THE CRAWFORD GRILL JAZZ CLUB
The Crawford Grill Jazz Club is located in the heart of the Hill District, which supported one of Pittsburgh's most vibrant nightlife scenes during the mid-20th century. William “Gus” Greenlee and his business partner and friend Joe Robinson opened the Crawford Grill in the mid-1940s. The Grill, as it became known, would be the last of Greenlee’s nightclub ventures, which had started with the Paramount Inn in the early 1920s. What would become a nationally recognized jazz venue during the 1950s started as one of many taverns along Wylie and Center Avenue that served drinks and Southern cooking into the late hours. Starting in 1956, Joe Robinson began to feature well known touring jazz acts for week-long engagements. In April, bassist, composer, and band leader Charles Mingus performed with his quintet following the release of his critically acclaimed album Pithecanthropus Erectus. The album was the first to feature Mingus as a composer and arranger, and prefigured the free jazz movement of the 1960s with experimental approaches to form and group improvisation. Mingus represented a sharp stylistic departure from the local groups that had built the Grill’s popularity, and marked the beginning of a new era for the club.
Shortly afterwards, in May of 1956, drummer Art Blakey returned to his hometown to play the Crawford Grill with the Jazz Messengers. The group, comprised of pianist Horace Silver, trumpeter Donald Byrd, bassist Doug Watkins, and Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, was a leader in blending the technical virtuosity of bebop with the rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities of gospel and blues. Blakey had grown up performing in Hill District venues such as the old Savoy Ballroom and was a source of pride for the neighborhood. Cecil Brooks, who had taken over the drum chair in Walt Harper’s band, recalls Joe Robinson expressing that he was “taking a chance” by bringing in Art Blakey. Blakey’s popularity at the Grill, however led to Robinson’s focus on top touring acts. It was at this point that the Crawford Grill began its shift to a “jazz house” that featured modern recording jazz artists.
Touring groups that followed in the Crawford Grill during 1956 and ’57 were Cecil Young, Paul Quinchette, James Moody, Les Jazz Modes featuring Charlie Rouse and Julius Watkins, Teddy Charles, Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Cannonball Adderly. These artists were instrumental in developing the aesthetic standards and symbolic meanings of jazz’s golden age. During the Crawford Grill’s height from 1957 to 1967, drummer Max Roach was one of the most featured touring jazz artists. As an innovator in bebop and hard bop, few embodied the sensibilities of hard bop more than Roach, who built a reputation as one of the leading jazz drummers and bandleaders. When Roach found himself in need of a band, he turned to local musicians to join him for the rest of the year. On bass he chose bassist Bobby Boswell, one of the top local bassists who had also gained national recognition touring with Billie Holiday and Louis Jordan. To fill the saxophone and trumpet chairs, Roach hired the brothers Tommy and Stanley Turrentine, known as two of the local leading modern jazz players.
Crawford Grill audiences clearly favored the hard swinging style of hard bop players such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Max Roach for the same reason that the music affirmed shared values based in both secular and religious musical traditions. For these reasons, hard bop remained a mainstay at the Grill, though “Buzzy” Robinson continued booking experimental artists including Jimmy Guiffre’s trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow, Rashaan Roland Kirk, and Eric Dolphy. These performances prompted a discourse concerning the identity of jazz. In June of 1963, Eric Dolphy performed with his quintet, which included vibraphonist Bobbie Hutcherson, bassist Eddie Khan, drummer J. C. Moses and Eddie Armour on flugelhorn. Dolphy’s week at the Grill came several months after the recording of his album Iron Man, a mixture of through-composed, free form, and hard bop compositions that featured Dolphy’s angular improvisations and Hutcherson’s modern harmonic approach. There is little doubt that Dolphy’s approach was strongly rooted in the jazz tradition, though his innovations were, in the context of the Crawford Grill, a sharp departure from the norm.