Smalls Jazz Club

Overview

A $10-cover, no-liquor-license basement room opened in 1994 by Mitchell Borden that became an incubator for modern jazz, home to all-night jam sessions and a decade of Frank Hewitt at the piano; its SmallsLIVE webstream has since archived over 15,000 recordings.

Smalls Jazz Club occupies a low-ceilinged basement at 183 West 10th Street, opened on May 20, 1994 by Mitchell 'Mitch' Borden, a former U.S. Navy submariner, registered nurse, philosopher, and jazz violinist whose approach to running a club was closer to that of a believer than an operator. The original room had no liquor license; a $10 cover (sometimes waived) bought you the right to bring your own beer and stay until dawn, with music running nightly from 10:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. in a room that held perhaps 50 people. In an era when West Village real estate still permitted such idealism, Borden booked the room on generosity rather than revenue, and the result was a proving ground without precedent in New York jazz: an address where Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Ari Hoenig, Avishai Cohen, Roy Hargrove, Norah Jones, and dozens of others hammered out their voices. The presiding spirit of that first era was Frank Hewitt (October 23, 1935 – September 5, 2002), a hard-bop pianist from Queens who had worked with John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington in the 1950s and 1960s but who arrived at Smalls largely unrecorded and under-recognized. Hewitt became the house pianist for nine years, playing two or three nights a week, and in his final years lived in a stripped-out walk-in refrigerator in the back of the club. Pianists traveled from around the world specifically to hear him. At his death he had no known living relatives and no albums under his own name; it was the Smalls scene that finally captured him. Luke Kaven founded Smalls Records in part to document Hewitt, releasing We Loved You and Not Afraid to Live (material recorded in 2001 and 2002) along with a label catalogue that extended the club's commitment to documentation into vinyl. Financial pressures brought the first chapter to a close on May 31, 2003: Borden cited post-9/11 attendance decline, a rent spike, and Mayor Bloomberg's 2003 smoking ban. The space passed briefly to a Brazilian restaurateur who renamed it The Rio Bar before failing. Borden returned as manager; by February 2007, jazz pianist Michael 'Spike' Wilner and his partner Lee Kostrinsky bought in, renovating the basement, installing a full bar (cover raised to $20), and (crucially) launching the live webstream that has since recorded every performance. Kostrinsky exited in 2011; Wilner became sole owner, with Borden continuing until his retirement in 2019. In 2014 Wilner opened Mezzrow, a piano-room companion venue at 163 West 10th Street named after the clarinetist Milton 'Mezz' Mezzrow, with a single $20 ticket admitting entry to both clubs. The SmallsLIVE archive (broadcast live and available to subscribers in replay) now holds over 15,000 recordings by more than 4,000 musicians. The SmallsLIVE Foundation, established as a nonprofit in 2018, funds subsidies, recordings, educational programs, and touring. The room itself remains what it has always been: capacity around 60, subterranean, close. Distinct in name and ownership from Smalls Paradise, the Harlem club that operated from 1925 to 1986.

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