Charles Ottaviano
January 3, 1942 – November 17, 2008
Charles Ottaviano was a the owner of Charlie O’s, a popular yet intimate jazz club located in the Van Nuys section of the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. A musician himself, Ottaviano moved to Los Angeles from Buffalo in 1960. He opened the Van Nuys location as a restaurant in 1987, and then converted it to a jazz club in 2000. Charlie O’s became a favorite hangout for local jazz enthusiasts thanks in part, to early regular performers, Earl Palmer and John Heard. Charles Ottaviano was 66 when he died of a heart attack on November 17, 2008.
Art D’Lugoff was a highly respected jazz impresario who opened the Village Gate in New York in 1958. The Greenwich Village jazz club became world famous thanks to D’Lugoff’s bookings of such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and many more. Though mostly known as jazz venue, thanks in part to numerous “Live at the Village Gate” jazz albums over the years, D’Lugoff also hosted rock, blues, and R&B acts like Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, and Aretha Franklin. He does however, have the dubious honor of refusing to book a young Bob Dylan. D’lugoff closed the club in 1994 due to financial troubles. In later years, he was instrumental in the development of the National Jazz Museum of Harlem, and acted consultant for the 2008 opening of a new jazz club, Le Poisson Rouge, which stands in the original location of the Village Gate. Art D’Lugoff passed away at the age of 85 on November 4, 2009.
Brendan Mullen is best remembered for The Masque, the legendary Los Angeles punk club that he opened in 1977. After moving to Los Angeles from London in 1973, Mullen took over a filthy room that sat right behind the notorious Pussycat Theater in Hollywood and transformed it into a rehearsal space for local bands. In a matter of matter of months, the room became a venue that some consider the flashpoint of the local punk scene of the late ’70s. Bands like the Germs, X, the Weirdos, the Go-Gos, and the Plugz all played some of their earliest gigs there. As could be expected, Mullen clashed on numerous occasions with area merchants, the fire department and the L.A.P.D. before the club was temporarily shut down in 1978. It briefly re-opened in another location in 1979 before closing permanently. Mullen later went on to book shows at The Other Masque and Club Lingerie, both also in Hollywood. In later years, Mullen wrote such books about the L.A. punk scene as We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs, and Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley. Brendan Mullen died in a Los Angeles hospital on October 12, 2009. He had suffered a massive stroke.
Known around the Los Angeles blues scened as “Mama,” Laura Mae Gross was the owner of Babe and Ricky’s Inn which she opened on the storied Central Avenue in 1964. In no time, the club became a destination of local and traveling blues musicians alike. She hosted the likes of B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Big Mama Thornton, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, John Lee Hooker and Albert King to name just a few. In 1987, the mayor of Los Angeles signed a proclamation honoring Gross for her commitment to keeping the Central Avenue music scene alive. After a downturn in the area during the ’90s, Gross moved the club to the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. Laura Mae Gross died of heart failure at the age of 89.
Hilly Kristal
September 23, 1931 – August 28, 2007
Hilly with Little Steven
Opened in 1973, Hilly Kristal’s CBGB became the epicenter of the punk and new wave movement thanks to his early bookings of such acts as Blondie, Talking Heads, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Television and the Ramones. After moving to New York City after serving in the Marines, Kristal became manager of the storied Village Vanguard jazz club where he booked such acts as Miles Davis. In 1968, he co-founded the Central Park’s Schaefer Music Festival which, over the next decade, hosted the likes of the Who, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, the Doors and Aerosmith. In 1973, he opened CBGB – OMFUG, which stood for “Country, BlueGrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers.” He closed the club during a much publicized rent dispute in 2006. Hilly Kristal died of lung cancer at the age of 75.
Along with partner Mickey Gilley, Sherwood Cryer owned the Pasadena, Texas honky tonk, Gilley’s which became world renowned thanks to the hit 1980 film Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Debra Winger. Cryer discovered Gilley performing in a local club and convinced him to open up the club in 1971. With Gilley on stage, cold Lone Star beer, and several mechanical bulls, the club helped launch a pop-culture phenomenom that was second only to disco less than a decade earlier. During its heyday, the bar’s stage featured some of the biggest names in country music. Gilley, himself becoming one of those stars, thanks in part to Cryer’s business savvy. When the Urban Cowboy filmmakers wanted to recreate the bar on a soundstage, it was Cryer who convinced them to film the now-famous scenes right there in the club. After the movie’s release, Gilley’s became one of the biggest tourist attractions in Texas. Unfortunately, the club’s new popularity drove away the regulars, and eventually caused the break-up of Cryer and Gilley’s partnership and the closure of the bar. The building burned down in 1989 in what was ruled arson. Sherwood Cryer passed away at the age of 81. Cause of death has not been released.
Rashied Ali (Born Robert Patterson)
July 1, 1935 – August 12, 2009
Born into a musical family, jazz drummer Rashied Ali began to come into his own after moving to New York City in his late 20s. Within a short time, he was playing behind the likes of James Blood Ulmer, Pharoah Sanders, and eventually John Coltrane. He played on Coltrane’s final recordings. Ali went on to become one of world’s highest regarded avant garde jazz musicians. During the ’70s he opened a Ali’s Alley, a popular jazz club in New York while continuing to play with the likes of Don Cherry and Bill Laswell. Ali continued to play and record up until his passing on August 12, 2009. He died after a heart attack during heart surgery.
A man of many hats, Tony Wilson is best remembered as co-owner of Factory Records, home the one-time home of Joy Division, New Order and OMD. He also owned The Hacienda, which became the epicenter of the Manchester music scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Before his foray into music, Wilson was a journalist and BBC television peronaility, most notably hosting So It Goes and After Dark. Suffering from advance stages of renal cancer, Wilson, age 57, died of a heart attack in a Manchester hospital.
Steve Rubell was a New York business man who teamed up with friend Ian Schrager to open Studio 54, the Brooklyn nightclub that became the epicenter of the ’70s disco phenomenon. The disco opened in April of 1977 and quickly became the late night destination of the rich and famous. It would not be unusual for one to bump into the likes of Elton John, Liza Minnelli, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Warren Beatty, Cher, John Lennon or Steve Buckingham. On many nights, Rubell would stand at the front door and randomly decide who could enter based on their looks or wardrobe. Two years after the club opened, Rubell and Schrager were charged with tax evasion and other charges and were later convicted and sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison. After his release from prison, Rubell opened another club and a hotel, but nothing ever matched the excitement of Studio 54. In 1985, he discovered he had AIDS which likely had a hand in his death from hepatitus on July 25, 1989.
Antoinette K-Doe (Born Antoinette Dorsey)
1943(?) – February 24, 2009
Antoinette K-Doe, the irrepressible widow of rhythm & blues singer Ernie K-Doe who transformed the Mother-in-Law Lounge into a living shrine and community center, died early Tuesday after suffering a massive heart attack. She was 66. “It was her personal mission to keep his memory alive,” said Ben Sandmel, who is writing a biography of Ernie K-Doe. “But she also did so much for the community. It’s a huge loss for the whole musicians’ community of New Orleans.” Born Antoinette Dorsey, Mrs. K-Doe was a cousin of rhythm & blues singer Lee Dorsey. She had known Ernie K-Doe for many years before they became a couple around 1990. At the time, the singer’s best days were far behind him. After a string of hits in the early 1960s, most notably “Mother-in-Law,” his career, and life bottomed out. By sheer force of will, she helped him return to the stage and transform himself into an icon of eclectic New Orleans. The couple married in 1994. “She had him on a short leash,” Sandmel said. “She cleaned him up and opened the lounge to give him a place to play.” Ernie K-Doe died in 2001. But thanks to his wife, he maintained a schedule of public appearances via a life-size, fully costumed, look-alike mannequin. Mrs. K-Doe referred to the mannequin as “Ernie.” As the mother hen of the Mother-in-Law Lounge, she presided over one of the city’s most diverse, funky-but-chic watering holes. With its vibrant, larger-than-life exterior murals and adjoining gardens, the Lounge stood out on an otherwise rough stretch of North Claiborne Avenue. As the Ernie mannequin looked on from its corner throne, Mrs. K-Doe served a mix of neighborhood regulars and hipsters from across the city. The Lounge was a favorite haunt of such non-traditional musicians as Mr. Quintron, the Bywater avant-garde keyboardist, inventor and marching band impresario. The Lounge badly flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s levee breaches. In advance of the floodwaters, Mrs. K-Doe dismantled the mannequin, stored the pieces in plastic bags, and stowed them in an upstairs closet. In the months after the storm, she revived the Lounge with the aid of an army of volunteers and financial support from contemporary R&B star Usher. Mrs. K-Doe suffered a minor heart attack during Mardi Gras 2008, but recovered. On Thursday, she rode in the Muses parade with the Ernie mannequin. She served as the honorary queen of the Cameltoe Ladysteppers marching organization. Today she had planned to don the traditional Baby Doll costume and parade through the streets of Treme before returning to the lounge for what is always a busy day. She helped revive the tradition of the Baby Dolls marching organization, and was happy to see others take up the mantle. Michelle Longino, a founder of the Bayou Steppers Social Aid and Pleasure Club, received Mrs. K-Doe’s blessing to costume as a Baby Doll and come out with Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Monk Boudreaux on Mardi Gras morning. “She told us that we needed to be proper Baby Dolls, not nasty Baby Dolls,” Longino said. “Today we’re going to call ourselves the Antoinette K-Doe Baby Dolls in her honor.” Around 3 a.m. Mardi Gras morning, Mrs. K-Doe awoke in her apartment above the Mother-in-Law Lounge and complained of feeling hot, said Gary Hughes, the husband of her adopted daughter, Jackie Coleman. She went downstairs and apparently suffered a heart attack on a sofa in the lounge. Hughes, who was staying in the apartment at the time, said paramedics arrived quickly but could not revive Mrs. K-Doe. Today’s festivities at the Mother-in-Law Lounge will be in her honor. “Mardi Gras was her holiday,” Hughes said. “She loved Mardi Gras. We’re going to run the lounge as if she was here and do it up this one last time for her.” – Keith Spera (nola.com)
Albert Grossman is best remembered as an artist manager representing, among others, Bob Dylan between 1962 and 1970. He also co-founded the Newport Folk Festival with George Wein in 1959. In 1961, Grossman put three folk singers together, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, otherwise known as Peter, Paul and Mary. Over the years, Grossman also represented John Lee Hooker, Ian & Sylvia, Odetta, Janis Joplin, and the Band. Grossman also built the legendary Bearsville Recording Studio outside of Woodstock, NY and formed Bearsville Records. Acts like Todd Rundgren, Foghat, NRBQ and Jesse Winchester recorded for the label. On January 25, 1986, Albert Grossman died of a heart attack while flying from the U.S. to London aboard the Concorde. He was 59 years old.
Page Cavanaugh
January 26, 1922 – December 19, 2008
Page Cavanaugh, a veteran pianist-singer whose trio was a popular nightclub and recording group in the late 1940s and ’50s and who became one of Southern California’s most enduring lounge jazz artists, has died. He was 86. Cavanaugh, who also was a composer and arranger during his more than 60-year career, died Friday morning of kidney failure at a skilled nursing facility in Granada Hills, said Phil Mallory, Cavanaugh’s bass player for 18 years. During the early days with his trio, Cavanaugh appeared with Frank Sinatra at the Waldorf-Astoria and elsewhere, played for NBC Radio’s “The Jack Paar Show” and appeared in movies such as “A Song Is Born,” “Romance on the High Seas,” “Big City” and “Lullaby of Broadway.” “He was always a creatively fascinating artist throughout his long career,” music critic Don Heckman told The Times. “What he did with his most famous group in the ’40s and ’50s was to develop a new style, in which all three members of the group would sing in unison in a whisper fashion.” It was a time, Heckman said, “when jazz and popular music were in much closer sync than they are today, so that groups like Nat Cole and George Shearing and Page Cavanaugh could play with a distinctly jazz flavor and still reach large audiences and sell a lot of records.” The Page Cavanaugh Trio, which placed in Top 10 polls in Down Beat and Metronome magazines from 1946 to the early ’50s, had chart hits such as “The Three Bears” and “She Had to Go and Lose It At the Astor.” Cavanaugh, whose trio also performed at clubs such as Ciro’s and the Trocadero in the ’40s, had his share of long-run gigs, including regular stints at the Captain’s Table on La Cienega Boulevard in the early ’50s and at the Money Tree in Toluca Lake in the ’80s and ’90s. In the early ’60s, he formed a seven-piece group, The Page 7, that recorded for RCA and appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other TV programs. Around the same time, he opened his own club in Studio City. But Cavanaugh, who performed solo in Las Vegas for a number of years in the ’80s, had his share of career ups and downs. “At the end of the ’50s, when rock ‘n’ roll came in, prices went down, and you couldn’t get arrested,” he said in a 1992 interview with The Times. “I’d end up playing in bowling alleys. It was a bad time.” Still, he said, “a life in music was a good choice for me. It’s been a damn roller coaster, flying high one day, poor as Job’s turkey the next. But I can’t think of anything I’d trade it for.” Walter Page Cavanaugh was born Jan. 26, 1922, in Cherokee, Kan., and grew up on his family’s farm. Both of his parents played ragtime piano, and he switched from his first instrument — ukulele — to piano when he was about 9. He later won high school solo piano competitions four years in a row and earned a scholarship to Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg, Kan. But he stayed less than a semester and joined a Kansas-based band. At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Bobby Sherwood band, with whom he toured until he was drafted during World War II. While serving in the Army Signal Corps, he joined the Three Sergeants, a trio with Al Viola on guitar and Lloyd Pratt on bass, which played for officers’ club dances and other functions. After the war, they became known as the Page Cavanaugh Trio. The latest edition of the Page Cavanaugh Trio — featuring Mallory on bass and Jason Lingle on drums — released its last CD, “Return to Elegance,” in 2006. Cavanaugh made his final appearance with his trio in June 2007 at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, where the band had played on Thursday nights for more than a decade. “He loved to entertain,” Mallory said. Cavanaugh, who never married, had no immediate surviving family members. – Dennis McLellan (Los Angeles Times)
Elmer Valentine, co-founder of the Whisky a Go Go, the legendary live rock showcase on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood that gave birth to the go-go dancer phenomenon of the 1960s, has died. He was 85. Valentine, who also co-founded the Roxy Theatre in the early ’70s, died Wednesday at his home in Studio City after suffering from various ailments the last four years, said music mogul Lou Adler, his longtime friend and business partner. A former Chicago cop who arrived in Los Angeles in 1960, Valentine was co-owner of P.J.’s, a successful West Hollywood restaurant-nightclub, when he sold his interest and took a trip to Europe in 1963. While in Paris, he visited a discotheque and was so impressed by the large, enthusiastic crowd of young dancers that he decided to borrow the disco’s name and start his own club back home in Los Angeles. After lining up three partners, Valentine launched the Whisky a Go Go in January 1964. The club was an immediate hit, with headliner Johnny Rivers attracting celebrity-studded sold-out audiences. “For much of the ’60s and early ’70s, Elmer Valentine’s Whisky was the most important rock club in town,” former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn wrote in 1977. “It was an incubation spot for local bands and a showcase for highly touted visiting groups.” The Byrds, the Doors, the Kinks, the Who, Them, Love and Buffalo Springfield were among the bands to play there. “The Whisky was mecca,” Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist for the Doors, told The Times in 2003. “It was the place in Los Angeles. It was probably the place in the entire country.” Adler, who first met Valentine in 1964 and produced Rivers’ live Whisky a Go Go album, said the Whisky “was a template for what rock clubs would be, not only in Los Angeles but across the United States and around the world.” “Up until that point, rock acts did not have that kind of venue. It drew a lot of celebrities, and the celebrities drew people to come watch the celebrities.” Along with drawing such stars as Steve McQueen, Jayne Mansfield and Cary Grant, the Whisky drew national media attention, including from Life magazine and Jack Paar, who did a segment for his weekly comedy-variety program at the club. Part of the attraction was the mini-skirted go-go girls, a contribution to pop culture that happened by accident. As recounted in a 2000 Vanity Fair article on Valentine, he arranged to have a female DJ play records between Rivers’ sets so patrons could continue dancing. But because there wasn’t enough room on the floor for a DJ booth, he had a glass-walled booth mounted high above the floor. To publicize the girl-DJ gimmick, a public contest was held for the job. But when the young winner called Valentine on the night of the opening to tearfully say her mother forbade her from doing it, Valentine recruited the club’s cigarette girl, Patty Brockhurst. “She had on a slit skirt, and we put her up there,” Valentine told Vanity Fair. “So she’s up there playing the records. She’s a young girl, so while playing ‘em, all of a sudden she starts dancing to ‘em. It was a dream. It worked.” Valentine quickly hired two more girl dancers, one of whom, Joanie Labine, according to the Vanity Fair article, “designed the official go-go-girl costume of fringed dress and white boots.” The Whisky a Go Go “spurred the entire go-go period,” said Adler. “The advertising agencies picked up on the phrase and everything became ‘go-go.’ ” The way Valentine ran the Whisky — and his relationships with the acts — was nothing like the stereotypical hard-nosed nightclub owners in the movies, Adler said. “Being in that club was like heaven for him,” said Adler. “He loved rock music, and he loved the musicians. He had a special relationship with all of them.” Valentine was born in Chicago on June 16, 1923. After serving as an Army Air Forces mechanic stationed in England during World War II, he joined the Chicago police force. “I left Chicago [in 1960] because my wife dumped me, and I was flipped out,” he told Vanity Fair. But, as the magazine noted, he was also having a bit of trouble on the job: He was on the take from the Mob. “It was a way of life,” Valentine said.
Although he was indicted for extortion, the magazine reported, he was never convicted. And once Valentine arrived in Los Angeles, he had a backup career plan: “I used to moonlight running nightclubs for the outfit. For gangsters.” In 1965, Valentine launched the Trip, a small, short-lived rock club on the Strip. In 1972, he, Adler, Mario Maglieri and others started the Rainbow Bar & Grill on the Strip; a year later, Valentine, Adler and others founded the Roxy. Adler, who bought into the Whisky in the late ’70s, said Valentine sold his interest in the club in the ’90s but retained an ownership in the Rainbow and the Roxy until his death. Valentine, who was divorced, is survived by his daughter, Kimberly Valentine; and a grandson. Plans for a memorial service are pending. – Dennis McLellan (Los Angeles Times)
Known around the Los Angeles blues scened as “Mama,” Laura Mae Gross was the owner of Babe and Ricky’s Inn which she opened on the storied Central Avenue in 1964. In no time, the club became a destination of local and traveling blues musicians alike. She hosted the likes of B.B. King, 
Born into a musical family, jazz drummer Rashied Ali began to come into his own after moving to New York City in his late 20s. Within a short time, he was playing behind the likes of James Blood Ulmer, Pharoah Sanders, and eventually 
A man of many hats, Tony Wilson is best remembered as co-owner of Factory Records, home the one-time home of Joy Division, New Order and OMD. He also owned The Hacienda, which became the epicenter of the Manchester music scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Before his foray into music, Wilson was a journalist and BBC television peronaility, most notably hosting So It Goes and After Dark. Suffering from advance stages of renal cancer, Wilson, age 57, died of a heart attack in a Manchester hospital.
