Metropole Cafe

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The Metropole Cafe was a jazz club that operated in New York's Manhattan from the mid-1950s through 1965. Located at 7th Avenue and 48th Street, it was primarily noted in the bebop and progressive jazz era as a venue for traditional musicians. Henry "Red" Allen, a New Orleans veteran of many bands, including King Oliver's and Fletcher Henderson's, led the house band beginning in 1954.

The Metropole featured jazz performances in the afternoon and evening. Its bandstand was a long runway behind the bar that proved convenient when the club abandoned jazz in later years to feature strippers. Noted songwriters Jim Holvay and Gary Beisbier (who penned hit songs for the Buckinghams in the late 1960s) were part of an R&B band called The Chicagoans who played at the Metropole Cafe in fall 1963.^[1]

In 1968, the Metropole was home to a variety of rock bands. Featured were two bands per period; a two-week stint in most cases. The bands alternated sets, each on stage for an hour, over a 12-hour stretch from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. During their individual sets, go-go dancers wearing skimpy bikini outfits were stationed across the runway stage behind the bar, which was usually frequented by older men who might have wandered into the club throughout the day and night.

Other resident performers at the club included Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Cozy Cole, Charlie Shavers, Zutty Singleton, Claude Hopkins, J. C. Higginbotham, Tony Scott, Max Kaminsky, Sol Yaged, Maynard Ferguson (in 1964) and Buster Bailey.^[2] The last jazz acts to play the club before it ended its jazz policy in June 1965 were Gene Krupa and Mongo Santamaria.^[3]

In the film version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, Felix Ungar stops by the Metropole after a suicide attempt at the beginning of the film.

• Interview with jazz bassist and historian Bill Crow.

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