Something that should be understood about Cleveland, Ohio. The people who live there like to bowl. They're in leagues, the factory or plant or hospital where they work belongs to a league; their church is in a league. That's just the way it is. Except for some oddballs, everyone whom I knew when growing up had his or her own bowling ball.
The mayor of Cleveland was once invited to Jimmy Carter's White House for a conference on urban issues. He refused as it was his wife's league night and they were contenders. Even the mayor's political opponents understood. The White House will always be there, but a potential league championship is a rarity.
However, on the corner of West 25th Street was something the likes of which no one had ever seen: A failed bowling alley. In Cleveland. Really.
So, although it was completely equipped with fifteen lanes and surfacing that would guarantee at least a few perfect games a year, even if those wouldn't be certified by the PBA, it was considered odd that no one wanted to take over a turn-key business in an excellent location neat the Interstate.
Except the obvious, of course. For a bowling alley to fail in Cleveland, that meant it was built on a tribal burial ground or something equally as cursed. The place was so snake-bit that no one would ever make it into a bowling alley again.
However, there is one medium that deals successfully with curses, hard luck, the works of Satan, and the like, even turning such experiences into art, and that's music. In 1971, the bowling alley became, after a lot of renovation, The Smiling Dog Saloon, the last outpost of jazz in Ohio, Indiana, and western Pennsylvania.
The decline of jazz is one of the sadder portions of 20th century history, given that it is as American a creation as one may enjoy, made up of the bits and pieces of the vast history and range of cultural experience contained in our shared experience. While jazz commanded the airwaves and the record sales, was presented by small combos in intimate spaces and large orchestras in vast dance halls, by the 1970's, when one could no longer dance to the jazz that had become sullenly introspective, it was supplanted by rock music and its various sub-genres.
Even in Cleveland, that had its own form of jazz based around the Hammond B3 organ, the number of jazz clubs had been reduced from over one hundred to, well, one.
A ordinary soul might despair, but Rodger Bohn, the owner of The Smiling Dog, thought it merely meant that they would have little competition. He was right. Over the next decade, the Dog would host Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea with Return to Forever, Stanley Clarke, Sun Ra; Weather Report, Stan Getz, Mose Allison, Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden, Cannonball Adderly, Yusef Lateef, and even the comedian Martin Mull. One night, although not a jazz group, Lynyrd Skynyrd even made an appearance.
Even if one doesn't know jazz, at least a few of those names are recognizable. The very notion of seeing Miles Davis for $6, when it would have cost $50 in NYC, and be able to sit at a table with a $5 pitcher of beer while he played mere feet away from you, seems incomprehensible.
Welcome to Cleveland, city of incomprehensibility.
Since I began sneaking into The Dog when I was fifteen or so, owing to my mature appearance and really good fake ID, I was able to catch many of the seminal jazz performers in an intimate atmosphere that permitted the audience an opportunity to observe the singular creative process of improvisation unfold before them. As Miles Davis once said, "Do not fear mistakes; there are none", one could see him weave around and through any lost moment of melody, any fouling of the blue notes, and seize some transposed, multi-key emotion from those discords. It was terrific.
Unfortunately, it wasn't profitable. The Smiling Dog Saloon closed before that decade was over and that corner of West 25th would fall quiet for another twenty years until gentrifying entrepreneurs would discover the neighborhood. I believe the former site of so much jazz history is now a dental office.
My two favorite acts at The Dog were Jimmy McGriff, since I'm partial to the Hammond B3, and particularly Sun Ra, my moment with whom is to be found elsewhere in The Coracle.
The good news is, since the closing of that last jazz club in what was once a lively city for performances, a dozen new places have been developed in and around the metro area that still attract the music genre's leading lights. And, when fond reminiscence is made by those artists in their twilight, often The Smiling Dog is mentioned with appreciation for what it did to keep jazz alive, and the venue that it provided for fans of the music.