Sat 3/16 @ 5-7PM
Starting in the 1970s, Cleveland has had quite a few concert clubs where patrons could see up-and-coming rock bands, jazz acts, singer-songwriters, blues artists and more. The legendary Agora, the Smiling Dog, the Pirate’s Cove/Peabody’s Down Under, the Phantasy, Babylon a Go Go, and later the Euclid Tavern, the Grog Shop and the Beachland Ballroom all gave up-and-coming acts as well as those with specialized audiences a stage on which to perform.
But in the 60s, the only place to go was LaCave, located on Euclid between East 105th and East 107th, an area long since swallowed up by the constantly metastasizing Cleveland Clinic. Back then it was a basement space that began as a folk club and ended as a showcase room for blues-rock, psychedelic and other rising rock acts.
WRUW-FM folk show host Steve Traina tells the whole story in his valuable new book, La Cave: Cleveland’s Legendary Music Club and the ’60’s Folk-to-Rock Revolution. With access to the papers and records of both of the club’s bookers/managers, the late Stan Cain and Larry Bruner (now in poor health and in nursing care, his archive was given to Traina by his nephew Michael Bruner), he provides all the facts, figures and dates, outlining the club’s trajectory from its inauspicious 1962 opening to its always-precarious mid-60s success to its bowing to inevitable changes in July 1969.
Despite being underage, Traina frequented La Cave in its waning days of 1967-69, thanks to an older sister, but he didn’t really meet Stan or Larry until years later.
“When I met Stan officially in 2009, I shook his hand and said, I snuck into your club many times,” relates Traina. “With a little glint in his eye, that elfish look, and he said, ‘you didn’t sneak in.’ They let us in because we had money and acted like we were lucky to be there and might get kicked out, so we toed the line.”
Connecting with the two men who fueled the club’s success and reputation led to a two-day La Cave reunion in 2010 at the old Wilbert’s downtown.
“After the reunion I found out from Larry and Stan they were like packrats,” Traina continues. “They had cancelled checks, contracts, correspondence with the stars and their agents. I said, ‘you have to tell this story.’ I waited around. Then I looked at myself. And Stan and Larry gave me all the memorabilia. I became the world’s leading authority on La Cave because I had all their stuff.
Originally conceived by a group of businessmen, of whom Nelson Karl was the primary, ongoing partner, they lucked upon Cain, whose charm and schmoozing talent brought together the artists who gave the club its reputation as the place to be. While Bob Dylan never played there, many of the early ’60s folkies who were part of the same scene did — Tom Paxton, Tom Rush, Eric Anderson, Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte Marie. Such legendary folk performers as Bob Gibson, Josh White and Josh White Jr, Odetta, and John Hammond were mainstays. The club booked many women artists and, although the audience was largely white, Black performers as well. It also provided a home for local performers such as Gusti, Leatherwood and Lisa, Jim & Jean, the Tiny Alice Jug Band and the Mr. Stress Blues Band.
But as the times changed so did the bookings. Slowly bands began to creep in, necessitating more gear and bigger budgets. Traina’s book gives you the dollar amounts. The Velvet Underground played several legendary dates there, although “Jimmy” Hendrix as he was advertised in an ad, was a no-show.
Initially this change looked promising for La Cave and they had great years from 1965-68, with psychedelic-style bands, both known (Iron Butterfly, The Velvet Underground, Procol Harum) and unknown (These Vizitors, Wildflower) filling (or not) the venue. But slowly the club became burdened by the costs, and the downturn accelerated in 1968, when the Glenville riots marked the club, located nearby, as too dangerous for much of its largely, white suburban crowd. By then, Bruner had taken over as the club’s main booker/manager from Cain, who encountered legal problems due to a drug bust and served a short prison sentence, although the book seems to indicate he was a behind-the-scenes force until the club closed.
While multiple factors came together to write the club’s obituary, the most significant was the evolution from solo performers and small ensembles to bands whose cost and touring requirements were higher, and who were, in 1968 and 1969, transitioning away from multiple-day residencies at 300 capacity clubs such as La Cave to single nights in much larger venues. Nothing illustrates this more starkly than Blood, Sweat and Tears’ August 30-September 1, 1968 stint at La Cave just after David Clayton-Thomas joined the group for its second album. They made just under $19,000 in today’s money. Less than a year later, they headlined Blossom Music Center — and set a one-night attendance record of more than 26,000 people that has never been officially surpassed. (The traffic jam, no surprise, was monumental too and dominated the reviews!) Other acts were transitioning to playing venues such as Public Hall and Music Hall, the Allen Theatre and MusiCarnival — one night, get paid and move on.
The highly readable book isn’t polished, but the typos and occasional minor bloopers (Little Italy residents will be surprised to hear that short, sleepy Murray Hill Road is a “boulevard”) are forgivable given that the book is self-published and so much valuable information has been put into the public record. I do wish the images of contracts, newspaper articles and business records were legible, and that the index was used strictly for citations and not for amplifying information that would have been better put in the text. (It’s annoying to have to go to the index to learn that the “Lisa” of Leatherwood and Lisa was Alan Leatherwood’s wife Patti.) And it would’ve been helpful if the money amounts had been more consistently translated into today’s dollars. Two hundred dollars might sound paltry for a week’s shows — but in 1962 that was $2000!
Once you whip out your inflation calculator and follow along, it’s obvious one of the club’s problems was overpaying artists. But as Traina makes clear, Stan Cain was a soft touch for the artists. Bruner was much less so. But by the time he took over most of the day-to-day operations from Cain in 1968, the writing was on the wall. No amount of the hard-headed practicality, which he brought to the business, could stop the trajectory of bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears, or artists such as Neil Young, The Jeff Beck Group and Ten Years After to playing one-night concerts in larger venues.
“Stan was not a businessman, he was your friend,” says Traina. “He was the belle of the ball. He always had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He brought joy. Stan’s superpower was he could pick out acts who would become wildly successful.” After they became friends in 2009, Triana says, “Every time somebody came to town who had played at La Cave, I would take him and he would bring some piece of memorabilia that pertained to the person we were seeing. Someone like Judy Collins, onstage she’d say ‘Stan Cain is here, Stan, stand up.’ She said ‘Without Stan, I might not have had my career.’ Brewer and Shipley said the same thing.”
Traina will be at the B-Side Lounge on Coventry to talk about La Cave and his book, and share photos from the material he’s amassed. Light refreshments will be available. The event, sponsored by Mac’s Backs, in free and open to all.
macsbacks.com/event/la-cave-steve-traina