BRONZEVILLE — Two of the city's most storied jazz venues welcome visitors this weekend as part of the architecture expo Open House Chicago.
The Forum, 324 E. 43rd St., and the Sunset Cafe, 315 E. 35th St., are both throwing open their doors this weekend to architecture aficionados, but jazz fans might be even more interested.
Neither looks very impressive these days. The Forum lies vacant in hopes of a costly renovation, while the Sunset Cafe is incognito, under the guise of Meyers Ace Hardware.
Yet that building retains some of the wall murals from the performance space inside, and those will be on display as part of Open House Chicago.
The Sunset Cafe was "the city's premier nightclub" during the Roaring '20s, according to Chicago jazz historian Kay Henderson, who has taken tour groups to the site. The key to that was Louis Armstrong.
"It was the place to go at that time," Henderson said Friday. "Well, anyplace Louis played was the place to go."
According to Henderson, the era was a critical juncture for Armstrong. His marriage to pianist Lil Hardin, who had managed him, was breaking up. At the Sunset, which was owned by Joe Glaser, his future manager, he hooked up with Carrol Dickerson's Sunset Syncopated Orchestra, which led to him uniting with Earl "Fatha" Hines in a partnership that would lead jazz away from the New Orleans style of Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens and toward a more mature and artistic sense of improvisation.
"This was right when Louis Armstrong rose to the top," Henderson said.
On the way, however, Armstrong and his original Hot Five recorded "Sunset Cafe Stomp" in November 1926, including the lyrics: "Lord, it's going/And the people strain/Created in the crazy house/It sets good folks insane."
"He loved working there because it was a little bit tougher, and Louis kinda liked that," Henderson said.
The Sunset Cafe boasted of being "Chicago's brightest pleasure spot," and Henderson said it was a unique draw in part because it was an integrated "black and tan" club, luring Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman along with locals.
"A lot of black folks went there," Henderson said. "It was a very prosperous time on the South Side."
There were also several other jazz clubs in the area, in what might be described today as a jazz incubator. "All came down to hear what was going on there, because that wasn't going on anywhere else," Henderson added. "People couldn't believe what they were hearing, because it was so different."
Later, Sunset Cafe was remodeled in 1937 and became the Grand Terrace Cafe, but it continued to attract top talent and innovative groups like Billy Eckstine's band, which included future bebop titans Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, as well as Sarah Vaughn. Current owner Daniel Meyers said in a video recorded four years ago by Northwestern University student Ben Richmond that "Bird" sometimes slept under the stage, a legend repeated by Henderson, who added it was "because he would never be on time."
Meyers will lead tours this weekend that will include murals originally painted behind the stage. Henderson called them "politically incorrect," indulging in racial caricatures of the time, but added, "They're beautiful [and] the colors are actually still pretty brilliant."
The imposing red brick Forum is still pretty brilliant as well, located right at the 43rd Street stop on the CTA Green Line, but inside it's been vacant and out of service since the mid-'70s.
Yet Bernard Loyd, of Urban Juncture, who has also been leading an economic revival down the line at 51st Street, bought the venue and cleaned it out a few years ago, and opened it last year to Open House Chicago, attracting 1,200 visitors.
According to the Open House Chicago website, the 1897 structure is "possibly the oldest hardwood ballroom dance floor in Chicago," antedating the Aragon Ballroom by decades, and it continued to attract top talent into the '50s, '60s and '70s. Loyd has documented Nat "King" Cole and jazz bassist Milt Hinton playing there, and believes Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Johnnie Taylor and Koko Taylor most likely played there as well, when 43rd Street was a hotbed of jazz, blues and soul with a stretch including the Checkerboard Lounge.
"As far as we can tell, everybody who was a major player in blues or jazz and came to the South Side played there," Loyd said.
Yet it was abandoned and fell into disrepair, and while Loyd has made it literally presentable in spots, he said, "The whole building needs a gut rehab."
He estimated the cost at $20 million to $25 million, making it in some ways the Uptown Theater of Bronzeville. "It's a big project," Loyd allowed.
Yet he said he hopes the Open House Chicago publicity will add momentum to a bid to have it added to the National Register of Historic Places, which would lead to tax breaks and better opportunities for loans and fundraising.
Other Bronzeville locations throwing their doors open this weekend include the Swift Mansion, now the Inner City Youth & Adult Foundation, 4500 S. Michigan Ave., and the Illinois Institute of Technology's Crown Hall, 3360 S. State St., and the Campus Center, 3201 S. State St., which spans the CTA tracks.
A full list of Open House Chicago sites, for Bronzeville and citywide, is found on the Chicago Architecture Foundation website.
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