Speak easy, but carry a big stick: Jazz in Denver's Prohibition Era
Written by Cara Thursday, 05 February 2009 19:26
Sipping, sitting lazily in good ol’ Charlie Brown’s, tuning in and out as blind Paulie tickles the ivory, I reminisce about days before, and then days before I was born.
Wet behind the ears, I have been known to engage in some risky business, but I think the double duce was an epic year. And in that faithful year I stumbled upon the Speakeasy. Sexually schizophrenic Sharon poured car bombs and Mr. Doe closed the doors at 2 AM, and Dolores and I were locked in and ready for the grand tour. Mind you, these were the days of the infancy of the camera phone, our detection device. But, I digress; let me start from the beginning.
The college days of yore, though slightly extended and pleasantly in the past, brought me upon a Monday night bartending gig on the cusp of Shanty Town Suburban Vista in a little joint, once a great venue for local zeros and touring heroes, converted to a sports bar. Scuba Steve was known for his deep toilet diving and the clientele remained that of the other dives scattered about north Lowell Blvd. I would like to express my gratitude to D, the bar owner at the time (he knows Paulie) thanks for leaving me alone to run the show - I least I learned how to deal with bar fights and smoke bombs. Rightly so, he sold the place and, everyday, I miss his grunting Greek wife’s delectable fare and will never forget what its like to singlehandedly run a bar and grill. Regardless, the assistant manager, a transplant and jolly drunk who networked amongst Denver bar owners, was scoping his next middle bar management prey and he came across the place over in the industrial area off Walnut and High. And so we went.
The first night we showed up after closing our own doors at 12:30 or so and made the journey Eastward, and a bit South. The party was far from over, though very few seats were actually filled with living buttocks. The owner struck me as the lost member of the Kids and the Hall and I now recall he may have suffered from a form of Napoleon Complex due to his stature. Perhaps he compensated by giving away the bar after close…
Tunes crackle and blare through the vintage juke box and smoke wafts through the noisy group on the dance floor to the patient bar-stoolers to the indignant purveyors of pool. Couples stagger and groups hoot out the door by force at 2:10 AM, and the lock slides. And so it begins, and I glance toward the absence of form of new partner in crime; her name was Dolores and she had quick beauty and wit. Every picture we snapped in the place, of my figment Dolores or whatever, was orbed, streaked or trailed in some way, though it was the first real camera phone I had ever seen.
The bar was creepy enough, but Mr. Doe had offered us a tour of the vacant second floor, practically untouched since the days when it was a brothel. The stairs creak and I call Dolores’ name in my buzzed haze, and others shush and giggle. He points to the blood on the wall by the claw foot tub and the ooos and ahhs follow. The tour proceeds to a bedroom of sorts in which the mighty wardrobe resides. I see it and I act, enclosing myself from the inside and I shudder in anticipation for the spirits to take over. And… nothing. Perhaps my approach is a little aggressive, alas, this is how I roll. Well, in the end we walked out at about 4:30 AM with less insight than when we had walked in, and I heard stories about my grand exit, and I, against my better judgment, must share. After the tour and my ultimate failure to summon the spirit beyond my wild imagination, I began to reflect about the real Dolores and her role here and why this place ever existed in the first place. And fade to flashback…
“So, this is the land of the free
That awoke when the U-boats were sinking
And told us to go o'er the sea
And protect her liberty
Now I'm just as true as can be
To my land, but I cannot help from thinking
That I should have stayed in Paree
Where no one dares to interfere with what you're drinking.” Irving Berlin
The words fade in and out and Dolores is looking a bit tipsy, so she teeters up the stairs to bed. She sleeps alone tonight; not as many men visit her these days. Not like the days of Prohibition, when drinking and alcohol related deaths doubled during the booze ban, and Dolores and the brothel were booming. What exactly was it about the forbidden fermented fruits and the like that caused skirt hems rise in more ways than one and people to erupt in a fury of unfounded euphoria at the underground scene? Jazz penetrated and stuck like a vice to American culture, and the alcoholism, though omnipresent, stuck around too.
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you,” F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Jazz fever traveled up the Mississippi and bore in Chicago, twenty years before it bore our president elect, the gangster scene. The self proclaimed soldiers of the era attested that music was essential in their gambling, prostitution and alcohol conquests. Mob jobs were no prob; musicians gained confidence amongst the wealth and allure of the big city life. You sing a different tune when employed by the mob I suppose, and for many jazz musicians, this was their audience. And how does this scene relate to that of the Mile High City? Umm, hard to say, but we had a similar reaction to our own dry whistles, so to speak, and were ironically known as the other windy city in the day. Brothels like Dolores’ flourished then, thus artifacts remain nationwide, such our dear little Speakeasy, if not for perhaps only those faithful days fresh to the millennium. Fossils and scores in the state’s musical/cultural cell wall, so to speak, still exist and directly influence the current musical/cultural brown cloud that blankets the dear city and state. Oh and as history has clearly demonstrated, we Coloradoans have not been known to being opposed to altering our mind states with various substances throughout the centuries, inherently related to any music scene in some sense.
As alcohol is both the problem behind and answer to all of life’s hiccups, it is relatable to nearly any subject of musical culture. We clutch our plastic cups at a gig and feel 10 years younger, desperately inhaling the cigarette smoke and youthful euphoria the musical experience brings to us. The live music experience varies and though there are perfectly wonderful musicians out there, some I prefer to enjoy with the company of a cigarette, blasting down the highway, but there are those who are opposite, and this is where my focus lies. In this analysis/rambling and overall I seek to explore the musical experience, however it’s (w)rapped. Yet there is no doubt, the booze headlines these teams sometimes and that brings me back to my grand exit on that faithful first morning at the Speakeasy.
I remember the shots of Jameson in big rocks tubs, a third or more full on any given shot. I hung with the best of ‘em until I abruptly excused myself, and the jolly joke of my manager jaunted behind. Allegedly, my pace quickened and foolishly without slamming the door in his fog horn leghorn face, he followed me into the powder room only to find the utmost contents of my stomach, primarily Jameson, on the walls, ceiling and floors. Even across the mirror; there had been a brief massacre. I then proceeded to order him out and minutes later it was said that I emerged. The small restroom was inspected by the few bystanders still standing and miraculously it was as clean as it had been pre-massacre. Later I attributed my blacked out courtesy to the concept of preserving the places like this that still exist. And today the bar has been several masculine Mexican names, whether it Juan’s or Miguel’s perhaps Juanita now can get her nightly cred, because Delores, God bless her, is getting old.
