged, the lights replaced, new bathrooms added, and an exit sealed in the back. "The ceiling is still the same, with the same scallops and upside down ashtrays, the same grid. We just put air conditioning up under it," says Reed. Unfortunately, the famous zebra skin walls had to be replaced with zebra print wallpaper, but from a distance the substitution isn't apparent. When the newly restored lounge was first opened, Harlem locals would peer in as they walked by, knowing about the renovation, and wondering why it looked no more modern than before.
The Reinstatement of Jazz
One of Reed's goals in restoring the jazz club was to bring Harlem locals, particularly African Americans, back to the Lounge to experience their neighborhood's rich cultural history and to appreciate the musical genre that defined it. He has deep respect for jazz, and wanted the current community in Harlem to understand it as he did. "When I took over the Lounge, I was trying to re-live my era. In my era, it was a lot of black folks." When Mr. Reed finally reinstituted live jazz at the Lounge, however, the primary audience was white. Many Harlemites seemed to want no part of it. They came in and drank at the bar, but rarely entered the back room to hear the music. Although a more diverse crowd now frequents the place, it continues to trouble Reed that the patrons of the music are mainly tourists, interested in the historic aspect of the Lounge. The Lenox Lounge consciously trades on the allure of the past, but it's a nostalgia that locals may not share.
Reed speculates, "What happened is, my generation just stopped coming out as much. But I thought maybe I could get them to come out. The musicians were hopeful that it would happen, they said don’t give up on it." During performances in the Zebra room, "We had a small audience, sometimes only eight. I used to look at the musicians, and they were watching every move I made, because they were worried about getting paid! Some places don’t pay you when they don't have enough people. Managers disappear before paying [the musicians]; they say they're going to get a cup of coffee and don't ever come back. But I respect them, I pay the musicians no matter who shows up."
These days, he says, the Lenox Lounge's music patrons still remain largely white, and tourists provide a large chunk of the revenue. Harlem Tour buses stop in front of the Lounge to talk about the club's history. People come from all over the world to see the Zebra Room and hear the jazz. It's the jam sessions, however, that are restoring the Lenox Lounge in the manner Reid hoped for: They are bringing in today's generation of jazz players who seek a creative outlet and need to experience the jazz tradition.
Jam Sessions at the Lenox Lounge
The Sunday and Monday night jam sessions at the Lenox Lounge continue the legacy of jazz as exciting entertainment, a creative art form, and collective learning process. The Monday sessions are hosted by Patience Higgins and the Sugar Hill Quartet, including Patience Higgins, saxophone, Andy McCloud, bass, Marcus Presiani, piano, and Dave Gibson, drums. At 11:30pm, the Quartet opens the floor to anyone who wishes to play his or her instrument. Everyone, young and old, amateur and veteran, traditional and modern, is welcome.
Jazz conservatory students now visit the jam sessions weekly, using the opportunity to listen, to practice and exhibit their skills, and to experience the life of the professional jazz musician. Students Theo Croker, trumpet player and grandson of the legendary Doc Cheatham, and Arnold Lee, alto saxophone player and son of composer Bill Lee, frequent the Lenox Lounge in order to play with Patience Higgins and his group. Well-known trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, now teaching at Manhattan School of Music, made an appearance at one of the sessions I attended and battled with another trumpeter, ending with an exhilarating cacophonous duet followed by raging applause. As an audience member witnessing a Monday night session, one might be treated to a veteran's performance or a preview of the next generation's young jazz innovators.
Jam sessions have always played an important role in jazz. Many young musicians who attended clubs in Harlem during the 1940s and 50s were learning jazz by ear (though some had musical training too), hanging around influential musicians, and attending jam sessions in order to take part in a thriving scene. In those days there were no conservatory programs in jazz. Today's jazz majors prove that the status of the genre has risen over time. However, students still need the kind of learning that happens onsite and informally, and the Lenox Lounge jam sessions provide this.
The club offers a professional setting, and the session hosts and visiting musicians provide the equivalent of career mentors. Reed explains, "At the jam sessions I've seen veterans like Melba Joyce--Yeah! Great singer--sing a couple songs and then sit on the side. She sat right here one day, and this girl sang, and then everybody clapped, and [Melba] clapped with them. The girl was going to sit back down over there and she said 'honey, come over here.' And she pulled her over here and gave her some good advice! She said, you've got potential, but you need some practice. Don’t give up."
Reed says that the Sunday night vocal jam in particular is a night when he asks the musicians to scout for promising vocalists, and on several occasions he has found up-and-coming musicians to fill his weekend bill, some of whom go on to become famous. And stars occasionally stride in alongside those who are brand new to the scene. Mr. Reed names a few, James Carter, Lou Donaldson, Broadway singer Jennifer Holiday.
There are always a few amateurs who frequent the sessions with an eye for the spotlight, and the band always accommodates them. I’ve seen a woman come in on several nights for the jam session, African American, maybe in her mid 40's, each time wearing a tiara with a different sparkling evening gown. She enters proudly smiling at the crowd, and sits in the Billie Holiday booth. Sometimes she wears a flower behind her ear. She sings at each jam session, usually a Billie Holiday song. Finally I asked Mr. Reed, "Do you know that woman who comes here a lot on Monday nights, the woman with the tiara..." "Billie Holiday Junior, yeah," he said. "Billie Holiday Junior?" I repeated. "That’s her name?" And Mr. Reed replied, "That's her name. She changed her name. Billie Holiday Jr., they say it's official. She really believes, she believes that she's Billie."
And he says that's OK by him. He says she's gotten much better at singing than when he first heard her.
The idea is to provide an outlet for anyone who has musical ideas and passion, and to exult in the joy of playing live music. "Now, the Lenox Lounge," Reed says, "contrary to what a lot of people think, never really hired big names! Big names came in here, played, jammed and stuff, but [the venue] was nourishing for unknowns! Unknowns! A guy named Sammy White, he was a nobody here, and he went on to become the king of the boogie woogie! The hubba hubba girls, that's a singing dance troupe, they got their start in here also." He continues to explain that now that names like John Coltrane are famous and revered, people assume that when these artists played at the Lounge, they had been hired for big headliner shows. But when they came here, he says, they weren't anyone. They were received with open ears, and the Lenox Lounge was a backdrop for their journey upwards as musicians. This, he repeats, is what the Lenox Lounge is all about.
The drummer Dave Gibson takes the stage every Monday night prepared for absolutely anything, having experienced so much in his life. His principal desire is to "keep jazz alive." About the Lenox Lounge, he says, "People come to Harlem to hear the hard swingin' jazz. People come to feel good, that's what music is all about. We swing, baby. We don't play smooth jazz up here, we play rough jazz." He expresses distaste for modern technology in music that he perceives as replacing live musicians. Drum machines, hip hop, and technologically altered sounds, he thinks, cannot create the same effect as live musicians, who connect with the audience on a personal level. His views reflect the overall vibe of the Lenox Lounge, a sort of collective effort to preserve a genre that changed the world' perception of music, and a deep, deep appreciation for the music itself. Gibson says, "I always say, if it wasn't about live, we'd all be dead."
In 2012 Reed's landlord increased his rent exponentially such that he was forced to sell the original Lenox Lounge location at 288 Lenox Avenue. However, in 2013 Reed relocated to 333 Lenox Avenue, taking the venue's legacy, music and iconic sign with him.
For more information, go to: www.lenoxlounge.com
Sources
Anderson, Jervis. Harlem: The Great Black Way, 1900-1950. London: Orbis Publishing Limited, 1982.
Burns, Ric. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Collection of [the periodical literature of jazz], Rusch, Bob, collector. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
William L. Hamilton, "A Legendary Harlem Club Preens for Its Second Act," New York Times, March 30, 2000.
Interview with Alvin Reid, Sr. by Nina Moffitt, for Place Matters, City Lore, June 25, 2007.
Lenox Lounge website, www.lenoxlounge.com
Lynda Richardson, "Longing For Authenticity; Is the Jazz Really Jazz in Harlem Without the Locals," New York Times, November 16, 2000.
Nina Siegal, "Neighborhood Report: Washington Heights/Harlem: Restoring The Lenox Lounge to Its Uptown Opulence," New York Times, June 6, 1999.
Verve Jazz History- Bebop, http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/history.aspx?hid=20>
Watkins-Owens, Irma. Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press,1996.
[Posted, August 2007]
