The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST Grab your fedora and take a trip with the Bowery Boys into the heart of New York City’s jazz scene — late nights, smoky bars, neon signs — through the eyes of one of the greatest American vocalists who ever lived here — Billie Holiday. Eleanora Fagan walked out of Pennsylvania Station in 1929… Read More
Nina Simone was born on this date in 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina. She came to New York as a student of the Julliard School, but her unique blend of genres came from her experiences in the nightclubs and cabarets of Harlem and Greenwich Village. She wowed audiences with a memorable New York debut at the Village… Read More
A ton of people on-stage at the Harlem Opera House in 1907. During this period, it was owned by vaudeville impresario Keith Proctor and called Proctor’s Harlem Opera House. Pictures courtesy the Museum of the City of New York The Hotel Theresa, subject of this week’s podcast, had a rather unusual neighbor in its early… Read More
Renown jazz pianist Dave Brubeck died this morning, just a day before his 92nd birthday. The fourth entry in his ‘Jazz Impressions’ series, recorded in 1964, featured music evoking the ‘urbane personality’ of New York City. The recording also featured his well-known quartet line-up, including Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello. From that album,… Read More
Renown jazz pianist Dave Brubeck died this morning, just a day before his 92nd birthday. The fourth entry in his ‘Jazz Impressions’ series, recorded in 1964, featured music evoking the ‘urbane personality’ of New York City. The recording also featured his well-known quartet line-up, including Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello. From that album,… Read More
A Welcome Debut: Our podcast this week was on the history of New York University, an institution which spent decades in the Bronx neighborhood today called University Heights. When they returned downtown to Greenwich Village, the campus passed into the hands of Bronx Community College, a part of the City University of New York system.… Read More
WARNING The article contains a few spoilers about last night’s ‘Mad Men’ on AMC, so if you’re a fan of the show, come back once you’re watched the episode. Lusty groupies, ample drug intake, smoky hallways and deafening rock music. One might have thought last night’s ‘Mad Men’ — partially centered around the backstage antics… Read More
Girl gone wild: Madonna enjoys the video opulence of Private Eyes with former boyfriend and producer Jellybean Benitez, July 17, 1984 It’s 1984, and the hottest trend in American pop culture is the music video . MTV had debuted a channel of non-stop music videos in 1981, and just three years later, most new pop superstars were… Read More
Above: The first of hundreds of Bowery hotels — the old Gotham Inn in 1862. The inn, which dated from the 1790s, sat quite close to where 315 Bowery is today, just north of Houston Street. (Pic courtesy NYPL) The early history of buildings at 315 Bowery — the address that would later become the… Read More
Photo courtesy araceli.g, Flickr PODCAST Modern American rock music would have been a whole lot different without the rundown dive mecca CBGB’s, a beat-up former flophouse bar that made stars out of young musicians and helped shape the musical edge of downtown Manhattan. Owner Hilly Kristal may have initially envisioned a place for ‘Country Blue… Read More
Above: Lena Horne at the Copacabana, October 1948 Lena Horne, the Brooklyn-born entertainer who broke color barriers in the New York nightclub scene as well as in Hollywood, died in a New York hospital yesterday at age 92. She would make history in Harlem, in segregated hotspots like The Cotton Club, where the entertainment was… Read More
Here’s a sampling of female entertainers from the last one hundred years, focusing on one particular venue that figures into shaping that person’s professional career. Obviously, most of these women performed in dozens of places throughout the city. I’m just focusing on location pivotal to their beginnings. Billie Holiday in a jam session, 1943 (Gjon… Read More
Sonny and Cher in New York City (picture courtesy Getty Images) June 1, 1970: Sonny and Cher begin a two-week stint at the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria. The Empire was one of the swankiest hotel lounges in Manhattan, usually the site of stars slightly past their prime, pop and jazz musicians of the prior… Read More
March 30, 1974: The Ramones, the pride of Forest Hills, Queens, play their first public concert together at Performance Studio, a small space on East 20th Street* managed by future member Tommy Erdelyi (later Tommy Ramone). For their debut set, there were just three of them, and Dee Dee Ramone sang lead How did it… Read More
September 9-10, 1963: Future member of the Velvet Underground John Cale, as well as a dozen other pianists of varying talents, took to the stage at the Pocket Theatre at 100 Third Avenue, to perform the 1893 piece Vexations by the French composer Erik Satie. Allegedly, according to Satie’s own wishes, the short piece was… Read More