Talk About a Dive
The sun will never shine in Jimmy's Restaurant, the bistro down a flight of metal stairs on 7th Street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue, where Dee Pop's Freestyle Jazz series holds court Thursday nights. "We're going for the speakeasy look," said the waitress who brought me scrumptious pan-seared scallops, and they've succeeded-it's easy to walk past the place without even knowing it's there. Even inside you might not realize there's a music room through a heavy curtain, except for the glow of sound once the serious jazzers start to blow.
A couple weeks ago saxophonist Steve Lehman led his quartet with impressive trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, knockout drummer Tyshawn Sorey (he applied something like Elvin Jones' diffusion of the beat to the basic blues shuffle) and ever-fluid bassist Drew Gress, linking the venue with other small but daring presenters such as Brooklyn's Barbes, Philadelphia's Ars Nova Workshop (winner of this year's ASCAP award for "adventurous programming"), New Haven's Firehouse 12 and the annual Festival de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Canada. This Thursday night, alto saxist Michaël Attias and tenor saxist Tony Malaby perform in a piano-less quartet, and subsequent weeks in May feature combos with saxophonists David Aaron and Ellery Eskelin, trumpeter Roy Campbell, bassist Hilliard Greene, drummers Gerry Hemingway and Dee Pop himself, pounder for the cult fave no-wave band Bush Tetras (who previously held three years of Sunday "freestyle" sessions at the lower-level CBGB's Gallery).
"Freestyle," though, is a bit of a misnomer. Dee Pop books few raw-splat improvisers, but rather players who conceive their original music free from the constraints of convention. The great drummer, Max Roach, used to rail at jazz always being shuttled into basements, which he took as a sign of disrespect; he wouldn't enter them. There are benefits, though, in the focus provided by a small, low-ceiled room: a cheap ($10) cover charge and one-drink minimum. Places like Jimmy's (Cornelia Street is another one) promote our underground culture.