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Spring into Supper Club Season March 9 at Archie’s

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The Northern Lights are always on at Archie's

The Northern Lights are always on at Archie’s

 

It is never too early to celebrate the promise of spring, the start of supper club season.
Pitchers of beer and catchers of Friday night fish fries report for duty.
Archie’s Iowa & Rockwell Tavern, 2600 W. Iowa hosts “The Supper Club Book” party and book signing from 5-8 p.m. Sunday, March 9, after Daylight Savings Time kicks in. I’ll be signing along with the book’s esteemed field photographer Paul Natkin.

The Wisconsin-flavored Archie’s is offering $5 Brandy Old Fashioneds and $3 Leinenkugel’s—straight from the North Woods. Expect a traditional Wisconsin supper club relish tray along with Deborah Pup’s famous open faced Polish sandwiches. Pup’s father is patriarch Archie Boraca, who died in November.
I will be spinning sweet soul music along with cheesy supper club standards like The Irving Fields Trio’s “Bagels and Bongos” and Al Morgan’s “A Lifetime of Memories” a two disc set recorded live at Barthel’s Supper Club in Dolton, Ill. How about that Joe Bryl? (There’s more about Irving in the “Supper Club Music” category of this site.)

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Archie’s has Chicago liquor license No. 177. It has been serving drinks at the corner of Iowa and Rockwell since 1943. Polka legend Lil’ Wally and his band performed in the tavern in the late 1950’s and in 1991 my pals and country hipsters the Sundowners played a gig at at the bar for Archie’s 60th birthday.
Pup will be on hand as well as granddaughter-bar manager Katrina Arthur, the third generation who has worked at the bar.

To heighten your supper club spirit, try a shot of the “Magnificent Zubrowka” behind the bar. This is a chilled shot ($4) of Polish vodka flavored with a blade of bison grass that floats in the bottle.The Zubrowka has a coconut aftertaste and Katrina recommends the vodka be mixed in a cocktail with apple juice, garnished with a wedge of lime and served on the rocks ($6).

Jack Sheldon: Supper Club Hipster Saint

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Jack Sheldon

Some scenes stick with you like a stamp on a picture postcard.

In March, 1989 the Chicago Sun-Times sent me to Los Angeles to cover the Grammy awards. After I filed my story I searched out Jack Sheldon, who was playing trumpet in a smoky North Hollywood supper club called Money Tree. I liked to find unusual and mostly unknown characters for my readers.

Special coins.

At the time Sheldon was best known as the Doc Severinsen/Paul Shaffer-like sidekick on “The Merv Griffin Show,” on which he appeared between 1970 and 1986. He had played on Tom Waits’ 1977 album “Foreign Affairs,” including the noir solo at the end of “Burma Shave.”

Dressed in blue jeans and an untucked black sport shirt, Sheldon sat with trumpet in hand on a stool behind a stand-up bassist, rhythm guitarist and a pianist at the Money Tree. His material was cut for the cocktail crowd, and yes there were supper clubby folks like Red and Susie from Portage, Wis., who were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. Sheldon sang a scat-drenched “Lover, Come Back to Me” for them. The tones from his horn were soft, yet declared.

The sound of a good marriage.

A couple of weeks ago after an appearance for my supper club book I stopped at Strictly Discs in Madison, Wis.

For $10 I picked up a vinyl copy of Sheldon’s “Playin’ It Straight” which featured Johnny Carson “Tonight Show” band members Tommy Newsom (alto and flute),  Ed Shaughnessy (drums) and Joel DeBartolo (electric bass, although he plays acoustic on the 1981 Sheldon album.) Wasn’t the conversation, warmth and chatter of late night television in the 1970s just an extension of a heartland supper club?

While listening to “Playin’ It Straight” I went back to the cool shade of that night at the Money Tree.

Sheldon will turn 82 on Nov. 30.

The good old Internet had reported his death from complications of a stroke in June, 2011. The story was picked up by Jazz Times, which apologized and said he was living in Los Angeles.

He has done a lot since we talked in 1989.

Jack Sheldon, 2011

Sheldon  was the subject of an award winning 2008 documentary “Trying To Get Good: the Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon” (which features interviews with Billy Crystal, Clint Eastwood, Merv Griffin and others) and in 1996 provided voices on “The Simpsons.”

In 2000 and 2001 he did voices for the animated “Family Guy” television series. He was the train engineer on the “Schoolhouse Rock!” grammar song “Conjunction Junction” and later on “Family Guy” parodied himself on a sex-education skit by singing “Vagina Junction.”

Sheldon has five children and has lost two of them: daughter Julie died in a 1979 airplane crash and son Kevin died of cancer in 2003.

I was interested in seeing Sheldon in 1989 because I knew he had worked the Playboy Club circuit with Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce and during the mid-1950s he appeared at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago.

Hugh Hefner has told me the Playboy Club was a supper club and I would consider Mister Kelly’s an urban supper club. At Mister Kelly’s Sheldon played the comic foil between sets by singer Julie London and pianist Bobby “Route 66” Troup at Mister Kelly’s, now the site of Gibson’s steak house.

I love Route 66 as much as I love supper clubs.

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London always would stop in the middle of her act and ask Sheldon for a cigarette. He’d grab a cigarette for himself, get a second cigarette for London and stick both of them in his mouth. After he lit them, London would say how Sheldon looked like a walrus.

It was that oddball style of understated humor that got Sheldon his Griffin gig.

Sheldon knew little of the 1989 Grammy festivities when I talked to him between sets.

He did know that his mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Sheldon said Gillespie and singer Sarah Vaughan  occasionally stopped by the Money Tree to catch his act.

“I was working at a candy store at the Central Market in downtown Los Angeles when I met Dizzy,” Sheldon recalled.  “It was 1947. I was 14 years old. I had just come to town from Jacksonville, Fla. and Dizzy sounded strange to me. He hit those funny notes. I was used to (the more conventional styles of) Roy Eldridge and Bunny Berigan.

“Then I saw Dizzy’s Things to Come Big Band at the Million Dollar Theater. It was a brand-new sound. My whole life changed. He wore a beret and dark glasses and had a goatee. I did all that stuff. I carried my horn in a bag.

“I wanted to be hip at all costs.”

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Sheldon made some timely moves. He grew up with “cool-school” trumpet player Chet Baker, who blew horn in a light and lyrical style. Baker died in 1988 after falling from a hotel window in Amsterdam.

“We had a little rhythm section and we’d drive around Los Angeles in a big Pierce-Arrow hearse,” Sheldon said. “We bought that so we could fit the bass in it. Every time we’d go out at night to play somewhere, the cops would stop and search us. It became a ritual. We looked so suspicious.”

Sheldon went on to play with the small big bands of the 1950s. He gigged with Stan Kenton in 1958 and Benny Goodman in 1959. “With Stan, there would be five horns playing as loud and as high as we could play,” he said. “He’d be standing out there going, `More, more,’ and guys would be passing out.

“I always said Stan Kenton held the record of sidemen suicides. (Trombonist) Frank Rosolino shot himself. Bud Brisbo shot himself. (Singer and former Mrs. Kenton) Ann Richards shot herself. Art Pepper kept shooting himself over and over again. It’s kind of a little act.”

Sheldon gave a gentle tweak, as we call it today. A  bold jaw offset his squinty eyes and he had a dab of grease in his jet-black hair.

Sheldon credited the mid-’50s comedy at Mister Kelly’s for opening the door to his television career. Sheldon enjoyed bit parts on “I Spy,”  and “The Edie Adams Show.” In 1966, he starred in his own television program, “Run Buddy Run,” a spoof of “The Fugitive.”

In 1989 he was also playing Sunday night gigs with  Ross Tompkins, the “Tonight Show” piano player,  at a Los Angeles club.

I asked him what sparked the sudden activity.

“A lot of drinking got in the way of my playing,” he answered in soft tones.  “When I stopped drinking in 1985, it helped a lot. I always worked when I drank and I never drank when I worked. Merv put up with a lot of my stuff – like drunks and hangovers. One time, I was drunk in Las Vegas and (singer) Leo Sayer was sitting on a couch. I fell off the stage and knocked him off the couch. He wasn’t going to do the show. But Merv was supportive of me.

“I think I drank to get rid of feelings. I’d start drinking and stop feeling things. I had to give it up, go through the feelings and learn how to live sober. It’s not easy, but it’s better than living drunk. I go to (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings each day. The fog is really just starting to lift.”

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In 1988 Sheldon began studying trumpet again under former MGM first trumpeter and symphony instrumentalist Uan Rasey. “I’m slowly getting better,” he said. “Wynton Marsalis really inspired me to do both great jazz and symphonic stuff.  I wanted to play better and more efficiently. I got a certain spark that I can do good. But I want to do more.”

Sheldon was always an evolving jazz musician who, without compromising his pacing, played with adventure. His searing tones have an authenticity and sense of sincerity, and that’s most certainly a supper club sound.

A Toast to a new Old Fashioned

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There is a new twist to the Old Fashioned.

 
You can take it with you.
Like beer. Cheese
Or any other iconic components of Wisconsin food culture.

 
The Brandy Old Fashioned is a staple of the Wisconsin Supper Club landscape.  Timothy Pappin and his nephew Ryan Mijal have now rolled out the barrel with “Arty’s,”  an Old Fashioned in a bottle.

 

They came up with the zany motto “It’s not a party without Arty’s!” although there is no real Arty.
The imagery works.

 
I had my first Arty’s over the summer at a Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Midwest League baseball game outside of Appleton. I pictured an old frosty dude named Arty making the concoction in the basement of his Wisconsin home. The name Arty’s comes from the “R” in Ryan’s name and the “T” in Tim’s name.

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“You don’t know any Arty’s today but I knew there was enough Wisconsin Old Fashioned drinkers to make the drink convenient,” Pappin said in a late summer interview. “Instead of having to muddle, slice, carry fruit, having bitters and all that. If somebody was going to a Packer tail gate or camping, they could grab a six pack of Old Fashioneds. It’s an alternative to flavored and regular beers.”

 

Arty’s markets three flavors: Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet, Whiskey Old Fashioned Sour, and Whiskey Old Fashioned Sweet.

 
Pappin, 49, grew up in the sweet supper club environment

 
During the mid-1970s his parents Richard and Margaret Pappin owned the Embers Supper Club in downtown Clintonville, Wis.

 

“My Dad had a regular job as materials manager for Seagrave Fire Truck,” Pappin said. “They had the supper club on the side. So Friday nights after work he would bartend and my Mom would hostess. I would ride my bike there, go behind the bar and wash glasses and eat all the cherries.

 
“This was when people smoked and it was just all the supper club feel. My Dad wore turtlenecks and sport coats. The fire truck corporation was a large employer for the town and a colorful bunch of workers would frequent the supper club. I was 12 years old and I’d watch everyone  getting happy and my Mother would always order a Brandy Old Fashioned. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s interesting,’.”

 

Pa Pappin at his supper club (Courtesy of Tim Pappin)

Pa Pappin at his supper club (Courtesy of Tim Pappin)

 

Everyone has a thought on why the Old Fashioned is the Wisconsin state cocktail.
Here is Pappin’s theory:
“It had to do with the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Korbel Brandy came there. People from Wisconsin brought that brandy back and created that cocktail. It hooked itself into Wisconsin lifestyle. I don’t know if it has anything to do with German heritage. It is very similar to the Mint Julep in Kentucky, the Hurricane in New Orleans or Margaritas in the Southwest. But once anybody drinks an Old Fashioned, they go ‘This is delicious’.”
This is what happened in the summer of 2010 when Pappin and Mijal were hanging out at the family’s lake property about 45 miles Northwest of Appleton, Wis.

“We would spend our free time there on the lake,” he said. “Or hanging around the taverns around the lake. In 2010  I was with my nephew, who was then in his mid-twenties.  I didn’t feel like having a beer that evening so I ordered a Brandy Old Fashioned. He had never had one before.”
Gave it a shot, so to speak.
He loved it. “So we made an evening out of it,” he said. “It was a weekend and came out into the living room of the cottage the next day. We were getting the cobwebs out and I looked at him and said, ‘Let me grab another Old Fashioned out of the refrigerator.’ That was the a-ha moment, like ‘This would be something kind of simple’.” We figured somebody had to be doing this. This is Wisconsin.”

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The young men recreated that old fashioned night a couple weeks later that summer.

“We were on a pontoon boat and elbowed each other and said, ‘What a great place for a quick Old Fashioned.’ It evolved into ‘This is making too much sense’.”
Research was done and it was found no one was making a ready to drink Old Fashioned.
“There are plenty of mixes out there,” Pappin explained. “My formative years were in Wisconsin and I moved out of the state when I was 14.” He has since lived in 12 different states and cities like Kansas City, Mo. and Los Angeles.
“I never heard anybody order an Old Fashioned,” he said. “Or if I tried to in later years, you’d get a real nasty Manhattan.”

At the age of 30 Pappin opened a sports bar and grill in Tucson, Az. He recalled, “I thought I’d bring a little bit of Wisconsin to Arizona. So I had brats and I had the Old Fashioned. Down there you would get  people from Wisconsin and other people would ask about them. I got a following in that bar and I knew there was something unique. First it’s a delicious drink if you drink cocktails. I’m a beer guy, but I knew there was this tradition of the Old Fashioned from people who wintered into Arizona.”
Pappin grasped the old fashioned fascination for  marketing purposes

He said, “The idea was to put it in a glass bottle and our motto is ‘Tip Your Bottle Once or Twice, Always Better Over Ice,’ but one of the biggest surprises is that people put them in their cooler and would drink them straight out of the bottle. I never even thought about that. I probably see as many people drinking them straight out of the bottle as I do over a cup of ice.”
Pappin has been astonished by the response.

Lambeau Field tailgating with Arty's, Sept. 2013 (Courtesy of Arty's)

Lambeau Field tailgating with Arty’s, Sept. 2013 (Courtesy of Arty’s)

“We hodge-podged this process together because I wasn’t sure if it would be accepted,” he explained. “With the tradition, ‘You can’t put an Old Fashioned in a bottle, in Wisconsin it has to be muddled. And there’s still some people who say that.”

Arty’s strongest market is the Appleton-Green Bay area, although it is spreading out through Wisconsin.

The Chicago area may be coming.

“We’ve all seen malt beverages, but nothing has ever been made that is liquor based like this for an Old Fashioned in Wisconsin,” said Andy Kriz, Non-alcohol and liquor brand manager for Lee Beverage, which distributes Arty’s. “It’s important to be the first one of a new idea or concept in the market. Nobody remembers who came in second.”

Arty’s retails at $8.99 for a six pack of 7-0unce bottles.

Pappin said, “Retailers didn’t know where to put us. Some of them have us in the beer aisle. Some have us in the liquor aisle. Some have us in the ready-to-drink aisle. Because there’s nothing else out there like it.”

Kriz was sold on the quality. “It is spot on for flavor,” he said. “It is real whiskey and brandy. Its real bitters. And real 7-up and Squirt. And carbonated in a seven ounce bottle.”

It took time to put Arty’s in motion.

Pappin visited a couple of micro distilleries. They were supportive but they didn’t have the equipment to bust out a cocktail.

“They were all equipped to do their vodka or whiskey in 750 millliiters –not in a ready to drink 7 ounce bottle,” he said. ” I found a couple Midwest bottling operations but you had to have a half a million bottle run or $100,000 order, but we were nowhere near that. We were just the little guy starting out.
“So I thought, ‘Heck with it, let’s do it ourselves.”
The two-man Arty’s team rented the gutted Last Chance Cafe in Clove Leaf Lakes, Wis. for six months .

“I needed an address just to start all the legalities to get into the distilled spirits industry,” Pappiin said. “There was no toilet, no running water in there. By April 2012, we got all our approvals.”

Pappin and Mijal spent 2010-12 experimenting with formulas  and recipes, before arriving at a genuine Wisconsin Old Fashioned with “a minor secret,” according to Pappin. “It came after six months of three Old Fashioneds a night,” he said. “Because you can’t do more than that because they all start tasting good.”

 

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Friends and neighbors were the happy test group.

Kriz said, “It is more than popular. We will do over 10,000 cases of the item this year, just set out of an office in Oshkosh and another one in the western part of the state near Eau Claire. It is one thing to get the product out of the shelf for people to try it. The proof is the re-buys and brand loyalty. If the liquor wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be seeing all the re-buys.”
Pappin said one of the first product names was The Old Fashioned Old Fashioned.

But that doesn’t do justice to the new wave of heartland drinking.

Hot Times at the Fire House Supper Club

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Hostesses who were matches at the Fire House

Hostesses who were matches at the Fire House

 

 

Now, this had to be a smokin’ supper club.

The Ruth Culver Community Library, 540 Water St. in Prairie du Sac, Wi. is in the former location of the Fire House Supper Club. Want more bang for your bite?
The Blue Spoon Cafe’, next door to the library at 550 Water St. in downtown Prairie du Sac is the only restaurant created and owned by the Culver’s franchise that isn’t a Culver’s. The soup-sandwich-wine cafe overlooks the Wisconsin River.
I will be talking about the Supper Club Book and showing book photos at 6 p.m. Oct. 18 at the Culver library. Joining me will be Rex and Bette Boss, the former owners of the Fire House Supper Club. Cheese spread and crackers, veggies and dip will be served with iced tea and lemonade.
Admission is free.

BYOB (Butter)

 

Prairie du Sac is about 30 miles northwest of Madison, off the Highway 60 on 90/94 towards the Dells.
For my Madison friends, expect a post-talk-talk at Genna’s, 105 W. Main St. near the state capitol building.
I’m sure I will soon know more about the Fire House Supper Club, but I did find a commemorative Facebook page that also placed the Fire House down the road in Janesville between 1972-75. The pictures reminded me of the Gaslight clubs in Chicago.

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Apparently, there was also live music, a staple of 1970s supper clubs: dining music from The John K. Duo.
Should be a fun getaway trip.
Ruth and George Culver opened the first Culver’s Frozen Custard and Butter Burgers in July, 1984 on U.S. Highway 12 in Sauk City, Wis. Today there are 475 Culver restaurants across the United States.

But there were only one–or two–Fire House Supper Clubs.





 

 

Detroit’s Downtown Supper Club

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I came into Detroit a night before my book signing at Cliff Bell’s because I like the city.
Things seem so rock bottom, I feel a new slate of creative expression emerging–even though the vapor rising from the grates along Woodward Avenue still gives Detroit an apocalyptic  feel.

You can’t go far in downtown Detroit without someone mentioning the city’s bankruptcy. It’s the same way everyone in Chicago harps about the Bears.
After catching a Tigers game I was sitting at a bar next to the Fox Theater.
A stranger looked me in the eye and asked, “Is this city worth saving?”
I’ve been from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Guatemalan fishing village of La Barrona (pop. 900) where I spent a New Year’s Eve on a mattress on a dirt floor. Adriana and I still question if we saw a black rat scurry across the floor to bring in the new year.
But no one has asked me, “Is this city worth saving?” on any visit.
I could not answer that question objectively about Detroit.
“Of course,” I said over a Blue Moon at the Detroit bar. I elaborated that maybe Detroit should no longer think of itself as a major metropolitan area but as a boutique urban destination like Baltimore (pop. 619,000).

Cliff Bell at work

Cliff Bell at work

But what do I know?
I do not know what it is like to live day to day in Detroit.
“It’s daunting,” said Paul Howard, one of the founding partners who brought Cliff Bell’s back to life in downtown Detroit. I had told him about my previous evening’s encounter. He said,  “It’s tough getting things done daily.”
Howard, 39, is a Detroit native.

Book party appetizers, fresh baked flatbread with tomato, basil and mozzarella

Book party appetizers, fresh baked flatbread with tomato, basil and mozzarella

I loved  Cliff Bell’s history and wanted to veer off the predictable rural supper club path to include them in my book.

Howard and I had a couple long talks while I was researching the book. I closed the Cliff Bell’s chapter with his remark about Detroit that still gives me chills. He reflected, “Maybe a good analogy would be the people who held out in the Dust Bowl. They had the same sense of pride and would be happy to tell you about their lives.
“I guess I’m one of them.”
You find that in Detroit.
I go to Detroit a couple times a year and I’ve consistently noticed the majority of people make an extra effort to talk to you, give you directions or share a story. And there is no argument that Detroit’s Eastern Market is more exciting and cross cultural than any Farmer’s Market in Chicago. After all, I found Mountain Dew jelly at the the Eastern Market.
The book signing turnout at Cliff Bell’s was unlike any other of the half-dozen appearances I did this summer. There weren’t many older supper club regulars.
Cliff Bell’s has been reinvented into an upscale urban destination. They are using Chicago’s iconic Green Mill night club  as a dark, visual template for live music. On a Thursday evening I saw  Tigers fans (Cliff Bell’s is just a couple blocks from the balllpark) and Wayne State students. Alissa Jenkins is studying journalism at Wayne State. Her friend Steve Duttine is a photographer from England who was documenting Detroit.

We talked a lot about the presumed deaths of Detroit and print journalism.

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Thanks to my friend Susan Whitall for this comprehensive write- up in the Detroit News.

Find her 2011 book “Fever: Little Willie John, A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul (Titan Books). The former Creem editor does justice to the precursor to James Brown and Stevie Wonder.

Grits ain’t groceries.


So when you go travel to Detroit, and please do, also find a room at the Inn on Ferry Street.
Ironically, the first time I stayed at Inn on Ferry was when I went to see Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” tour last spring in suburban Auburn Hills. The Inn on Ferry is actually four restored Victorian homes and two carriage houses just north of downtown Detroit. Both times I have stayed at Inn on Ferry I was in The Scott House, built in 1886 by Detroit architect John Scott. Locally roasted Great Lakes coffee is served 24/7, which is always a plus for me.
The Inn was developed by Midtown Detroit, a non-profit planning and economic development agency. The group partnered with the Detroit Institute of the Arts (DIA), which owned the property and had been using some of the homes for storage. The Inn opened about a week after 9/11. All the buildings comprising the Inn are on the local, state and the National Register of Historic Places.
After the Tigers game and the Blue Moon beer I stopped for a sandwich at the Magic Stick on Woodward. I had called the Inn on Ferry for a briefing on where to turn. It was just before midnight when I rolled into The Inn. A parking attendant was waiting for me on the driveway. I was not a stranger in this struggling town.
Sometimes the wounded heart is the most passionate heart.

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The Perfect Polynesian Supper Club

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kahiki

 

My lure for the supper club was cast in a sea of wonder at the Kahiki in Columbus, Ohio.

The Kahiki was one of the most remarkable restaurants I have seen.

I was a 7-year-old living in Columbus the first time I visited the Kahiki in 1962. Just like a Northwoods supper club it was a larger than life destination.

Cascading indoor waterfalls were framed by big tiki gods, “tropical” rain fell every half hour and war chants and steel drum rhythms spun through intimate bamboo dining huts. More than 1,000 tropical fish were featured in an aquarium along the huge east wall.

Just like many Northwoods supper clubs, the ambiance overshadowed the food. The Columbus Dispatch once wrote that the Kahiki “is one of the few restaurants in Columbus in which food can injure you.”

My father was a purchasing agent who had been transferred from Chicago to Columbus by Swift & Company. Founder Gustavus Swift began in Chicago’s Union Stockyards–and Swift was a purveyor to Midwest supper clubs.

Kahiki Friday night fish fry? Mahi-mahi almodine.
Saturday night prime rum! [Click on Supper Club recipes for the exclusive Kahiki Polynesian Spell drink recipe.]
Like a Midwest supper club, the Kahiki was an accessible escape into another world.

Like a Midwest supper club of the 1960s, the Kahiki had a live trio: The Beachcomber Trio mixed “Beyond the Reef” with Andre Previn’s “Like Young.” The Beachcomber Trio were led by woodwinds-pianist  Marcel “Marsh” Padilla, who during World War II was lead saxophonist behind the bands of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. I have a live album they cut in 1965 and it is easy to hear the timeless chill backdrop of clinking cocktail glasses and waterfalls.

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The Kahiki was built in 1961 and designed like a New Guinean war canoe. The roof peaked at 60 feet at the front of it’s A-frame. It was the nation’s first free-standing Polynesian restaurant. I recall talking to Chicago restauranteur Rich Melman about the Kahiki (which means “Sail to Tahiti”) and we concluded it would be cost prohibitive to build a detailed 20,000 square-foot restaurant like this today.

The centerpiece of the main dining hall was an 80-feet tall tiki goddess with bright red eyes and a fireplace for a mouth.

Who wouldn’t be impressed?


The Kahiki was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in in 1997. The federal government cited the Kahiki’s “rich Polynesian culture, architectural design and influence on national and local restaurant history.”

The honor didn’t stop the Kahiki from being torn down in 2000 to make way for a Walgreen’s. More than 500 Kahiki fans from as far away as London, Melbourne and San Francisco flew to Columbus for a farewell party hosted by Otto von Stroheim of “Tiki News.” I flew out with a dear Chicago editor friend who really enjoyed the make-your-own-won-ton-bar.

Meeting fun friends at Kahiki farewell party, 2000

Meeting fun friends at Kahiki farewell party, 2000

A few weeks ago I was going through my father’s archives in the basement of the west suburban Chicago home we moved to in 1966 after we left Columbus.
I saw an ad for the Kahiki in one of those weekly entertainment magazines you find in airports and hotel rooms.
I couldn’t believe my eyes:
“KAHIKI SUPPER CLUB,” just 10 minutes from downtown Columbus. (What made the Kahiki an even stranger destination is that the Polynesian supper club was in Bexley, the Jewish neighborhood where Chicago newspaperman Bob Greene grew up.)

The small print of the Kahiki Supper Club was a collision of cuisine: “Kahiki is the world’s most elaborate Polynesian Supper Club. You’ll enjoy the ultimate in Polynesian cuisine, or the finest steaks, chops and seafood, while viewing an undersea panorama of rare tropical fish…”

Note the quick transition out of Polynesian food in a meat and potatoes place like central Ohio.

 

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But sense of place is the key component which connects the Kahiki Supper Club with Wally’s House of Embers (a Kahiki cousin in terms of crazy decor), Smoky’s Club in Madison or any others in my book.
I will never forget the Kahiki.
Life was larger, yet a bit more accessible.
Earlier this summer John Tierney wrote a fascinating New York Times piece about nostalgia as a positive emotion. University of Southampton (England) psychologist Constantine Sedikides had a conversation with a colleague, who was a clinical psychologist homesick for Chapel Hill, N.C. The North Carolinian assumed he was depressed because he was “living in the past.”
Sedikides countered, “Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It made me feel good about myself and my relationships. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to go forward.” In the 14 years since that conversation Sedikides’ research on nostalgia has concluded in part that nostalgia can make people more generous to strangers and more tolerant to outsiders.
This is true of the warm feeling of a supper club. I hope to think I absorbed a bit of that as a kid in Columbus. Whether it replicates a large Polynesian canoe in Ohio or offers a majestic lake view in Wisconsin the American supper club creates an expansive canvas for vivid memories–even after the physical realm has gone away.

 

Supper Clubs in your home

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Can you duplicate the supper club experience at home?

The question was recently posed to me by Tribune Company food writer Bill Daley. At first I thought it was a doubtful proposition since supper clubs are so much about destination.

But then I looked at my home tiki bar.

And how the older I get the earlier I have supper.

I reflected on how the best supper club recipes were, in fact, created at home and popularized in family owned supper clubs.

I walked into my kitchen and saw the very cool Pflatzgraff Lazy Susan I recently picked up for $15.75 at the Old Towne Antique Mall in Kewaunee, Wis. en route to a book event at the Sister Bay Bowl in Door County.

Platzgraaff has been making ceramic house wares for 200 years out of York County, Pa..

The Lazy Susan was a staple of the 1960s Midwest supper club scene and my research concluded it is fading away.

But real Lazy Susan freaks should head to Bo Diddley’s hometown of McComb, Ms. and check out the Dinner Bell. You can eat outstanding fried chicken while sitting around a huge Lazy Susan. This place has always been a must stop when I am driving from Chicago to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Here is Bill Daley’ report which appeared in the Baltimore Sun as well as the Chicago Tribune.

So now I think I can pull this off.

I have the home-made recipes (see the recipe category of this website.)

I have several vintage supper club albums for soft background music  (see Supper Club Music)

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I already have dim lights because of my tiki bar escapism. Maybe I’ll go buy a Schlitz beer neon sign,

And make me a Brandy Old Fashioned.

 

 

 

 

 

Express Milwaukee; Hob Knobbin’ Shout Out

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August 14, 2013

Someone should open a supper club called The Blue Dahlia.

Good Raymond Chandler inspired drinks would be served.

Thanks to David Luhrssen for this fine write up in Express Milwaukee.

Wanted to find a Milwaukee supper club, closest I got was the Five O’Clock, 2416 W. State. St. but concluded that the former supper club is now  too much of a steak house.

 

 

Cathy Wurzer’s Tales of the Road from Minnesota

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August 10, 2013

There is no point in writing if you are not going to be honest.

And to be honest, the Aug. 1 signing at Jax Cafe  in Minneapolis was not the best one we have had this summer.

But it was such a treat to sign books with Cozy Cossette ,the beautiful match maker who is featured in my book’s chapter on Jax. Cozy manually typesets matchbooks for supper club guests from her office in the club’s coat room.

It was also a treat to hang out with my friend Cathy Wurzer, host of  “Morning Edition” on Minnesota Public Radio. She  filed this Tales of the Road  post with rich supper club memories from Minnesota. Thank you to Cathy and everyone else who showed up.

I will return to the cities, maybe for a drink at Nye’s.

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The Oldest Supper Club Piano Player in America

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NEW YORK, N.Y..—Irving Fields touches the soul when he plays the piano at Nino’s Tuscany, 117 W. 58th St, a block from Central Park.

It was a mellow Thursday night in late July, 2012 and Fields was dealing out songs like “Sentimental Journey” and “As Time Goes By.”

This was appropriate stuff.

At age 96, Fields was the oldest piano player in New York.
“I’m the oldest piano player anywhere,” he crowed during a break a month before his 97th  birthday.

He turns 98 years old on Aug. 4, 2013.

You might say he plays in the keys of black and Betty White.

Fields is regarded as the father of “The Supper Club Trio” sound in New York City. “A traditional trio was violin, guitar and a piano,” he said. “I pioneered a new supper club trio sound of drums, piano and bass. Because you could play dance music that way. We didn’t play loud.

“I played the El Morocco Supper Club (154 E. 54th St., filled with blue zebra stripes). The Latin Quarter was a nightclub. Supper clubs were more exclusive and more action on the food. Nightclubs were more action on the entertainment. When I was at the Mermaid Room of the Park Sheraton Hotel (1950 to 1968) it was a piano bar, but we had 250 people around the bar. My trio was on a pedestal that turned around slowly so people could see every angle of the piano. I was broadcast on coast to coast radio three times a week on CBS Mutual. From there I went to Las Vegas and played the Sands, the Thunderbird, and the Flamingo.

“I played the Copacabana, I would call that a nightclub because they had tremendous entertainment. But they had great food. At midnight they would have Chinese food because people got hungry from drinking so much. Jilly’s was a combination of a supper club and a hang out. Sinatra went there all the time.”

Jilly’s ran from 1952 until the mid-1970s at 256 W. 52nd at Eighth Avenue. The club was named after the late Jilly Rizzo, who was Sinatra’s best friend and body guard. It was a narrow 20-seat saloon and supper club that also attracted Johnny Carson, Quincy Jones, the Kennedy clan and Marilyn Monroe.
Those are just desserts.

A dinner table anchored with a “Reserved for Sinatra” sign defined the rear of the restaurant. The chairman enjoyed the Chinese cuisine of Chef Howie Yee. He cooked out of a wok in the tavern’s basement and Sinatra always ordered chow mein.

Fields looked around the intimate Nino’s and said, “I would call this an elegant supper club, yes I would. But it is open for lunch. I could never understand why they called them supper clubs. If you have supper, what about dinner? Why don’t you call it a dinner club?

“Maybe supper is a nice name.”

Nino’s is a popular steakhouse around Central Park. Fields performed on a Yamaha piano in front of a framed painting of a cow. Slabs of steaks were in the front window. Fields has always had good luck with food. In 1959 he sold more than 2 million copies of “Bagels & Bongos,” which he recorded with his trio for Decca Records. So, in 1960 he recorded “More Bagels & Bongos” and later the Latin-tinged “Bikinis and Bongos.” Fields even set “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoren” to a Mambo beat.

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His muse was the Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat (1900-1990).  “He came to her me and he starts talking to me in Spanish,” Fields recalled. “ I say, ‘I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish.’ So he says, ‘You are not Cuban? You are not Puerto Rican? You play like a Cuban. He thought I was Cuban because I played authentic Latin music. I was in Havana in 1946 and went crazy about Latin music. I was on a cruise ship. I was on RCA Victor. I recorded ‘Miami Beach Rhumba’ which Woody Allen has in many movies. Then I wrote ‘Managua Nicaragua.’ Guy Lombardo and Freddy Martin had number one hits with “Managua Nicaragua,” which Fields wrote from the appetizing riff of the Cuban classic “The Peanut Vendor,” popularized in 1947 by Stan Kenton.

Fields said he knows thousands of songs and has recorded more than 80 albums. His fans included Barbara Walters, Regis Philbin and Donald Trump. The big-haired real estate mogul delivered a blurb for Fields’ 2012 memoir “The Melody of My Life” ($24.98; www.irvingfields.net.) The Donald wrote in part, “Irving has said that work is a blessing, especially when you like your work. He loves his work……”

“Donald is my friend,” Fields said with New York pride. “He sends me letters. He says I’m his favorite piano player. Tony Bennett comes in. He goes straight to the back and has dinner without any fanfare. I play all his songs. The physical set up of this place is not like doing a show. When I do a show or concert my act is like Victor Borge. I sing, I tell jokes. Here I don’t sing. Who is going to hear it? Most people can’t see me. This is an intimate place. I play requests. This place calls for piano music. My favorite song is not my favorite request. My favorite song is ‘The Pearl Fishers.’ I make the piano sound like a mandolin. I trill it. You think you are in Italy. The Pearl Fishers’ is an aria from the (Georges Bizet) opera.”

Fields was born in New York City. His father, Max, was a carpenter who moved the family to Coney Island when Fields was young.

Fields met his current wife Ruth in 1979 when he was playing at the Granit Hotel in New Hampshire.

“We had 1,500 people coming every weekend,” he said, “The average age of the people were deceased. I was looking for a nice young girl. In comes these two gorgeous blonds,” and he nodded to Ruth, who was sitting across the supper table. “She and her friend Elaine.”

Ruth said, “I was living in the Brooklyn area. I didn’t know who he was.” After Fields’ set ended around midnight he sat down with Ruth and they shared  jokes. “Every time I told a joke she topped me with a better joke,” he said with a smile. “We were telling jokes until four in the morning. It was a pleasure being with this girl.”

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Irving & Ruth, Summer of 2012

 

 

Ruth returned to hear Fields the next night. The Brooklyn native said, “I didn’t know who he was frankly, so I didn’t have time to be impressed. But he was very interesting.” Fields was 63 years old when he met Ruth. Time gets shorter as life gets longer. Do you know that song?

Fields immediately asked her on a 80-day cruise ship gig. She took a pass saying she needed some time. But Ruth offered to house sit the Central Park South apartment Fields has lived in since 1964. “I missed her like mad,” he said. The couple was married on June 6, 1982.

 

Perhaps the best way to sign off on this ode to the Big Apple supper club scene is with another story about food. Ruth said, “Tell him about the cheesecake.” Fields said, “What?” Raising her voice a bit Ruth repeated, “The cheesecake!”

Fields complied and said, “I’m riding my bicycle along the Hudson River. I like to see the ships along the water. That morning I had a delicious strawberry cheesecake with my breakfast at Lindy’s (the iconic deli at 825 7th Ave. at 53rd St.) I thought about that cake all morning while I was on the bicycle. There were speed bumps in the sidewalk. They went ‘bumpety bump, bumpety bump’. I thought, ‘Gee, that’s a nice rhythm.’ So I started writing a melody in my mind with that rhythm. I put cheesecake, cheesecake into the words.”

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A Grade A cut of supper club music

 

Fields liked the tune so much he recorded a demo. Just as the demo session wound down a black drummer told Fields he did a mean impression of legendary jazz trumpet player-vocalist Louis Armstrong. The New Orleans-born Armstrong also was a food devotee, who often signed his letters, “Red beans and nicely yours.”

“The drummer started singing ‘Cheesecake, cheesecake’,” Fields recalled. “So I go to Joe Glazer, who was Louis Armstrong’s manager. I told him I had a hell of a song for him. He was a rough guy. But then he heard it, ‘Cheesecake, cheesecake’ and asked if I stole Louis Armstrong from him.”

A week later, Armstrong himself recorded “Cheesecake.” It debuted on his 1966 album “Louis” that delivered Armstrong’s crossover hit “Mame.”

The ride has been smooth for Irving Fields, a stylish gentleman who understands that supper is always a nice name.

Hot times at Smoky’s Club

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Johnny Widdicombe on bass, David Hanson on keyboards (Photo by Tom Schmock)

I was impressed Eleanor Peterson of WUWM (89.7, NPR) Lake Effect in Milwaukee would drive from Milwaukee to conduct an interview during my June 19 book signing at Smoky’s Club in Madison.

But then a supper club is all about destination.

Here is her interview. I apologize for being distracted by the people dancing to The Michael Hanson Trio.

And it was only 6 p.m. on a Wednesday.

The trio was perfect for a supper club setting. The bass-keyboards-drums combo personalized “You Are My Sunshine” with supper club lyrics and dedicated “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” to Janet Schmock, the late bride of founder Smoky Schmock. The elegant Mrs. Schmock was holding court at a table across from the band.

And then lots of folks got up to dance to Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” which was steered by the nimble bass playing of Widdicombe, who studied double bass with Rufus Reid and the great Charles “Truck” Parham. Parham, who died in 2002, was a Roy Eldridge sideman and played football with the Chicago Negro All-Stars.

Barb Schmock dances with Wisconsin family friends.

Barb Schmock dances with Wisconsin family friends.

Conversation flows like Old Fashioneds at a good supper club and Smoky’s is no exception.

I learned that Peterson is working on a thesis about 1940s and 1950s radio shows in Minnesota that feature western/folk/country music. Her grandfather had his own radio show in southeastern Minnesota during that time, so she is using his show as a vehicle to explore other shows around the state. Maybe you can help her out.

Here is Eleanor’s text:

It’s a Friday night – or it will be in a few hours – and you’re looking for a place to eat. Some place that you want to escape to, to have a nice, filling meal, a refreshing drink or two, and conversation. Fast food or a lively chain restaurant just doesn’t sound like it will hit the spot.

The Wisconsin solution might be a supper club.

Supper clubs, known for their Friday night Fish Frys, Saturday night Steak Dinners, full bar, linen napkins, and dim lighting, are a temporary escape into the past. Often there is entertainment of some sort, making a meal into an all-night affair. Certainly, there is no room for dine-and-dash.

Chicago Sun-Times writer Dave Hoekstra ate at these places while traveling around Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Michigan, looking for the next story and his next meal. He felt it was time to write about these Midwest treasures in his newest book The Supper Club Book.

Supper clubs began in Beverly Hills by Milwaukee native Lawrence Frank in the 1930s, but they flourished in the Midwest. When people went to supper clubs, it was not a “dine and dash;” it was an all-night affair. The night would be filled with cocktails, a steak dinner, entertainment, and more drinks to round out the night. However, with the development of smoking and drinking laws, the all-night tradition has adjusted accordingly.

According to Hoekstra, supper clubs must have certain characteristics to be a traditional supper club: a dark, eclectic setting, Fish Fry Fridays, Steak Dinner Saturdays, linen napkins, and relish trays. Originally, the men were expected to wear ties and the women were expected to wear heels. However, supper clubs are not stagnant; they are evolving in order to stay around.

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Eleanor Peterson and her media-shy subject. (Photo by Jon Sall)

Hoekstra says supper clubs are more than about the food: it is about the ability to escape for a little bit, the atmosphere, and the sense of community.

“It underscores a sense of community,” Hoekstra says. “The one theme about all these things is a sense of place and how important a sense of place really is. A sense of belonging, you see that in a lot of these places.”

You’ll often see the same families going to a particular supper club for decades. Tom Schmock, second-generation owner of Smoky’s Club in Madison, says while a new base of clientele is frequenting the club as a throwback, much of his business relies on his regulars.

Smoky’s Club is a perfect example of what makes for a true supper club. Located close to the University of Wisconsin campus, Smoky’s has only relocated once and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.

The décor of the club is a mixture of the northern Wisconsin woods and miscellaneous accouterments. The dining areas are lined with stuffed fish that Schmock says is from a family mortuary that went out of business over ten years ago. The miscellany that helps make Smoky’s what it is are the sousaphone from the UW Marching Band, the steer skull, and the room of aviation photographs.

During the anniversary party, Schmock, the son of the original owners Leonard “Smoky” and Janet Schmock, visited with guests and snapped pictures of customers dancing to the Michael Hanson Trio. Patrons and the friendly wait staff swapped their fond Smoky’s memories.

It’s people like Schmock who inspired Hoekstra to write the book and tell their stories. For example, he met Ozzie, the dishwasher at Smoky’s who has been cleaning dishes since the 1960s even though he lost his eyesight over the years.

Another person who stands out is Cossette at Minneapolis’ Jax Supper Club, who embroiders matchbooks while the customers are eating, giving the customers a little souvenir of their experience at Jax.

As Hoekstra says, these aren’t exactly the people, stories and experiences you can find easily at any regular restaurant or fast food chain.

Billy Anderson Live at House of Embers

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The great Billy Anderson (Photo by Paul Natkin)

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis.—Someone calls out a request for “What a Wonderful World” from a dark corner of the lounge at the House of Embers.

It is early on a cold December night in Central Wisconsin but that doesn’t prevent house entertainer Billy Anderson from wearing a short sleeved brown print Hawaiian shirt.

He smiles brightly and launches into the Louis Armstrong classic, his brown hands gliding across his vintage Hammond B-3 organ like skis on snow.

The request has come from one of seven middle-aged women from the Wisconsin Dells who are celebrating a birthday in full cruise ship mode. One woman works for a local real estate company. It is said another woman’s husband runs a circus. After Billy Anderson is done singing “What a Wonderful World” the women approach him.

“Let’s go sit on Billy’s organ!,” one declares.

Billy Anderson still smiles brightly.

“I’ve heard that a few times,” he says.

The women know Billy Anderson because he has been appearing at Wisconsin Dells supper clubs since 1966.

“Right now I play five different places,” Billy says over a soft drink at the bar. “Here. Trappers Turn for Sunday brunch, which is a golf course here. Over at Glacier Rock in Baraboo. I work at Spring Brooke. And Ishnala in the summer. I started there in 1966. I left for a while and I’m back. It’s the same thing as here. Happy hour crowd, they go home at 8:30 or 9. That’s my age group. That’s the type of songs I play.”

Billy Anderson is to the Dells what Jimmy Buffett is to Florida.

He has appeared on Friday and Saturday nights at (Wally’s) House of Embers since 1998. “In this supper club where I get an older crowd, I start around 4:30, 5’o clock,” he says. “It’s standards; Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin.

“It’s not a rap place.”

Ellen Weiss of Baraboo seems to be the ring leader of the playful posse. She sits down on a piano bench next to Billy Anderson and the other women quickly assemble behind the organ player. The scene resembles a saucy 1970s photo shoot for an Isaac Hayes album cover.

Weiss later reflects, “One thing about Billy is there could be a whole group of young people in here and he would play exactly what they want. He is the most amazing musician I have seen.”

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Billy Anderson fan Ellen Weiss (right). Photo by Payl Natkin

House of Embers is a special place for Weiss.

“In 2006 my husband asked me to marry him at this restaurant,” says Weiss, who works at the Great Wolf Lodge Resort in the Dells. “It was right around the corner from where we are sitting. Someone was playing the harp. A waitress wrapped the ring in a tissue and he handed it to me. I opened it up and said ‘Yes.’ My husband and I come here every year for our anniversary.”

Here is where you begin to understand the sound of the supper club.

Supper club musicians perform in an arena of meaningful tradition. They are not lounge singers, heavy on the shtick. And supper clubs are not piano bars where people drink all night long and sing along to “New York, New York.” This is Wisconsin.

“People are eating,” Billy says. “I do quiet dinner stuff. I take requests. My favorite songs are ‘Witchcraft’ by Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World.’ They are my favorite entertainers. Frank had a unique way of singing his songs, you felt it just by listening. Louis made you feel like anyone could sing even if they had an average voice.”

A supper club musician is like a good marriage: It is all about balance.

“It’s more expensive to have live entertainment in a supper club these days but Billy is worth it,” says House of Embers owner Mike Obois in a separate interview. “He’s great with families and kids, which are future customers. The old people know him and know the songs. And he’s personable. He’ll take his break and visit you at a table. No matter how busy the bar is, if he wants to visit, he’ll visit with you. And he’s got a memory. He’ll remember somebody from seven years ago on their birthday and he will know their favorite song.”

The House of Embers has a storied tradition of supper club music.

When the restaurant opened in 1959, Louise “Lou” Stettin began playing every Sunday night on a baby grand piano in the club’s fireplace enhanced Tiffany Roon. She played until the age of 95. She never read music, but could stretch from ragtime to standards.

No rap, either.

Born in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day, Stettin died in June, 2005 at the age of 98. Her favorite song to play was “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.”

Stettin was the mother of the late Barbara Obois, who was Wally’s wife. Stettin’s tradition was to have one whiskey Old Fashioned and a cup of soup before her gig, something Keith Richards might also have done during his recent residency at the United Center in Chicago.

In September, 2000 Stettin served as Grand Marshall of the famous Wa-Zha-Wa Days parade in the Dells. She wore multicolored Carmen Miranda headgear and a sparkling rhinestone dress. Stettin waved to everyone along the parade route. She struck a familiar chord. “My arm hurt,” she told the Wisconsin State Journal in a November, 2000 profile. “And I had to play that night.”

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Cheers! at House of Embers (Photo by Paul Natkin)

Billy Anderson was born in 1939 in Waterloo, Iowa.

His mother Gladys owned a diner called Gladys’s Restaurant. His father William worked at a government factory. They are deceased and Billy is not married. He lives in Nellsville, Wis., about 100 miles from the Dells. During his weekend gigs he stays in the Dells.

Billy has always been a solo act.

He was on the road for two weeks when a Milwaukee booking agency found him work at the old Uphoff hotel and restaurant (now part of the new Mount Olympus complex at nearby Lake Delton.) Billy then moved to the Ishnala in the summer of 1966. “There was this place,” Billy says in describing the 1966 Dells scene. “Fisher’s (now Sorrento’s). The Del-Bar.”

He never left.

Another thing about supper clubs is their extraordinary sense of place.

Ask Billy Anderson about the bright lights of Chicago or Minneapolis and he shakes his head no. “Chicago, no, no,” he says, and in fact there are more supper club gigs in the Dells than jobs at non-hotel piano bars in Chicago. “There’s so much work here,” he says. “The Dells used to close up early, especially in the winter. With the casino and water parks they’re open year round. After the summer it over its a pretty regular crowd that comes in.”

Billy figures he knows “thousands” of songs. He can play pop standards, boogie-woogie and blues. He played country and western the night Charley Pride came in after Pride headlined at the Crystal Grand Music Theatre down the road from the supper club.

Billy Anderson is a self-contained operation.

He owns three Hammond B-3s and usually keeps them at the clubs he is appearing at. The B-3 at the House of Embers is made of dark furniture wood. Billy bought it in 1979 in Waterloo, Ia. “It’s not that heavy,” he says. “Take the pedals off, flip it and roll it away. I do have a trailer I haul it around in. I take it to Ishnala in the summer.” He also sells CDs from the top of the B-3. Billy Anderson’s latest CD is “Greatness Remembered,” consisting of 11 standards by dead artists. “What a Wonderful World” is on the CD as is Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife” and Lou Rawls’ “Lady Love.” But Anderson’s high range floats more like blue eyed soulster Boz Scaggs than the baritone of Rawls.

“Greatness Remembered” was recorded in a small home studio in Wisconsin Rapids. “I order about 200 at a time,” he says. “When they sell out I order 200 more. Its not a million seller. Years ago I did LPs. And cassettes. Now CDs.”

Times change.

But Billy Anderson hasn’t changed so much.

Mike Obois says, “When Mom and Dad sold the restaurant to us in ‘98 we were talking about getting entertainment. This is the honest truth. My Dad goes, ‘See that guy sitting over at the table?’ It was table 35 in the other dining room. My Dad says, ‘That’s Billy Anderson. He used to play at Ishnala all those years and I don’t know what he is doing, but he is a great musician.” Mike was introduced to Billy. And he has been at the House of Embers ever since.

The dimly lit Wisconsin supper clubs set the mood for the supper club sound.

Customers would arrive around 4 or 5 p.m., hear some lounge music, have a couple drinks, adjourn for supper and return to the lounge for more music and a nightcap or three. “Some old timers still do that,” Mike says. “Young people are in a hurry. The drinking laws changed after-dinner drinking. But now that there’s good taxi services in town, or the designated driver, people are smarter. And we don’t want them to get that way.”

A Nov. 5, 1966 Chicago Daily News column asked “What Makes a Supper Club Go?”

Entertainment columnist Sam Lesner wondered, “Is it the room or the show that makes a supper club go? Someone asked it earlier this week in the newly remodeled Camellia House (at the Drake Hotel).” Lesner concluded the talent set the stage, a fact Billy Anderson began backing up at roughly the same period.

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Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner told me supper clubs were the template for his Playboy Club chain. And remember, he opened a Playboy Club resort in supper clubby Lake Geneva, Wis.

“A supper club is exactly what the Playboy club was,” Hefner said during a 2010 interview from his Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. “When you come into the lobby you were greeted by the bunny (a “host” in supper club parlance) who checked your key. It was double level. You looked down the steps into the bar or up half a floor into the living room. There was a piano bar in the living room and a buffet at the end of the room.

“It was a very supper clubby feeling.”

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Lesner also drew a parallel between supper clubs and the Playboy Club in his article: “In the Playboy Club where it can be said that many patrons just come to be part of the Playboy scene (not unlike the birthday women at the House of Embers), it’s still the show that brings out the best in the performers and the audience.”

Forward Spirit

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FitzGerald’s Supper Club Party 6/6/13, Pictures by Sheila Russell

I’ve been more humbled than a devil in an egg  by the early response to The Supper Club Book.

We sold out at our 6/6 launch party, so graciously hosted by FitzGerald’s roadhouse in Berwyn. A couple nights later we did brisk business at the Lighthouse Supper Club in Cedar Rapids,  an old Lincoln Highway hideaway featured in my book.

At the Lighthouse, all sorts of jazz cats from the Quad Cities showed up to jam with The Dick Watson Combo. I heard Dick sing “Falling in Love With Love” and I met supper club regulars Wayne and Jayne Wunschel.

 

When a Wayne meets a Jayne you know all is right with the world.

While driving around Illinois and Indiana for these two launch events I wondered about a  bigger meaning.

I didn’t feel any particular euphoria  from releasing a book to which I have devoted three summers of research (thank goodness the Cubs have sucked), but it was more about the warmth I felt in these rooms.

A forward spirit.

A slower pace. The support from a wide circle of friends and colleagues. My editors from the Sun-Times and my book editor. The sudden appearance at FitzGerald’s of an ex-girl friend’s parents. And an ex-girl friend.

The music of The Letter 3 was so perfect for the Berwyn evening, ranging from a knock out cover of Dan Penn’s “I’m Your Puppet” to Harry Nilsson’s “Cuddly Toy,” popularized by the Monkees. I think the band also enjoyed themselves, otherwise they would have not returned to the stage an hour after their final song for an extended version of Ramsey Lewis’s “The In Crowd.”

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The Letter 3 (with a fourth bongo player)

The Supper Club Beer from Capital Brewery went down easy. And the cheese spreads from Shulllsburg Creamery (established 1934) in Shullsburg, Wis. were a hit.  The most popular  cream cheese-sharp cheddar spread is based on a recipe at the Owl’s Nest Supper Club in Central Wisconsin.

The mellow brats for Tom Cimms outdoor barbecue were procured from Miesfield’s Market in Sheboygan, the same brats used at Madison’s popular Old Fashioned supper club in my book.

So in doing press for the book I’ve been asked what the supper club is all about. I have seemed to reach an even greater understanding.

They are about sense of place. They are about ritual, a gathering for an anniversary, a birthday, a rehearsal dinner. Or supper.

In his book “Standing By Words” Kentucky regionalist Wendell Barry writes, “To know where you are (and whether or not that is where you should be) is as least as important as to know what you are doing, because in the moral sense, you cannot know what you have learned where. Not knowing where you are, you can lose your soul or your soil, your life, or  your way home.”

Supper club events are bookmarks in time.

And I feel very grateful as this next chapter unfolds this summer.

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My friend Bill FitzGerald at Supper Club Party. Go Blackhawks.

Beyond the Food Beltway

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The Ced-Rel Supper Club, photo by Paul Natkin as featured in "The Supper Club Book."When I speak to journalism students I make sure to mention the wide open spaces of Food and Travel coverage. Newspapers can do lots of things in covering Food and Travel besides the standard agenda  of “reviews.”

Food and Travel share a common ground of discovery (foodways), literature, photography, and most exciting in recent years the creativity and dignity of local product. When I travel to indy record stores I almost always pick up DIY cassettes made by a band down the street, just as I make sure to sample regional food.

This is why this new Eater.com link is so interesting.
Besides my book, look at all the compelling titles and avenues food can take you.

The Supper Club Book (Chicago Review Press, 9781613743683) was included on the popular Eater.com in a round-up of Summer 2013 Cookbooks. The book is the first of the “Eater’s Picks” listed in the Regional category.

Enjoy! Also check out Hot Doug’s book!