Club owner Clarence Baker dies

[brownie]

From AP:

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) _ Clarence Baker, the longtime owner of one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious jazz clubs, died Sunday. He was 93.

Jazz greats who have performed at Baker's Keyboard Lounge include John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Kenny Burrell and Stan Getz.

Baker's father, Chris, opened Baker's as a restaurant in 1934. The younger Baker persuaded his father to add live piano music in the evenings, then took over running the club in 1939.

The celebrated jazz pianist Art Tatum helped pick out the club's first grand piano in the late 1950s, about the time Baker installed the trademark curved bar decorated as a keyboard.

Baker sold the club in 1963, then ran a Detroit supper club and managed several nightspots before regaining complete ownership of the jazz club in 1974. He then sold the club but bought it back when the new owner ran into trouble _ a cycle repeated five or so times during the 1970s and 1980s, said John Colbert, who has owned Baker's since 1996.

[Jim Alfredson]

Wow. Nutty. We still haven't played there. Been trying to get in. Detroit is a weird scene.

[Soul Stream]

Hey, didn't Bill Heid say he used to see Grant Green there all the time?

[Jim Alfredson]

Oh yeah.... everybody played Baker's.