Around 9:30 on a Tuesday night, the Ortlieb's jam session is up and running. It's a smaller crowd than usual, but it's still early. On stage, a quartet: Doug Hirlinger on drums, Sid Simmons on piano, Mike Boone on bass, and Pete Souders, the club's owner, on tenor sax. They play the kind of jazz that seems most fit for a crowded, smoky late-night club: a mid-tempo, shuffling drum beat, loping bass lines, a sax part more assiduous than manic.
It is, on some level, a typical Tuesday night at Ortlieb's Jazzhaus, where up-and-coming jazz musicians can join established Philadelphia talents for an informal performance. Though weekend dates attract bigger acts, the free-form session has become one of the club's unique features. And it's made the Northern Liberties space a priming ground for aspiring artists. "We started the Tuesday jam session the week I opened [in September. 1987]," Souders remembers. "We instituted the music policy almost immediately."
"It's one of those rare kinds of environments where people who want to learn how to do this could actually interact with and play with really serious musicians," reflects Tom Moon, former music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Ortlieb's is a restaurant as much as a club, and it lacks the dark, smokey atmosphere of the typical underground jazz house. But the club is rooted in the history of the music - and it's made some history itself. The photos that line its cedar walls bear witness to the legends who have performed on its stage: Shirley Scott, Mickey Roker, Bootsie Barnes.
A mixed crowd spreads out across the room. Two college-age guys sit close to the stage, looking on with reverence; couples and some families sit nearby. At the bar, the patrons seem mostly regulars. A middle-aged black man walks gingerly out towards the door: "We good?" Joseph, the bartender on duty, returns a knowing look. "We always good, baby!"
The set continues. Souders periodically steps off stage and sits at a table close by. His eyes, vacant, shift from the door to the band. He plays Tuesday nights almost every week, but tonight the kindly, searching gaze has added, if unconscious, meaning.
This month, Pete Souders will sell the jazz house he's owned for 19 years.
Just off the corner of North Third and Poplar is the small, three-story building where Ortlieb's has made its home. A free-standing chalkboard rests a few feet from the door, advertising the upcoming schedule. The curiously blue, shingled fa‡ade lies sandwiched between the remains of the beer brewery from which it gets its name. On one side, a chain-link fence surrounds the mammoth abandoned bottling plant, its windows broken and walls scrawled with graffiti. From behind, a faded painted sign on high reads: "Henry F. Ortlieb Brewhouse." To the right sits an abandoned lot where the brewery plant once stood.
Not far, on Poplar and American, stands a street sign marking a historic site: "America's First Lager": John Wagner, 1840. The ruins stand as remnants of the area's rich history, but they only tell half the story.
At Ground Floor, a hip nearby coffee house, a platinum-haired twenty-something seemed unsure what to think about the neighborhood jazz club. "It feels like a different world in there, you know?" TV on the Radio pulses in the background. She concedes: "I was actually thinking about dropping off an application."
"The whole place could use to be gutted and redesigned," considers Shawn Hennessy, a musician and teacher who lives above Ground Floor. "But it probably won't - just because of its history." He fronts the local Afro-Cuban ensemble Leana Song, appearing at Ortlieb's Monday night sessions once a month. The group, whose style he says is "completely different" from the Ortlieb's paradigm, reflects a burgeoning local music community - and a lucrative new consumer base. "We received nothing but support from the owners because we brought a lot of younger people." He declares, "We're still the most popular act on Monday nights."
Joseph, who's worked the bar for 19 years, muses, "People come from far away just for this."
But with a younger, more vibrant neighborhood, he acknowledges: "It's not as productive as it should be. Sometimes I get here at 5, and I get no customers till 9." Among employees and patrons there seems to be a common refrain: Ortlieb's needs to "move into the 21st century."
Though jazz will remain the club's heart, renovation is the new ownership's priority. The kitchen and bathrooms will be redone, the paint restored, more beers added to the tap. "Everyone knows and loves the jazz," acknowledges owner-to-be Kevin Mayberry, a Northern Liberties resident. "We want it to be a dining destination." But the character of the club will remain unchanged: "The walls will still be cedar."
"I'm hoping that they can really take advantage of the fact that there's more vibrancy in this neighborhood," Souders acknowledges. Though, he admits, until this point he's rarely felt especially strong community support.
Mayberry, who purchased Ortlieb's along with partners Deep Logani and Andrey Myketev, stresses:
"We like the fact that we're buying a piece of history."
"History" seems the buzz word when people describe Ortlieb's. Greats from the older jazz eras still come in regularly. Framed copies of classic albums line the walls. The room even pays tribute to its namesake, the now-defunct brewery. Fifties-style beer signs grace the entrance and bar, most adorned with the typical winking middle-aged man, smiling a shade too brilliantly. On each table sits a mini-bottle with the Ortlieb's logo, a red oval with white script. But they're filled with water now, vases for white tulips.
Ortlieb's is essentially one long room. A bar stands right by the entrance with perhaps 15 stools. Tables form a ring around the stage, a slightly raised platform which juts out awkwardly into the middle of the room. On an earlier Sunday, Souders almost knocks down a flutist's stand as he leads me to the back of the room for coffee.
The club's cramped feel - Lawful Capacity: 55 - and somewhat dated facilities add to its mystique, its aura of authenticity. In 2000, The Washington Post wrote: "Jazz is meant to be heard in a place like Ortlieb's."
Souders, now 63, didn't inherit this well-entrenched landmark of live music. He and his ex-wife, Margaret, founded it on their own initiative and worked for visibility. And as he might see it, next to the rich, long history of jazz in Philadelphia, 20 years is hardly any time at all.
"I felt like there was a dichotomy at that time," Souders remembers of the time. "There was either the yuppie joint; everybody's back's turned to [the musicians] and they're behind a potted plant. Or on the other hand, the ghetto organ bars, where there was great music, but if I go in there I'm integrating the place. [There were] those two extremes." The smaller clubs, he remembers, "didn't even have a kitchen. You go in, pay for the music with the drinks. The musicians get paid next to nothing."
Ortlieb's served to bridge the gap from the very beginning. Tom Moon, a regular between 1988 and 1998, explained how Souders immediately set his club apart from the competition. "The thing that Pete did, very much against the trend in jazz club land, is that he wanted it to be a low-budget experience. He understood that not everyone has the money to go to a place like Zanzibar Blue and drop $150 on dinner and hear a set of music. He's a player himself; he understood that a club environment like Zanzibar, while it's beautiful, isn't necessarily the best environment for musicians. His basically taking this hole-in-the-wall brewery town bar, sort of the factory bar, and making it into a place for jazz was exactly in the spirit of some of the great jazz lounges in all sorts of cities, certainly Philadelphia in the 50s and 60s."
The comparison has to be flattering for Souders, always ready to wax nostalgic about Philadelphia's "golden era," the age of John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, and Jimmy McGriff. "If there are two or three rooms now, there were six or seven then, running all week. Music was all over the place then. It's like a lost era."
At the time, Souders had just retired early from a computer programming position at Sun Oil Company. He used connections from gigs in Philadelphia and the outlying suburbs, particularly Delaware County, to recruit the initial acts. His lucky break came from organist Shirley Scott, who by that time had established herself as a major name in American jazz. "She was impressed by the fact that I wanted to run music every night. She thought that was a commitment to being a serious jazz club." Her trio would remain an Ortlieb's regular for the good part of the next ten years.
From the beginning, the club was one of only a few to feature live music five or six nights a week. Within the past few years, it's expanded to seven, incorporating a more eclectic Monday night series organized by some of Souders's staff.
Ortlieb's has also become a kind of practical center for jazz education. Says Moon, "People studying at University of the Arts, Temple.they get a piece of what a session was like with a really good rhythm section. And they learn the etiquette of the music - how to act in a club."
Twice a week, Souders offers young players the opportunity to perform alongside the Haus Band, or players like Mickey Roker, Bobby Durham, and Oren Evans. "Everybody that plays here a lot is a mentor, whether they admit it to themselves or not." Ortlieb's is blessed with a group of mentors who both set a high standard of musicianship and make themselves accessible to budding talent.
At the bar, Joseph, admittedly "not a jazz fan," reminisces: "I've literally seen 15-year-olds come onstage and come back ten years later as pros."
"You learn by doing," says Moon. "And if you're going to do it by being in clubs, then you need to be around people who can really play. That's where I think clubs like Ortlieb's made a huge contribution."
At times, the club can seem like it's spent too much time under the lens of its chroniclers. The employees, Souders himself even, seem wary, maybe a bit blas‚ at the prospect of another writer coming in the door, preparing a new profile. But for all its storied history, for all the concern about preserving its sanctity, Ortlieb's is hardly an artifact. It's a living, breathing entity, a meeting ground for the old and new. It's where the next generation of jazz talent is being born.
* * * *
One Sunday afternoon in December, Ortlieb's opens its doors early to celebrate the kick-off for an instrument drive for Intercultural Families Services, a Saturday morning music program for disadvantaged children. No more than ten people are seated at tables near the stage; a few regulars sit slumped over at the bar. Around 3 p.m., an older man with a mother and child walk in and sit down. He leans over the table as they settle in, "I love it here!"
Tanya Limosnero, a young bartender at the club, takes the stage to discuss the drive and thank those who made it out. With charming, bubbling enthusiasm, she declares, "Jazz is a beautiful thing!" Before she steps down, she extends a vote of confidence, even appreciation, to the new owners, one of whom sits matter-of-factly in the back of the room, shuffling papers with a partner. A plaintive, hopeful look comes over Limosnero's face, but the two men continue their business, giving no sign that they've heard anything she's said.
Long-time patrons, Souders readily acknowledges, are uneasy about his departure. (Technically, though, he'll still be around, as an advisor and performer.) Discussing the upcoming sale, he tends to be pragmatic, maybe a residual trait from his days as an engineer. "Selling a business is much, much harder than quitting a job. My fear was: what happens if I get sick? My best bet if I want to see the continuation of the institution, if you want to call it that: at least [try] to uphold the principles as close as possible. This looks like the opportunity to do that."
Moon doesn't know the new owners, but remains wary: "One of the strokes of genius of Pete was this sense that it wasn't going to be a starch-shirt room. We'll see what they do. My advice to them would be: don't lose that. Because you want to have a place where musicians can feel like they can come in if they don't have a lot of money in their pocket and spend an evening."
Mayberry, for his part, seems eager to continue the tradition. "We're keeping it jazz, and we're going to keep it true to its roots. Pete's passed us the torch."
Souders figures, from this point on, he can make do financially without putting in a club owner's long hours. Retirement will mean more time with his family - and more time with his instrument. Even after years of performances and practice, he feels there's more progress to be made. "I'm getting closer to being what I consider to be a jazz musician capable of playing cogent jazz, playing the changes the right way."
Maybe it's a fitting ending that he's letting Ortlieb's go to pursue his first passion. "A lot of people have described their moment of epiphany, their moment of saying 'God damn, that's what I want to do!'" What about his? "Oh, shit yeah," he exclaims, remembering how he discovered Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins at a local record and appliance store. "I just went nuts when I heard 'Mood Indigo'."
So Souders for now is sticking to the sax, just as he did forty years ago, when it all began.
