The hot Harlem club making 1940s jazz cool again
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Trumpet player Wayne Tucker leads his quartet in a Duke Ellington tune before letting other musicians take the Minton’s stage for a Friday night jam.Stefano Giovannini
At the stroke of midnight one recent Friday at Minton’s, Wayne Tucker’s quartet comes out swinging — literally — with Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll.”
For the next 20 minutes or so, the trumpeter and his band — David Linard on piano, Tamir Shmerling on bass, Charles Goold on drums — hold the stage, before yielding to a time-honored tradition: the Friday night jam session.
Saxophonists, a trombonist, singers and the occasional tap dancer come up to the bandstand, call out a song and show their best stuff. Their audience — a mix of students, couples out on a date and small groups of friends — sip cocktails or nibble on hot dogs from the cart near the bar.
Tucker’s jam sessions began in April, but historically date back to the ’40s, when the Harlem club was called Minton’s Playhouse. Henry Minton opened the club in 1938; a tenor saxophonist himself, he saw to it that his place put musicians first.
And so Minton’s became the spot where musicians would go after they played elsewhere — not only for a hot plate of soul food but for the chance to heat up that stage, including Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke and Charlie Parker.
Tucker, a 28-year-old who’s played with everyone from Delfeayo Marsalis to Elvis Costello, says he’s mindful of both Minton’s history and its current clientele — making sure the music is accessible even to novice jazz fans.
And while Minton’s can no longer afford to serve up heaping plates of soul food to everyone who plays, the Friday night jam sessions offer hot dogs — an innovation by co-owner Alexander Smalls and chef de cuisine Joseph “JJ” Johnson.
The club closed after a fire in 1974, and when Smalls reopened it in 2013, the mood at Minton’s was far more elegant. There was a tasting menu and white tablecloths, elements he says were “off-putting” to many.
“There’s no charge to enjoy the music at the jam sessions, but we needed to have some [food] for customers who don’t want to come here for dinner,” says Smalls, a former opera singer and part-owner of Minton’s sister restaurant, the Cecil, next door.
And so, though Minton’s serves an upscale menu earlier in the evening (items like smoked praline pork chops with bourbon yams and snap peas, $29) when there’s a cover charge — $10 for bar and lounge seating, $20 for dining room seating — Smalls aimed to make late Friday nights different.
“I mean, it’s jazz and hot dogs!” he says.
By 2 a.m., Tucker and the many musicians who’ve taken a turn in the spotlight are clearly feeling that spirit. Samuel Coleman, a dance instructor who specializes in jazz, is getting his groove on, swing-dancing with one of his students, Julia Loving, a 43-year-old librarian from The Bronx, between the rows of tables in the dining room. A group of musicians and guests are chatting at the bar, patting each other on the back if they happened to go up for a song.
One of them is Charles Turner, a 26-year-old jazz singer who held everyone rapt with his rendition of George Gershwin’s “But Not for Me.” When asked how Minton’s compares to other clubs he’s played in, Turner says this Harlem spot is doing exactly what Smalls, Tucker and Henry Minton himself set out to do when it first opened.
“They’re tweaking things here to embrace the artist and make it more accessible to the audience as well,” Turner says. “That spirit of music and community is still very much in the air here.”
