Boston Jazz Club owner Lennie Sogoloff dies

[edafan]

Boston Jazz Club owner, Lennie Sogoloff, owner of Lennie's On The Turnpike passed away. He had Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, Jay Leno and Nina Simone in this small club on Rt 1 in Peabody. If you were into music in the sixties and seventies in Boston, this was the place to hang out.

edafan

[marv2]

Boston Jazz Club owner, Lennie Sogoloff, owner of Lennie's On The Turnpike passed away. He had Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, Jay Leno and Nina Simone in this small club on Rt 1 in Peabody. If you were into music in the sixties and seventies in Boston, this was the place to hang out.

edafan

I was just in Peabody/Salem this past week. Wow, I remember him. Rest in peace Lennie.

[edafan]

Lennie Sogoloff: The man who brought all that jazz to area
By Alan Burke Staff Writer
MARBLEHEAD — Sometimes, the music doesn’t stop all at once; it grows softer and softer until you’re not quite certain when it died. Jazz lost one of its biggest boosters with the passing of Lennie Sogoloff, 90, at the Devereux House on Saturday. A love of jazz led him to open Lennie’s on the Turnpike in Peabody in 1951 and run it until 1972. The Route 1 club featured giants of the craft: Miles Davis, Buddy Rich, Nina Simone, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillispie, to name a few.
“These people represent the golden age,” says retired Salem State University professor Jay McHale. “After this generation, there was no more jazz as we know jazz. They were played out.” At Lennie’s, he adds with amazed enthusiasm, these greats would play the entire week. [[Sogoloff gave late wife Barbara Ann credit for landing some of the talent.)
By the time Sogoloff closed the club, the passion for jazz was being drowned out by the mania for rock. But the music never stopped for the Peabody native. Even during his days at Devereux House, he continued organizing jazz concerts for fellow residents.
“What a great character he was,” says Gene Arnould, who has run the annual Marblehead Summer Jazz for 30 years. Perhaps poetically, Arnould is calling it quits after this year’s four-week series, which starts on Friday, citing attendance as a problem. “In 30 years, our audience has gotten 30 years older,” he explains. “We just haven’t been able to attract young people. ... I don’t know why.”
Arnould arrived on the North Shore from the Midwest long after Lennie’s on the Turnpike had closed. He knew it by reputation, however, and he soon knew Sogoloff. “He was very supportive of what we did and was a frequent guest. ... He had a wonderful sense of humor.” “He was very warm” and dedicated to his family, adds McHale.
Sogoloff’s idea of funny was keen enough that he spotted an unknown talent and made him his house comedian in 1972. Jay Leno never forgot. In 2009, the Andover native flew from Hollywood to a Salem State benefit where he donated $100,000 to a scholarship in the Sogoloffs’ names. He compared his former boss to Mr. Fezziwig of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” who compensated for a lack of business acumen by being “a wonderful human being with a huge heart.” At first, McHale was only a fan, visiting Lennie’s on a regular basis in the 1960s. He recalls it as a small, intimate place. He wasn’t introduced to Sogoloff until 2007, when he proposed archiving all his mementos, the paperwork and photos, at Salem State. To sweeten the deal, then-college president Nancy Harrington awarded an honorary doctorate recognizing his efforts to further the art of music.
Both Arnould and McHale can reel off stories revolving around Sogoloff’s dealings with the greats of jazz. There was the sometimes troubled trumpeter/composer Miles Davis wanting to be paid in advance, Arnould recounts. But there he was at the end of the week, sitting on Sogoloff’s desk and asking for his check. The boss delivered the bad news. “I already paid you.” McHale remembers the tale of sax player Illinois Jacquet drinking into the wee hours with Sogoloff and a state trooper and then managing to get hit by one of their cars in the mostly empty parking lot. “It was like getting run over by a camel in the desert,” Sogoloff laughed. Jacquet finished out the week on crutches.
Then there was another sax player who arrived with the news that the police were chasing him. “Can you hide me?” he asked. Jazz musicians could be difficult, McHale explains. Drug use was not uncommon. Some died young. In the end, “he ran out of acts. That’s why he went out of business.” For a while, Sogoloff tried the likes of Bette Midler, Ricky Nelson and Linda Ronstadt. “There were no more jazz musicians. And people liked The Beatles.” Eventually, Sogoloff became manager of Empire Clothing Co. store in Salem.
While the jazz radio stations have largely disappeared, along with the venues for live jazz, the craft continues to influence nearly every style of music. An American innovation, it has adherents across the globe. [[Friday’s act at Summer Jazz is pianist Makoto Ozon of Japan.) “Just about every high school has some kind of jazz program,” says Arnould. “And every college.” Not musically talented himself, Sogoloff made a contribution to the art nonetheless. “He became a legend,” says Arnould. “He was as much a part of the experience he provided as the musicians were.”