Bob Shields: Bartender & Manager

Bob Shields

Bob Shields: Bartender & Manager - Sylvia Levine talks with former bartender and manager at various NYC clubs

Hard core jazz fans and musicians who have spent serious time hanging out in New York jazz clubs know the people behind the scenes, who comprise an essential part of the jazz community, but who are neither musicians nor club owners. For more than twenty years, these unsung heroes have contributed to the ambience of the city’s legendary jazz rooms—and have served jazz—by communicating their own love and respect for the artists and the music as they perform their responsibilities—as bartender, waitress or doorman. It is time to document the stories of some of the people who helped us all feel at home.

We dedicate this series to the memory of Gerry Houston, long-time waitress at the Village Vanguard, who died last year. The subject of this week’s column is Bob Shields, bartender and manager at various NYC clubs. - Sylvia Levine Leitch.

Bob Shields:
I came to New York from Boston to work in sales and marketing; I'd been in business up there and this seemed like a challenging opportunity. There was nothing wrong with my life up in Boston—I managed a pharmacy, set my own hours, skied and played golf during the week, shared a great house with three young women—but I guess a new challenge was inviting.

I had heard some jazz in Boston, my girlfriend then was into it and dragged me off to Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop, where I heard great players including Stanley Turrentine, for example, and I started to go out in the evening to hang and hear music in New York. One of the places I went to a lot was the Angry Squire because it was right across the street from where I was living. Then at some point the owner, Frank Godin, asked me if I could fill in for him bartending one night. It seemed like a joke almost, and I did it. I really enjoyed working behind the bar and I started doing it more and more: I mean, I was having a lot of fun, meeting people that I liked, making money, and there were waitresses! The waitresses were all artists of one kind or another and interesting people and I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

Eventually I realized that I liked bartending way more than business, I was hearing some good music and I made more money at it than I did at the textile company. At that point, though, I wasn't the jazz fan that I am now and the Angry Squire did not have a consistently great roster of jazz artists, so I heard different levels of music. But I remember very clearly my jazz epiphany, when I really "heard" the music for the first time. It was in the late '70s and Kenny Barron—I even remember the song—played "Willow Weep for Me." I just shook my head. I have no musical training at all but maybe I have an ear for music. Anyway, from that moment on, I became a true jazz fan, a real jazz fan, and I pursued it. I really was captured by the music.

I would look forward to the great bands that would come in there and watch the schedule: Kenny, as I mentioned, would come in to play, and Clifford Jordan, another one. Dakota Staton would sometimes just stop by to hang at the bar, and she would perform there as well.

I moved on after a while and tried bartending at a number of other places, most of them without music: I was at the Lone Star Cafe for a period of time and they booked a wide variety of wonderful groups, primarily country and western, rhythm and blues, and bluegrass, but some with a jazzy feel, like Vassar Clements, a really great fiddle player who played with Stephane Grappelli at one time; Dr. John played there, Bill Monroe and his Country Gentlemen, the great guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, some very interesting bookings.

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