Bill Reinhardt, traditional jazz clarinetist and owner of the legendary Chicago club Jazz Ltd., died January 23, 2001, in San Diego. The cause of his death is not known at this time, his age is estimated as being in his late 80’s.
Reinhardt opened the Jazz Ltd. club in 1947 with his wife, Ruth. One of the first dixieland clubs in Chicago, it became a popular nightspot among jazz fans. Anxious jazz seekers formed long lines outside the club nightly, waiting for their chance to hear the roaring New Orleans sound of masters like Sidney Bechet and Muggsy Spanier. Reinhardt once estimated that Jazz Ltd. “must have hired over 700 musicians.”
The club also functioned as a recording house and in the late 40s, records were issued on the Jazz Ltd., Regal and Atlantic labels. Some of these recordings have been made available on CD by the Delmark label.
Reinhardt will be remembered for giving dixieland music a Chicago home and for being one of the first musicians to own a club.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes