When the proprietors of Jazz at Pearl's closed the room after failing to renew their lease, Pearl's was the sole full-time jazz club in San Francisco. The North Beach neighborhood where the club operated for 14 years had been one of the bustling capitals of the jazz world. Artists such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Oscar Peterson played Broadway nightspots around the corner like the Jazz Workshop, El Matador and Basin Street West.
So when word got out that Pearl's was a goner, things looked a little grim on the local jazz scene. Musicians grumbled about where they were going to work, fans wondered if there was going to be a place to hear live jazz, and the whole predicament seemed emblematic of the sad state of jazz today.
Enter jazz vocalist Kim Nalley and her new husband, Steve Sheraton, who stepped up to take over the Columbus Avenue nitery's expired lease and plunged into a do-it-yourself makeover that left the club dark for six months. In the meantime, Jazz Nouveau opened in the Cannery, and, near Rincon Annex, Shanghai 1930 started booking jazz. It's not a lot, but for a jazz scene that was given last rites only months ago, it's progress.
"It seems a new renaissance is happening, jazz-wise," Nalley said.
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