Concerts in Los Angeles usually means a ticketed show at a venue with a support act, doors at eight and everyone out by eleven-thirty. There is a different circuit running underneath that one, older than most of the city's nightlife, where the music starts when the other rooms are emptying. Jazz and blues in Los Angeles have always been late-set traditions, and the second set — the one that starts around eleven and runs past midnight — is where the playing actually gets interesting.
The second set is a different show from the first and it is rarely advertised as one. Ask Karpo who is playing late near you tonight and what time the room actually fills.
The rooms that have been doing this longest
The Baked Potato at 3787 Cahuenga Boulevard in Studio City has been open since 1970, which makes it the oldest jazz club in Los Angeles. It is small, it runs two sets a night, and it serves enormous stuffed baked potatoes, which is not a gimmick so much as an accident of history that stuck. The room seats a few dozen people and the musicians who play it are frequently session players of a calibre that would fill a theatre under their own names.
Harvelle's in Santa Monica has been operating since 1931, making it the oldest live music venue on the Westside. It is a blues room at its core, dark and narrow, and the late sets there run properly late. Both of these places share a defining characteristic: they are small enough that there is no bad position and no separation between the audience and the band.
Leimert Park and the tradition that never left
Leimert Park in South Los Angeles is the historic centre of Black cultural life in the city and remains one of the most important places in Los Angeles for jazz. The World Stage, founded in the late 1980s by the drummer Billy Higgins and the poet Kamau Daáood, has functioned for decades as a performance space and workshop rather than a nightclub — no bar, no cover in the commercial sense, and a programme built around education and the music itself.
Going there is a different proposition from going to a club: it is a room where people are working. Check the schedule, arrive on time, and understand that the workshops and jam sessions are as much of the offer as the billed performances. It is also the single best answer to anyone who claims Los Angeles has no jazz scene.
The listening rooms
A newer category has grown up around small, seated, quiet rooms where the point is to listen rather than to drink — no talking during sets, small capacities, two sets a night. There is a cluster of these on the Westside and near the airport, which sounds unpromising and is actually one of the more interesting developments in Los Angeles music over the last decade: rooms sized at forty or fifty seats where the volume is acoustic and the audience is silent.
If you have found live jazz frustrating in bar settings, these are the rooms that solve it. Book ahead, because forty seats sell out, and arrive before the first set rather than between sets.
How to do a late night properly
Three practical things. Sets are almost always two, at roughly nine-thirty and eleven-thirty, and the second is usually looser, longer and better — the band has warmed up, the room has thinned, and what happens after midnight is frequently the reason the musicians came. Cover charges are typically modest, but many of these rooms have a drink minimum instead of or in addition to the cover, so budget for both. And plan the drive home: these rooms are scattered across Studio City, Santa Monica, Leimert Park and the airport corridor rather than concentrated in one district, which means a late set almost always ends with a twenty-minute drive across a city that is finally, briefly, empty of traffic.
How to behave in a small room
These rooms have conventions and they are not arbitrary. Talking through a set in a forty-seat listening room is genuinely disruptive in a way it is not in a bar, and the rooms that enforce quiet do so because the music is acoustic and the audience is close enough to hear a conversation three tables away. Applaud after solos rather than only at the end of a tune, which is the convention in jazz and is how a room signals to the players that it is paying attention. Do not photograph with a flash. And buy something — most of these venues run on thin margins and a room full of people nursing a single drink is how small clubs close.
Practical notes
The Baked Potato, 3787 Cahuenga Blvd, Studio City: open since 1970, the oldest jazz club in Los Angeles, two sets a night, small room, known for its stuffed baked potatoes. Harvelle's, Santa Monica: operating since 1931, the oldest live music venue on the Westside, blues-centred with genuinely late sets. The World Stage in Leimert Park: founded in the late 1980s by drummer Billy Higgins and poet Kamau Daáood, run as a performance and workshop space rather than a club — check the schedule and arrive on time. Small listening rooms on the Westside and near the airport seat forty to fifty, enforce quiet during sets and sell out, so book ahead and arrive before the first set. Sets typically run at about 9:30pm and 11:30pm, with the second looser and longer. Expect a modest cover plus a drink minimum in many rooms. Venues are scattered across Studio City, Santa Monica, Leimert Park and the airport corridor rather than clustered.
Tags: #Concerts #LosAngeles #Jazz #Blues #TheBakedPotato #Harvelles #LeimertPark #TheWorldStage #StudioCity #SantaMonica #LateNight #LiveMusicLA #ListeningRoom #NightOut
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
The late sets in Los Angeles are rarely listed clearly and the good ones are in rooms that hold forty people. Ask Karpo who is playing after eleven near you tonight, whether the second set is the one to catch, and how long the drive home is once the room empties out.
