Brilliant Corners: Smoke Jazz Club, New York

On an unseasonably warm and muggy May day exactly 25 years and one month after first opening its doors, Smoke Jazz Club on New York City’s Upper West Side hosted a tribute to Benny Golson.

The band was Billy Pierce, Eddie Henderson, Steve Davis, Mike LeDonne, Buster Williams and Carl Allen. The same band, minus Pierce, had played with Golson back in 2008 at Smoke. The club has now spent a quarter-century supporting jazz legends and nurturing newer generations into stardom.

Its history actually goes back a few decades further, when it was called Augie’s Jazz Bar. Smoke co-founder Paul Stache, who moved to New York from Germany in 1992, went there almost immediately from the airport: “I remember Arthur Taylor was in the room. Junior Cook was playing. The place was filled with smoke and Columbia students and the music was unbelievable.” Stache would go on to work there and took over after its 1998 closure.

In the years since, Stache has seen the city and its jazz scene change quite a bit.

“The smoking ban [in 2002] was a big deal,” he recalls. “We thought it was the end of the world at the time. We didn’t think that nightclubs could survive.”

Many of the old guard died, though a jazz capital like New York would always offer vibrant new players to, if not take their place, continue in their footsteps. And plenty of jazz venues closed, some after decades in operation.

Then there was COVID-19. Smoke was the last club to reopen to audiences. With no in-person performances (but one of the most professional of the live-streaming services), the club had an opportunity to expand its footprint into a vacant storefront. The pandemic made the renovation process take far longer than Stache had hoped but the results were worth it. There is more seating, a separate bar and an expanded kitchen, the latter where Molly Sparrow Johnson, Stache’s partner – in business and life – curates a gourmet menu.

Especially fun are seats right alongside the small stage; during the aforementioned Golson tribute, your correspondent could have played Allen’s drumkit without leaning over. The club has no bad sightlines and, with deep red leather banquettes and sporting a gorgeous tin ceiling, recalls the New York of another era.

Smoke sits right outside the border to Harlem, a fertile crescent of jazz, in a neighbourhood now with, surprisingly, a dearth of music venues. This has contributed to Smoke’s cosy environment, one that drummer Joe Farnsworth, a club stalwart, says feels like, “home for so many jazz musicians and jazz lovers around the world. It is where we all gather again like at a family reunion.”

Stache echoes this when he says, “I think it has something to do with where we are located. There’s not a lot of hotels around here and it’s just not a tourist destination. So we’re catering to a New York crowd and a regular crowd, people who are very loyal and come sometimes two, three times a week.”

Those regulars are treated well. In addition to the Golson tribute, other recent artists at the club have been Nicholas Payton, Vijay Iyer, Louis Hayes, Ethan Iverson and Bill Charlap. “There’s a lot of great artists coming through,” says Stache. “And it’s not often that you get to see them in a small intimate venue like this.”

A musician who played at the club as an up-and-comer and is now featured as an acclaimed veteran is saxophonist Wayne Escoffery.

“Paul Stache is a dedicated jazz enthusiast who has earned the friendship and respect of many musicians, including my own,” he says. “His passion is evident throughout the club, which is meticulously designed to provide an unparalleled auditory experience for both performers and listeners.”

It is more than enough work to keep a jazz club thriving in today’s economic and entertainment climates but Stache decided to do more, founding Smoke Sessions Records in 2014, with 78 releases and counting.

“It happened very organically,” says Stache. “I come from an audio engineering background and in the very early days of Smoke, when I was still a bartender, I would set up a simple recording rig behind the bar.” Later he would get more gear and build a dedicated recording booth. “Eventually the recordings became good enough that artists came to me and said can I have my record label contact you? Then at some point it was musicians who came to us and said, you’re making these recordings, rather than putting them out on other labels, why don’t you form your own label?” While many were live from the club, later releases were studio dates by artists Stache signed.

The most recent is Reverence, featuring legendary saxophonist Charles McPherson live at Smoke in November 2023; “I couldn’t be happier with how that turned out,” McPherson says. “The ambience in the club is exactly what a jazz fan wants to experience and it’s great for us musicians too. I’m happy to be part of the Smoke family!”

This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Jazzwise today