Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club

Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club on Frith Street in London is a world-renowned music venue established in 1959 that hosted Jimi Hendrix’s final public performance in 1970. Founded by saxophonists Ronnie Scott and Pete King, the club relocated from Gerrard Street to Soho in 1965. Over six decades, it has hosted legendary musicians including Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Prince, and Amy Winehouse.

London · from the walk “Canvas & Cobblestones” · audio ~4 min · Generated

47 Frith Street, London W1D 4HT

Which iconic guitarist gave his final public performance at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in 1970?

Look at this unassuming doorway here on Frith Street. Number forty-seven. There's no grand marquee, no towering columns... just a simple entrance that has, for over six decades, served as a portal into one of the most important music rooms on Earth. This is Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.......... The man behind it all was Ronnie Scott, born Ronald Schatt in nineteen twenty-seven, a British jazz tenor saxophonist with an extraordinary origin story. As a young musician, he worked on the Cunard liner Queen Mary, sailing back and forth across the Atlantic, just so he could sneak into the bebop clubs of New York City. Imagine that! A teenager from London's East End, playing dance music on a cruise ship by day... and haunting fifty-second Street jazz joints by night. At The Three Deuces, he watched Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and even joined Dizzy Gillespie for a late-night jam session.......... That experience changed everything. In October nineteen fifty-nine, Scott and fellow saxophonist Pete King opened their club in a basement on Gerrard Street. The space had been a taxi drivers' hangout with billiard tables and a tea counter. With a thousand-pound loan from Scott's stepfather, they painted the room, built a tiny bandstand, and bought some second-hand furniture.......... By nineteen sixty-five, they'd moved here to Frith Street, and This is where the magic truly exploded. The clientele included Harold Pinter, the Beatles, Peter O'Toole, and Spike Milligan. And here's a detail most people miss... Ronnie Scott himself played the saxophone solo on the Beatles' single "Lady Madonna" in nineteen sixty-eight, and later the tenor sax solo on Phil Collins' "I Missed Again."

...... But the story that Haunts these walls... happened on September sixteenth, nineteen seventy. Eric Burdon, the former Animals frontman, had teamed up with the band War for a residency here. That evening, Jimi Hendrix showed up for the second set, and played moving, dramatic phrases across their covers of "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road." It was his Final public performance. He passed away less than forty-eight hours later.......... And Ronnie himself? He was the club's master of ceremonies, famous for his bone-dry wit. One of his legendary introductions went something like... "Our next guest is one of the finest musicians in the country. In the city, he's crap."

...... There's a brilliant twist to how American stars ended up here. In the early sixties, union rules demanded that a British act play the US for every American act brought to England. Then in nineteen sixty-four, the Beatles launched the British Invasion, and suddenly there were so many English rockers wanting US tours that top American jazz stars lined up to play Ronnie's. As Pete King once bragged... the bargain of the century was Sonny Rollins for the Sex Pistols.......... Today, from Miles Davis and Nina Simone to Prince and Amy Winehouse, some of the world's greatest artists have played on this stage. Step past that door on any given night, and you'll understand why this small room in Soho remains a living, breathing gallery of sound.

Nearby stories