Gramophone Dreams

Last night, I sat on a bright yellow velveteen sofa eating red beans and rice while listening for three hours to blues and jazz from rare 78rpm records. I walked out feeling gospel-level raised up, with a head full of dreams and cultural memories.

The Hot Club of New York
Matthew Rivera's Hot Club of New York is on the third floor of an old commercial building at 20 W 20th Street, across from what used to be the Limelight Club (footnote 1). The walk from the F Train at 23rd Street generated a Rolodex of memories from watching this neighborhood evolve during my 50 years traipsing the streets above Union Square. But those memories didn't prepare me for Matthew's passionately curated mise-en-scène inside the Hot Club of New York. The listening room was fitted with stuffed brown leather chairs, a famous yellow sofa, and period-correct Asian rugs. The lighting was shadowy, like in movies from the 1930s. The walls were lined with black discs in brown sleeves. Matthew fit the scene perfectly in his sleeveless argyle sweater.

Right away, my brain locked on to the room's sensuous feel. How could every detail be so hip style-wise and so cozy comfortwise? I could not stop focusing on the wall color, so I asked Matthew, what is that? "It's actually three colors that we layered in different washes. First a terracotta color was rolled on, then a reddish wash was sponged over that. Then finally a brown wash was rubbed on. It should be mentioned that my friends Clare Fentress and Andrew Billingsley are truly responsible for the look of the space. They run a New York–based design collective called Acritarchy. I gave my input, but their expertise, which they gave pro bono, not to mention labor and commitment, really pulled it all together in a matter of about one month! We started with a blank canvas on April 15 and opened on May 28."

Before the club's unofficial 8pm start, Matthew engaged his audience with absorbing recollections, creating a strong glad-to-be-there, "we-mind" vibe. While minds were melding in the front, JaRon Eames's sublime red beans and rice and corn bread were amping up the pleasure factor in the back. Besides being a charismatic Louisiana chef, JaRon Eames is also a jazz and blues vocalist (footnote 2).

Another reason Matthew fascinates me is that although he is a 78 collector, he started out buying 45s, as I did, then migrated to collecting 78s, where he's lingered and gone all in. Which means that Matthew, who is still quite young, has devoted a major portion of his youth to listening to individual songs on discs that play three to four minutes per side. That's a specialized form of music listening distinguished by its rhythms of attention and "hands on" physicality.

Matthew (above) is a natural-born presenter, a pro-level radio deejay/historian/storyteller with charm and sharp intellect. He worked with and was mentored by Phil Schaap at Columbia University's jazz-focused radio station WKCR (footnote 3).

At the Hot Club, music from 78s felt disarmingly raw and unadulterated and so foot-tappingly danceable that when I went home to my flimsy LPs, they seemed hesitant transient-wise and droopy punch and dynamics-wise. They were also, in a way, less transparent. At 78rpm, Chess Records star Howlin' Wolf was presented at full height and full volume, with vocal immediacy today's audiophiles can't imagine.

Matthew uses a single Harry Olson–designed RCA LC-1 loudspeaker in its original 1949 cabinet on a step-high stage where the sharp-focus "sweet spot" is everywhere in the room. A score of listeners can all experience the same quality of exquisitely detailed sound. This full-room mono spread relaxes listeners while directing their minds toward the music's artistic content.

The Hot Club's constantly evolving sound system was wisely and tastefully created not to be period correct, but to show these artists and their recordings in the best possible light.

Last Monday's session examined the career of Victoria Spivey, a dynamic, charismatic singer-songwriter and musical force during the 78 era and a blues artist I've admired since high school, when I worked in a record store.

Arriving at precisely 7:27pm, huddling expectantly in the hall with other guests, I felt like I was sneaking into a speakeasy. Matthew opened the door and greeted everybody at exactly 7:30. Approximately half the guests were female. Ages ranged from 21 or so to old as me. To my delight, these folks presented like hep cats: artists, writers, musicians, scholars, collectors, and celebrities on the down low. None needed fashion tips. The Hot Club's red-walled warmth and cozy lighting fostered a sense of intimacy that made me want to come back next week and get to know these people.

Matthew presented his rare shellacs as archeological artifacts to be studied as well as enjoyed. He played one Victoria Spivey recording three times, to make sure visitors had a chance to notice all of its good stuff. Each time it finished, everyone was grinning and applauding vigorously, ready to discuss the performance they just witnessed.

This is what listening to records is like at a music salon as opposed to an audio salon. In that regard, Matthew Rivera's Hot Club is doing exactly the kind of jazz education, outreach, and social promotion as its venerable namesake, the Hot Club de France, a famous jazz listening club founded in Paris in 1932 (footnote 4). Matthew emphasizes that he is not trying to show people what it sounded like to hear these discs originally, because not many people during that era would have had the opportunity to hear 78s with this quality of sound.

His record player isn't period. It's a professional-grade Technics SP-1510 (ca 1980) with a 12" SME 3012 tonearm and a new Miyajima Laboratory Kotetu mono moving coil cartridge ($655), which has a 0.4mil conical stylus and a 4 ohm internal impedance. He is using a Robyatt Audio MC-2 mono step-up transformer. Before the Miyajima, Matthew was using a Stanton 500 with swappable stylus tips measuring from 1.5mil to 3.5mil.

Matthew runs the MC-2's output into a McIntosh C20 preamp from 1960 then on to an RCA SP-20 MI-12191 power amplifier, which sports four period-correct 6V6 RCA tubes. Chief Audio Wizard Harry Olson designed this push-pull, parallel-feedback amplifier to power RCA's original LC-1 coaxial speakers. One of those speakers, also designed by Olson, was the source of this night's sound. Neither of these professional-grade components were released for home use.

After experiencing this system six times, Stereophile Contributing Editor Ken Micallef told me by text, "I've never heard music sound that alive. The energy was like the big bang, right there in the room. That Ghanian record, the way it captured the weirdness of their harmonies. It had a very special energy I've never heard before.

"It also captured the touchstones of the various solos. Those musicians had entirely different references than contemporary musicians. They were weird or odd or more connected to the Earth in some way. ... The Hot Club's system showed all that. It was kind of spooky."

When Ken asked me what I thought, my answer came easy. "I feel the same as you: Matthew's system has a raw, high-energy presence and an unfiltered clarity that allows instruments and performers to sound spooky real." It's my kind of sound.

Locked on
Matthew is an experienced deejay, so he knew in advance that the first two discs he played, "Daybreak Express" by Duke Ellington (1934) and "I Cover the Waterfront" by Tony Scott (1953), would smoke craniums and trounce expectations about what 100-year-old recordings might sound like. I swear to you, when he played "Boodle Am Shake" by the Dixieland Jug Blowers (1926) and "Feather Bed" by Cannon's Jug Stompers (1928), my cheeks were soaked in "oh my God" tears, marveling at these artists' creative powers as well as the uncanny immediacy of both group's blowing, singing, and stoned-out stomping.

These discs prompted waves of crazy cultural memories. For example, during "Boodle Am Shake," I remembered being at a big Sound by Singer demo, trying my best to block out some vapid female vocalist by imagining 1920s jug band music with dirty lyrics, kazoos, washtub bass, washboard rhythms, and clay-jug fart sounds coming out of Andy's gillion-dollar audiophile system. It was fun.

When Matthew asked what kind of blues I liked, I told him "country blues," but I also bragged that I remembered playing Howlin' Wolf 78s in my basement when I was 15. "So, if you've got any of those ..." Matthew responded by spinning Wolf 's "I Asked for Water" from 1956. Compared to suave male vocalists like Frank Sinatra and Johnny Hartman, Howlin' Wolf is a too-tall raging beast from Chicago. That night at the Hot Club, the Wolf-beast was in the room, stomping the floor in front of the speaker for four unforgettable minutes. When this Wolf side finished, the room remained respectfully silent.

Matthew closed out the night playing Ghanaian Highlife music by the Kumasi Trio (1926). This vividly recorded, made-in-Africa disc satisfied every one of my musical, emotional, cultural, ethnographic, and audiophile desires. It gave off life-enhancing energy.

In retrospect
I am struggling to find words to describe to readers the character of the sound that came out of Matthew's Hot Club system (see this video). I've experienced a lot of serious-level vintage audio, but never a system that could more accurately portray what went down in front of the microphones. A voice in my head kept repeating, "That music sounds as real as it possibly can."

I should mention in closing that, compared to playing mono via two speakers, which projects images backwards and between the speakers, the single, direct-radiating LC-1 presented performers' images near to but distinctly in front of its grille cloth: life-sized, extraordinarily solid, and—as Ken Micallef said—Big bang alive!

Besides the dynamic demo, the décor, and the room full of beautiful Pilgrims, what I enjoyed most about the Hot Club was the fun vibe of listening to recordings at a music salon instead of an audio salon. Thank you, Matthew, for creating this high-coolosity pilgrimage site.

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Footnote 1: The Hot Club of New York, 20 W. 20th St., Ste. 307, New York, NY 10011. Email: contact@hotclubny.com.

Footnote 2: Eames is also the author of Historical Jazz Conversations and other books and hosts The JaRon Eames Show on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network's—MNN for short—Culture Channel. It streams Saturday nights at 11:30pm. See mnn.org/tv-schedule.

Footnote 3: Known because of its power as the "blowtorch of the northeast," WKCR is a wonderfully idiosyncratic station that often—typically on birthdays—has 24-hour marathons during which they only play work by a particular jazz musician. WKCR broadcasts at 89.9 in NYC and is available streaming (at a regrettably low bitrate) on all the major internet radio apps.

Footnote 4: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Club_de_France.