There is good news for jazz listeners in Southern California. The Jazz Bakery can stop roaming. That modern-day rarity, a major jazz club in Los Angeles, the Bakery lost its lease in 2009 and has been presenting concerts in a variety of halls, moving from one spot to another. Now it can reestablish itself in Culver City near where it started nearly
two decades ago. A grant from the Annenberg Foundation and an agreement with a Culver City municipal agency will help make the new building a reality where founder Ruth Price wanted it. For details, see Chris Barton’s report in The Los Angeles Times.
During my Los Angeles period, the Bakery was a favorite haunt. Let’s hope that the new place will have the intimacy that made it a pleasure to hear music like this, played by Howard Alden and the late George Van Eps at the Jazz Bakery in 1994.
To see a Rifftides archive piece about Ruth Price, a bit of Jazz Bakery history and a video of Ruth singing, click here.