The city of Memphis has produced a lot of great jazz musicians- Jamil Nasser, Charles Lloyd, Booker Little, Frank Strozier, Harold Mabern, Phineas Newborn Jr., Frank Lowe, Joe Dukes, Sonny Criss, and any number of others. But, sadly, jazz is not popular in Memphis these days, and opportunities to hear it live are few and far between. To make matters worse, even when an event or a venue advertises “jazz,” the term is used quite loosely these days, and often what one encounters is actually neo-soul or even R & B. To these promoters, “jazz” is a way of signifying an event for the “grown and sexy” upscale Black community, rather than an actual genre of music.
However, there is a regular jazz jam session on Sunday nights at a rather unlikely place- a small oyster bar in the Broad Avenue Arts District near Binghampton called The Cove. Every Sunday, at 6 PM, local Memphis jazz musicians descend on the truly tiny venue, and experiment in their chosen form of music. Many of them are students at the University of Memphis or Rhodes College, and the talent level is surprisingly high and the choice of tunes broad and sophisticated. The demographic skews younger, and I did not know a lot of the musicians there, but I did know the keyboard player Pat Fusco, who is well known on the Memphis scene. The Cove’s jam session has been going on for awhile, but in its early years it was more guitar based, making it hard for keyboard players to sit in unless they wanted to bring their own keyboards and amps and set up. The session each week lasts from 6 to 9 PM.
The Cove
2559 Broad Avenue
Memphis, TN 38112
(901) 730-0719