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Home > Sangre Celestial > Blue Note president on history of the jazz club and LA opening
Podcast: Sangre Celestial
Episode:

Blue Note president on history of the jazz club and LA opening
Category: Arts
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-08-18 19:00:00
Description: For 45 years, Blue Note in Greenwich Village served as New York City’s upscale club for jazz — often packed with greats such as Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lionel Hampton. Then the club opened locations in Japan, Italy, China, Brazil, Hawaii, and Napa. The latest came last week in Hollywood . Grammy winner Robert Glasper played on Blue Note LA’s opening night, along with surprise guests such as Terrace Martin, Kenyon Dixon, Ledisi, and Lalah Hathaway — all big names in jazz, rap, soul, and R&B. Steven Bensusan is president of Blue Note. His dad, Danny Bensusan, opened the original location in New York in 1981. He says LA’s version is a little more spacious, with higher ceilings to maximize sound quality and lights during shows, and the audience will be seated relatively close to the stage. Programming will be similar to New York. How did Blue Note start in the first place? Bensusan explains that his dad immigrated from Israel to the U.S. in 1969, worked as a bartender in Greenwich Village, saved money, and opened a successful kosher restaurant in the Diamond District. After selling it, he launched a disco in Brooklyn in the 1970s. After that second venture faded, he bought an Israeli nightclub called David’s Harp in the Village, which he turned into Blue Note. The former owner of The Half Note jazz club in SoHo became a bartender at Blue Note, “and helped my father really book the place and introduce him to a lot of musicians.” “Then he also met a doorman at Arthur's Tavern, which is a bar we actually now own, but it was one of the oldest jazz clubs in New York, and his name was Harry Whiting. And Harry said to him, ‘Hey, you should call the club Blue Note.’ And at the time, Blue Note Records was out of business. I think they folded around ‘78 or ‘79. So we called it Blue Note, and he trademarked the name. And eventually Blue Note Records came back in 1985, and we have a co-existing agreement with them and work well with them over the years. But we do share the trademark.” During Blue Note’s first years, the elder Bensusan learned that popular artists weren’t playing certain clubs because people smoked inside, and they wanted to protect their voices. Blue Note then developed a no-smoking policy, “which was revolutionary for New York.” “And he did things at the club that really made artists … feel at home … like dressing rooms with a bathroom; sound system where they don't have to compromise their show. And so he was able to bring in some of these legends. … Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock and Tony Bennett. And all of these legends that really helped establish the club. It just snowballed around 1983-84.” People also didn’t need to know about jazz to be at the venue — it was simply a comfortable place to see a show and enjoy time with your significant other, Bensusan points out. Blue Note has historically embraced the progressive and changing nature of music. “The club has always evolved over the years, whether it was in the ‘80s and jazz fusion era, where it was a lot of the rock meets jazz; or the ‘90s, where it was a little bit more smooth jazz and R&B. And now, really, we've embraced the jazz meets hip-hop and R&B world.” Following LA, Bensusan plans to open the next Blue Note in London, he shares. The goal is simply to give artists a place to play, he says. “Jazz clubs have been closing all over the place. And I think that with our name and reputation, we have the ability to sell more tickets than others. An artist that may be able to sell a couple hundred seats in a concert hall in a given city — can sell thousands of tickets over the course of four nights with us, or five nights. So we want to continue to provide places for them to perform.”
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