“A seamy hole in the wall on Broadway -- the booming entertainment strip of North Beach-- this joint was near the bottom of the long list of jazz rooms flourishing in San Francisco around 1960.”
Clarinet player Bill Carter, 2014
Here is the tale of a colorful jazz nightclub and low dive. Musicians cringe when reminded of the name Burp Hollow. They remember the bad pay and tiny stage, watered-down booze and unsavory club owner -- a wheel chair-bound former Mafioso. The venue is recalled ruefully for its ridiculous four-by-six-foot dance floor and the confusing “Bob Mielke Bearcats Dixie Jazz” sign on the wall regardless of who was playing. But the insistent sound of lively Dixieland jazz was a magnet to the nighttime sidewalk foot traffic on Broadway near Columbus in the crowded entertainment district of North Beach.
Burp Hollow might have passed quietly into colorful San Francisco legend if not for the discovery of photos and audiotapes preserving performances by bright talents of the Frisco Jazz Revival, fortified by the recollections of musicians and fans. The strongly contrasting Revival jazz styles heard in the recovered audio featured below is distributed along
Trumpeter James O’Donnell: The Motor City Jazz Maestro
Brian Sheridan
