The spring fundraiser for the Aurora Historical Society is an evening at a re-created speakeasy in downtown Aurora.

The “Joe Sent Me” speakeasy event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, March 10, 2017, in the lower level lounge of Support Techs, a technology company, at 1 East Benton St.

Still life with bottles and instruments, taken at a rehearsal for “Joe Sent Me” fundraiser. (CREDIT: Aurora Historical Society)

There will be refreshments and cocktails of the era.  A seven-piece band led by John and Lori Klatt will provide jazz and rags from the 1920s, many of which are being celebrated this year during the centennial of America’s first jazz recordings.

The building served as the city’s public library for more than a century, and the new owners have opened up the walls of the basement, once the Young People’s Department, to reveal the original stone walls, windows and door openings as they appeared in 1904 when Andrew Carnegie funded the project.

Tickets are $45 per person ($40 for AHS members) and may be purchased online at www.aurorahistory.net or by calling 630-906-0650.

Reservations are required, and period dress is welcome.

Event Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Jazz Music

Cornetist Nick LaRocca and trombonist Eddie Edwards at a 1917 recording session for Victor Talking Machine Records in New York. (CREDIT: Photo courtesy of Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.)

The historic jazz that “Joe Sent Me” speakeasy patrons will hear on March 10 is having its own moment just now.

It was exactly 100 years ago on Feb. 26 that the first “jass” recording was made by five New Orleans musicians at the Victor Talking Machine Company studio in New York  City.

(CREDIT: Aurora Historical Society)

John and Lori Klatt, the husband-and-wife musical team who will be bringing a seven-piece band to play at the speakeasy, have 39 of the most important historic jazz numbers on their playlist for the evening, including “Livery Stable Blues” — the first “jass” record that, overnight, skyrocketed the new musical form into the American consciousness.

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, those musicians blowing into awkward metal funnels to concentrate the vibrations of their sound so a stylus could cut into a soft wax master disc, became responsible for a new American music. The social constrictions of the day were pushed far into the background by a new freedom of expression like the improvisation, bent tones, conversational structure and special effects of the new music.

John Klatt and his associates are musicologists as well as performers, and have an enormous repertoire of American music dating back to colonial days.

“As luck would have it,” Klatt chuckles, “we have recently been researching and arranging early jazz,  so this call from the historical society to musically create a 1920s speakeasy could not have come at a better time.”

Klatt and his group will perform at the Aurora Historical Society’s “Joe Sent Me” spring fundraiser.  The new owners of the building, Support Techs, have created a lower level lounge that exposes the stone walls and original windows of the 1904 Carnegie-funded building.

SOURCE: Aurora Historical Society news release