Jack’s Basket Room

Jack’s Basket Room. . , Where Everyone Comes to Play , Jack's Basket Room was one of Central Avenue's most famous after-hours jazz clubs in the 1940s and 1950s. Also known as "Jack's Chicken Basket," the "Bird in the Basket," and "Jack's Chicken Shack" - for the fried chicken with shoe string potatoes offered in rattan baskets - the place was a down home joint that nonetheless featured white tablecloths and well-dressed revelers. Ads in the Los Angeles Sentinel pegged Jack's as "the place where everyone comes to play." Almost every night, musicians would show up after their paying gigs and jam with each other to a packed house until dawn. Although it did not serve alcohol, savvy patrons knew to bring their own half-pints. "A chicken ain't nothin' but a bird," Cab Calloway's lyric, adorned the exterior of the 1923 brick building. , Legendary heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson owned several clubs along the Avenue, and tradition holds that he also owned the Basket Room. However, city records and club listings from the time name Sam "Jack" Jackson as the proprietor. , Jack's Basket Room was known for all-night jam sessions, where underage Mexican American fans could sneak in for their fix of jazz and R&B. joining African American and a smattering of white patrons. The club appeared for many years in The Negro Motorist Green Book, an annual guide for black travelers published during the Jim Crow era. Particularly in Southern states and those along the Mexico border, "Jim Crow" referred to the enforced racial segregation that was in effect until the mid-1960s. "Sportsman's Night" was typically held on Fridays at Jack's with the goal of raising money for scholarships to support basketball and football stars at UCLA. , Jams Every Night , A Monday night jam might feature musician Howard McGhee, an early bebop trumpeter, or Sammy Franklin and His Atomics. Saxophonist Joe Lutcher's orchestra and female impersonators entertained crowds with two post-midnight floor shows. King Perry, the "Pied Piper of Swingdom," and his sextet performed on Saturdays. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie played now and then. Radio host Bill Sampson broadcast sessions from a booth at Jack's every Monday night on station KAGH so that anyone could tune into the jumpin sounds of the Avenue. For many years, the Los Angeles Sentinel reported the club served a free Christmas dinner "to underprivileged children of all races, creed and color." , The Night "Bird" Played Jack’s , Jack's Basket Room hit a high note in February 1947, when influential bebop saxophonist Charlie "Bird Parker played a packed room after emerging from a six-month stay at Camarillo State Mental Hospital for heroin addiction. Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Gerald Wilson recalled the happening "I was there at Jack's Basket....Couldn't even sit down. Bird came to the bandstand, and a roar went up from the crowd like the one for Bill Clinton at the inauguration. It could be heard all up and down Central Avenue." , Jazz saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist Buddy Collette described the scene in his autobiography Jazz Generations: "There must have been thirty or forty different musicians all wanting to show Parker how they could play. All the tenor and alto players were there - Sonny Criss, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Gene Phillips, Teddy Edwards, Jay McNeely, and on and on. They all played and Bird just sat there and smiled. It was a long night. Finally, Bird got up there and I don't think he played more than three or four choruses. But he told a complete story, caught all the nuances, tapered off to the end. Nobody played a note after that. Everybody just packed up their horns and went on home because it was so complete, so right."