A New Day for the Historic Colored Musicians Club
A black and white snapshot of some of America’s most famous musicians hanging out in Buffalo’s Colored Musicians Club reveals why the newly renovated and reopened venue remains such a captivating place. You can now step into the same room and take a seat at the bar where jazz innovators like Miles Davis gathered to drink, eat, make music and listen.
The early 1950s photo shows Davis peering over John Coltrane’s shoulder. Dizzy Gillespie is at the piano. A local musician Elvin Shepherd watches, trumpet in hand. His friend Wilbur Trammel plays the saxophone. A small crowd listens in.
“What was great about it back then was the fact that, regardless of your musical ability, all were welcome … The club was a place that inspired young people to play better,” said George Scott, president of the Colored Musicians Club and Jazz Museum, and a big bandleader who went to the club as boy and learned to play the saxophone from working musicians.
Black musicians started the club a couple of years after they founded, in 1917, a Black union after the white union refused to integrate. In 1934, Local 533 bought the brick building at 145 Broadway, a former boot shop, billiard’s parlor and cigar stand.
The union held meetings on the first floor, where there is now a museum with interactive exhibits. Listen to Buffalo musicians, like Dodo Greene, a jazz singer and the first vocalist signed to an exclusive contract with Blue Note Records. Learn about the heydays of the 1940s and ‘50s when stars like Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole came to the club to relax after performing at segregated night spots where they weren’t allowed to walk through the front door.
The old club has a new elevator, a stage where musicians play and the original wood bar where people long ago ordered 25-cent “trotters”: a plate with pork, a pig’s foot, beans and a bottle of beer. “It’s the same place,” said Scott. “Same atmosphere. It’s intimate. It’s just a great feeling, relaxing and enjoying the same jazz groove. Sort of like what it was like back in the day.”
The Colored Musicians Club & Jazz Museum
145 Broadway, Buffalo, NY
thecoloredmusiciansclub.com
