Frankfurt photo #88 - Storyville

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frankfurtstoryville
In 1962, when Vespa was the height of cool...  Storyville on Stiftstaße 8-10, about 1.5km southeast of the Farben building, established in 1955 by Carlo Bohländer, named after Storyville in New Orleans, and featuring live performances by famous jazz musicians and groups including Lester Young, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, and the Modern Jazz Quartet*. Since it was larger than the Jazz Keller, it also served as a dance club. The building still stands but as of a 2008 Google street view, Storyville has been replaced by a LiDL supermarket. The word written in stone above the Johann Handel sign is PORZELLANWÄRE.

A different jazz club we went to more often in the early 1960s was the Jazzhaus† (thanks to Hans Freise for disambiguating these two places); it was (and apparently still is) at 12 Kleine Bockenheimer Straße‡ near the Goetheplatz: a bit beyond the Opernhaus as you go downtown and then turn left. The Jazzhaus was a tiny place, very narrow, so the tiny chairs and tables were on multiple floors and you had to go up a claus­trophobic ironwork spiral staircase to be seated. You placed and received your orders via a bucket on a pulley that went through holes in the floors. The music was recorded, not live as in Storyville and the Jazz Keller, but it was good: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, etc. Sorry, I don't have a 1960s photo of the Jazz Haus, but I do have a recent Google Street view screen capture‡; click here to see it.

* Carlo Bohländer, "The Evolution of Jazz Culture in Frankfurt", in Michael J. Budd, Jazz and the Germans, Pendragon Press, 2002, p.176.
Ibid, p.177: "For those jazz friends who want to associate and listen to jazz recordings, there has been since 1958 a very small bar called the Jazzhaus, which is located in an extremely 'narrow-chested' house built centuries ago."
12 Kleine Bockenheimer Straße, Google Maps, 16 August 2021.