Well, it’s hard to believe in a lot of ways and not too hard to believe in others. But since this pandemic started, we’ve had to close down our club, B Sharps, because we’re so small that we just couldn’t crowd people in and feel comfortable about it. We’ve just kind of had not too many shows, though we’ve had a few livestreams. But this particular article is about owning a small jazz club and what that means to not just the owners, but to the musicians and communities that the club serves.
I’ve always wanted a jazz club, and by being married to jazz musician Clarence Seay, I’ve traveled to a lot of different clubs all around the country, and then some internationally. The one thing I found that the really nice and memorable clubs had in common had to do with how they treated the musicians, how they treated their customers, how they created a welcoming community. It wasn’t all about money, but it was more about the music. And I wanted to have a club like that, particularly in this town.
Here in Tallahassee, after moving here around ’87 and having been used to going to jazz clubs coming out of Richmond, Virginia, in their heyday, there weren’t any clubs here that were strictly dedicated to jazz or straight-ahead jazz. I went to one club, and it was noisy, and people were drinking and laughing and having a good time, but there was music up front. And when I turned my attention to the music, toward the end of one of the songs, I saw a gentleman was playing. This particular gentleman was a local guy; people seemed to know him. He was blind, and when he finished a song, people started stuffing dollar bills in his shirt collar, and it just made me sick to my stomach. He was good natured about it, I guess. I mean, I don’t know his story, but he was very popular here in town.
When I saw those folks just laughing and joking and talking and sticking money in his shirt, it
