Jordi Herold opened the Iron Horse in 1979, and for the better part of 25 years offered a comprehensive array of jazz, blues, folk, roots music, and rock on a virtual nightly basis. Even chamber music was part of the early mix. The club’s seating capacity began at 60, expanded to 85 in its second year, and doubled to 170 in 1989. Its opening and subsequent expansions fairly paralleled the rebirth of downtown Northampton as a center of bourgeois bohemianism: restaurants, boutiques, arts and crafts galleries, record and book stores, all surrounded by four prestigious colleges and the University of Massachusetts.
Herold began compiling materials and recollections of the club in anticipation of its 25th anniversary in 2004. By that time, it was owned by Eric Suher. Herold had sold it in 1994, but returned a couple of years later as its talent consultant and remained in that capacity for another decade. He’s now published a memoir entitled Positively Center Street: My 25 Years at the Iron Horse Music Hall. His collaborator in this largely as-told-to volume is David Sokol, the former arts editor of The Valley Advocate.
Jazz bookings have declined since Herold left the Horse in 2004, but during his tenure the music was a “worthy constituent” of the club’s broad stylistic range. And it figures prominently in this scrapbook-like compendium, which includes Herold’s memories of club dates by Archie Shepp (who’s seen on-stage on the book’s cover), Stan Getz, Frank Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Pat Metheny, and local hero Marion Brown. One of the first images seen in this lavishly illustrated volume is of Amherst-born pianist Tom McClung and his early eighties quartet with Tim Moran, Joe Fonda, and Jay Conway.
Anyone reading this will already know that the music business is a complicated mess on the best of days. Herold makes no secret of that untidy fact as he recalls, sometimes with levity, at others with a sense of setting the record straight, that he was in the thick of a continually challenging environment with sensitive artists, fickle audiences, unpredictable weather, and bottom line demands. That he hung in there for 25 years is no small accomplishment, and the club largely reflects his vision down to the present day.
Herold and Sokol will celebrate the book’s publication at the Broadside in Northampton on Friday, and at World Eye Books in Greenfield on September 27. The book includes contributions from several “Other Voices,” including Carl Vigeland, who co-authored Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, and Lisa Danforth Gilson, a former publicist at the club and publisher of Lucille’s BluesLetter. I’m another voice, too. Here’s the article I wrote in 2004 that supplements Herold’s chapter about Stan Getz and Frank Morgan.
Iron Horse Memories
As I gather my thoughts in appreciation of the Iron Horse Music Hall’s silver anniversary, what first comes to mind is the extraordinary enhancement that the club brings to life in Northampton. Whenever friends near or far ask me what it is that makes life in my hometown exceptional, the Horse is always at or near the top. Other communities with populations as small as 30,000 may have great video stores and bakeries and cafes and independent cinemas and record stores and farmer’s markets and art galleries and community gardens and bookstores and film festivals. But few can boast of a nightclub that has managed to survive and thrive for 25 years with an amazing array of the world’s finest in jazz, blues, folk, zydeco, and the myriad other styles and stylists who have found their way to 20 Center Street.
For this jazz aficionado, it would be remarkable enough to hear the likes of Tommy Flanagan, Dave McKenna, Roland Hanna, Cecil Taylor, Steve Kuhn, Marcus Roberts, Eric Reed, Dr. John, Mose Allison, Pinetop Perkins, Joey Calderazzo, Kenny Barron, Paul Arslanian, Mulgrew Miller, Benny Green, Renee Rosnes, Danilo Perez, Geoff Keezer, Joanne Brackeen, George Cables, Horace Parlan, McCoy Tyner, Ronnie Matthews, Geri Allen, Ethan Iverson, Cyrus Chestnut, and Brad Mehldau at any venue. But to experience such bounty within minutes of one’s front door fosters genuine civic pride. And here I’m only scratching the surface of piano players heard at the Horse. A similarly long and impressive group of singers, trumpeters, saxophonists, drummers, guitarists, and blues harpists could also be compiled.
Here are a few unforgettable Iron Horse moments and memories: Wynton Marsalis playing a “Stardust” for the ages as his encore during a five-night stand in 1998; Richard Thompson leading a packed house in an a cappella version of “Twist and Shout” while restringing his guitar in April 2000 [the Thompson anthology, Watching the Dark, includes a few titles recorded at the Horse]; Taj Mahal leaving it to the audience to sing the menacing lyric of “Hey Joe” last summer; Delta blues legend Robert Jr. Lockwood greeting his step-father Robert Johnson’s relative Annye Anderson, who resides in Amherst, in 1990; and several performances in the 80’s by alto saxophonist Frank Morgan, heir apparent to Charlie Parker and a victim of California’s medieval drug laws, then making his first appearances outside the state in 40 years. Then there was the night when I stood virtually motionless for four hours in a cramped space in the rear corner of the club for Cassandra Wilson’s Iron Horse debut. And Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Archie Shepp, Woody Shaw, Anita O’Day, and Betty Carter are among the standard bearers who come readily to mind for their performances at the club.
There’ve been farewells and bon voyage celebrations for renowned local heroes Marion Brown and Tom McClung and Miro Sprague. And poignant memories too: The last time I saw the sadly diminished guitar hero Michael Bloomfield was at the Horse shortly before his death at age 37 in 1981; Laura Nyro singing her heart out months before her death in 1997; and inquiring of guitarist Charlie Baty, leader of Little Charlie & the Nightcats, the whereabouts of his sister Page, whom I’d known when she attended Smith College, and learning that she had died a few months earlier.
And always, always, always, and without fail, grateful acknowledgements from the performers themselves for the piano, the sound system, and the respectful and responsive patrons that the Horse both attracts and inspires.