Keystone Corner: "The World's First Psychedelic Jazz Club"

Steven Cerra

“You never went to work when you were at Keystone. You went to play.” - Carl Burnett, Jazz drummer

“There was a real special relationship always between Todd Barkan and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Todd absolutely loved Rahsaan. And, of course, Rahsaan just adored Todd. Rahsaan always liked to put his special people together. He had an art for that. He was not going to let me say no to making Todd a kitchen. Sol did. I basically did it as a favor to Rahsaan.

There was no kitchen there at Keystone Korner; there was a closet between the backstage green room and the garage, basically. He brought me down to look at the room and I looked at this little hole in the wall and said, "Oh my, how can I make a kitchen?"

[But] I did. One Saturday morning, Todd Barkan and his father came by to pick me up. We went to a supply store and bought a stove range and a sink, a refrigerator and a huge chopping block, and I made a kitchen: Ora's Kitchen at Keystone Korner. And it started from there.” - Ora Harris, Ora’s Kitchen at Keystone Korner

“I’ve always had good feelings about San Francisco as a jazz town for one extremely personal reason: … , the city had a couple of strong; eventually legendary jazz clubs. One in particular, in North Beach, was the Jazz Workshop. In 1959, I had done a live-in-the-club recording with the newly formed Cannonball Adderley Quintet for Riverside, and it was the first hit record of my life [Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco]. ... So I was aware from the night that I worked into [Keystone Korner] that the San Francisco jazz audience was very alert and aware and, under the right circumstances, enthusiastic. …

Todd [Barkan], in that sense, was one of the people [responsible for that awareness and enthusiasm]. He didn't act like a club owner. I don't know if he didn't care to or didn't know how, but he was more like a kid in a candy shop. And I don't know what it was like for an average customer, but I was a professional in this business; I knew most of the people I was going to hear and always felt that I was at least partially at work when I was in a jazz club listening. On the one hand, it was nice that there wasn't any built-in tension in the place; on the other hand, it pretty much drove me crazy how un-businesslike Todd's approach was. As long as it wasn't my problem, it was a lovely way for a jazz club to be.

People would tolerate and do benefits for Todd Barkan because of who he wasn't. He wasn't [like] any other club owner in town that you want to name.  …
- Orrin Keepnews, Founder and Musical Director, Riverside Records

The themes in this opening quotation by Orrin Keepnews are repeated throughout Kathy Sloane’s Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club [Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 2012].

Expressions of disbelief as to how Keystone Korner ever stayed in existence for eleven years [1972-1983], let alone how it ever came into existence in the first place, abound throughout the interviews, recollections and storytellings that comprise Kathy’s delightfully fascinating book.

The book itself is as much a labor of love as was Todd Barkan’s efforts to keep Keystone Korner going as Kathy and editor Sascha Feinstein went to great lengths to document a Jazz club for which record-keeping and documentation were in no way a common feature of its operations.

Among the storytellers that Sascha and Kathy have gathered to tell the saga of Keystone Korner are musicians who performed at the club including pianists George Cables and Ronnie Matthews, saxophonists Dave Liebman and Billy Harper, drummers Carl Burnett and Eddie Marshall, tuba player Bob Stewart , trombonist Steve Turre and trumpeter Eddie Henderson; writers and teachers who frequented the club including Laurie Antonelli, Devorah Major, Maria Ross Keyes, John Ross and Al Young; Stuart Kremsky, the club’s soundman and currently an archivist at Fantasy Records [Concord Music Group]; waitresses Flicka McGurrin and Helen Wray; Ora Harris, who developed the kitchen for the club which allowed it to apply for a full, liquor license, and, of course, Orrin Keepnews, NEA Master and founder of Riverside, Milestone and Landmark Records and Todd Barkan, who created the miracle of Keystone Korner in the first place and is currently the Programming Director of Dizzy’s Coca Cola Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center.


From afar, I had always perceived Keystone Korner as one of the three miracles that helped keep unadulterated Jazz alive in the 1970’s along with impresario Norman Granz’s founding of Pablo Records in 1973 and the coming-into-existence of Claude Nobs’ Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland [although Montreux actually began operations in 1967].

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