St. Nick's Pub

by Rod Amis

G21 Staff Writer

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NEW YORK CITY - The Sugar Hill district of Harlem is known as a home for fine music. No small credit for that fact goes to the Sugar Hill Jazz Band. This reknown jazz ensemble hosts the Monday night Jam Session at St. Nick's Pub (149th Street & St. Nicholas Avenue.)

Most people in our workaday world don't consider Monday night as a great party night, but then most people don't live in the City That Never Sleeps. If you are lucky enough to live in New York, you know that EVERY night is a party night somewhere in this town. And if you love great jazz, served up with accompanying soul food delights at reasonable prices, chances are you know the party starts at St. Nick's Pub in Harlem around nine o'clock.

At approximately 9:30 p.m. a bus literally rolls up on most Mondays, and in troop a group of Japanese jazz lovers, with their perennial cameras, usually in suits. In fact, there's a Japanese jazz promoter who prowls the aisles of St. Nick's Pub every Monday night in the home of finding talent he can book for the trip to Tokyo's clubs. (Yeah, he's always in a suit, too, but he doesn't carry a camera.)

Shortly after the Japanese contingent arrives, the whites from Finland, Germany, the U.K. --- you name it --- show up and take up the other tables in front of the small stage where the band has set up. It's part of the Monday night schtick to ask people at those front tables where they are from before one of the sets comes to a close.

If you didn't know that Monday night was a big night at St. Nick's, by now you do. The place stays packed from about 10 until the wee hours. The jazz is tasty, as is the soul food, the bartenders are busier than a whore at a Church picnic, and the one waitress who works the floor only has time to smile and sweat.

Part of the reason this Jam Session is so huge is that you never know what high-priced talent will show up. I was there three weeks ago, sitting at the bar talking with the super' from my building when this HOT reedsman joins the Jam. Something sounded familiar about his style, but when I looked up to the stage, I didn't recognize the scruffy brother wailing away. He could have been any guy from any street corner here in Harlem. Looked like he hadn't shaved in quite a few days.

But then he broke into an unmistakably virtuostic sax riff. And the bandleader thanks James Carter for sitting in with the band. Yes, THAT James Carter. The James Carter.

Nahh! Can't be, I said.

But when the brother came up to the bar, right beside me, to order a Heineken, I gave him a closer look. "Didn't I see you in Oakland a few years back?" I had to ask.

"At Yoshi's?" he smiled and nodded. "Yeah, my first time on the West Coast."

I had to do the "fan" thing, silly as it seemed, and get his autograph.

That's the way it is at St. Nick's Pub. Everybody is very laid-back and friendly, and the jazz just smokes.

So if you happen to be in New York City on a Monday night, and you're looking for a party --- take the A train to 145th Street. You won't regret it.

NEW YORK STATE Of Mind Is a NEW Feature of the G21 which will focus on Nightlife in the World's Most Exciting City.