Jazz at the Black Hawk T-Shirt

Product Description

San Francisco has a long jazz tradition, but no club is more synonymous with the city’s jazz scene than the long-extinct Black Hawk. Located in the Tenderloin, the club was, from 1949 until 1963, one of the country’s leading venues for touring jazz groups. In addition to many West Coast acts, like Cal Tjader, Art Farmer, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, locally-grown but nationally-famous acts like Dave Brubeck used it as a home base of sorts. Brubeck, in fact, held court there for several weeks a year for most of its existence. The big draw, however, were the visiting East Coast acts, like Art Blakey, Billie Holiday, Lester Young and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Miles Davis recorded a famous pair of albums at the Black Hawk during his 1961 engagement there, and titled them appropriately as “In Person Friday Night at the Black Hawk” and “In Person Saturday Night at the Black Hawk.” Thelonious Monk and Ahmad Jamal recorded well-known albums there as well. Owner Guido Caccienti, like many jazz club owners, really had only a passing knowledge of the music he booked, considering the musicians as an expense and a means to an end. He was known for his malapropisms when it came to the names of the artists who worked for him, famously hand-lettering a sign for the front door announcing an upcoming gig by saxophonist Illinois Jacquet so that it read “Indian Jacket.” Close enough for jazz, one supposes.