Back when I was a twentysomething yet to discovery the alchemy of jazz and the downbeat charm of the places it was often invented in, one particularly vividly written scene in Ross Russell’s semi-fictionalised biography of Charlie Parker caught my imagination.
Russell – a record producer but also a thriller writer-manqué on the side – liked hardboiled American gumshoe novels, and embroidered Parker’s wild life and 1940s New York milieu in a sometimes overheated Dashiell Hammett manner. But his description of Manhattan’s 52nd Street and its famous jazz clubs still gives me a shiver. “Now, with corroded plumbing and wiring systems that gave cause for concern to the fire department,” Russell wrote of the street’s once-luxurious brownstones, “they provided studios for sign painters and silkscreen operators, mail-order drops, and import-export concerns run out of a hat, offices for private detectives and teachers of the piano and saxophone, and darkrooms shared by photographers who prowled Broadway night clubs with Speed Graphics.”
During the daytime 52nd Street was dingy, but at night it was ablaze with light and noise from the cluster of jazz clubs huddled at the end of the block, often occupying, as Russell described it, “basements 30 feet wide and not much deeper, low of ceiling, with tiny checkrooms and miniature bars, furnished with a clutter of tables and chairs most likely picked up at an auction sale”.
London’s much-loved 606 Club in Chelsea, which this week celebrates 40 years with fast-talking and energetic flute-playing proprietor Steve Rubie at the helm, has always had that kind of seductive identity; but rather than being located on a rundown street of once-grand houses, it lies in the shadow of the glitzy new hotels of Chelsea Harbour and the millionaires’ apartments that encircle the dark monolith of the old Lots Road power station. It feels like a jazz tardis dropped in from another time and place. Take a stroll down Lots Road at night and you might never find it. A tiny “606” above an anonymous arch in a wall is almost the only clue, and a locked iron grille reveals only a bleak metal staircase into a basement. You have to ring a bell and wait, until the clank of the opening door below confirms there’s life within, and a voice enquires if you have a reservation. You descend the staircase, turn a corner and enter something very like Russell’s low-ceilinged jazz basement, with its tiny reception, miniature bar, clutter of unassuming furniture and blast of unruly sound from musicians who are practically playing in the front row’s laps.
“People have told me I ought to put something more welcoming on that staircase,” chuckles Rubie. “Jazz photographs, pictures of stars who’ve played here. I’ve always said no, the whole point is that you come in and can’t see where you’re going. I love hearing people who haven’t been before saying, ‘Where are we, what is this?’, and then going ‘WOW’ when they come into that room.”
The “Six”, as musicians dub it, is widely held to be among London’s premier jazz haunts – alongside Ronnie Scott’s, Dean Street’s Pizza Express, and Dalston’s Vortex – and local customers make up barely 20% of its turnover, the majority of its clientele being from all over the city and beyond.
In the club’s first incarnation – at 606 Kings Road – in the 1960s and 70s it was already a late-night musicians’ hangout as much as it was a public performing space. That atmosphere has flourished since Rubie took the reins in 1976 and its move to the present premises in 1988. These days, on almost any evening, players young and old warmly reunite or make new friends and huddle in animated conversations. Jamie Cullum calls the 606 “one of the best music venues in the world”. “I felt like I’d arrived home,” he says of his first visit.
Rubie has a close relationship with the Royal Academy of Music’s jazz department and others, and runs an exchange scheme for rising European talents as well as giving strong support to all generations of British players. This week (during a typical 606 gig that included Loose Tubes’ Iain Ballamy in an inventive impromptu band featuring three leading jazzwomen in pianist Nikki Iles, saxist Trish Clowes and bassist Flo Moore), British flautist Gareth Lockrane announced that over the years he had formed several of his bands on that very stage.
Providing a space to road-test new ideas to a sympathetic crowd continues to be a major reason why Rubie has devoted his life to the venue. “I worked as a chef in the original 606, which meant I could practise the flute in the day and make a bit of money at night,” he recalls. “I’d studied dentistry but liked playing the flute more. In 1976, the original 606 owner offered me the chance to take it over. It was a tiny place, the capacity was about 30, we were always turning people away. So in 1988, when the building was going to be redeveloped, we moved here to Lots Road. I’ve kept one bare brick wall in the club as a nod to the old place, which was all bare brick.”
“My intention has always been to make musicians and audiences feel equally comfortable. We’ve had big, established stars such as Bonnie Raitt and even Will Young on that stage, jazz originals like Soweto Kinch, Liane Carroll and the Impossible Gentlemen, and student bands just finding their way – and getting a chance to play alongside some of the best possible role models. Crises? Of course there have been crises, it’s a jazz club! But we’ve been in profit now for 10 years or so. I think I’ve become a bit more professional over time – I’ve even gone on business courses! Naturally, I’m never going to be a millionaire. But if I’d wanted to make a lot of money, I would have stuck with dentistry.”
•The 606 Club’s 40th Anniversary celebrations continue until 30 October, featuring Liane Carroll (26 October), Polar Bear’s Mark Lockheart (27 October), Jason Rebello (28 October) and Claire Martin (30 October). Box office: 020-7352 5953
•What are your favourite jazz venues? Tell us in the comments section below
