New Orleans Blue Room Fairmont Hotel 1980’s

Located at 123 Baronne Street in New Orleans, the Roosevelt Hotel (became the Fairmont Hotel in 1965 and in 2007 the original Roosevelt Hotel name was restored once again in 2007) originally opened in 1893 as “The Grunewald”. After a few years of operation, it was purchased by a group of New Orleans investors and renamed “The Roosevelt Hotel” (in honor of late former president Theodore Roosevelt).

The current hotel maintains 504 guest rooms of which 125 are suites. The total meeting space is over 68,000 square feet with multiple rooms across three floors of the hotel.

The world famous New Orleans Blue Room Supper Club opened in 1935.

For almost 50 years, the world famous Blue Room served as a prime supper club venue which staged the World’s hottest musical acts. Over an approximate 50 year period which ended in May 1983, the Blue Room featured celebrated performers such as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Benny, Marlene Dietrich, Bob Hope, Sonny and Cher, Tony Bennett, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker, Ethel Merman, Pearl Bailey, The Andrews Singers, Frank Sinatra, Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Mel Tormé, Stéphane Grappelli, Louis Prima, Tina Turner, Jack Jones, The Sandpipers, The Platters, Peggy Lee, Lou Rawls, Fats Domino, George Shearing, The Temptations, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson, Connie Stevens, The Four Tops, Billy Eckstrein, Joe Williams, Carol Channing, Cyd Charise and countless ‘big name’ musical entertainers. Over an approximate 50 year period the Blue Room featured over 1000 major entertainment acts that performed two shows a night on a Monday through Saturday basis. The ‘Parade of Stars’ continued into early 1983.   For almost 50 years, the ambiance of the Blue Room and quality of the nightly musical entertainment rivaled the top echelon supper clubs in New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

New Orleans Blue Room Orchestra early 1980’s

The Blue Room entertainers were supported by a full time, 14 piece orchestra that was comprised of 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 4 saxes, piano, bass, and drums, plus the band leader.

The Blue Room bandleader in 1981 and 1982 was Bill Clifford who also played on occasion trombone as well as violin.
In late 1981 through 1982 the Blue Room orchestra personnel consisted of the following:
Lead Trumpet – Sweet Willie Singleton
2nd Trumpet (ride/jazz chair) – Chuck “Mr. Jazz” Easterling (RIP 1996)
3rd Trumpet – Bob Amato
Lead Trombone – Wayne Starnes
2nd Trombone – Jimmy Duggan (RIP 1992)
Lead Alto Sax – Steve Giarratano  (RIP 2022)
Also see, Steve’s fine recording “Steve Giarratano and Friends” on YouTube
1st Tenor Sax – Ray Moore
2nd Tenor Sax – Liston Johnson (RIP 2014)
Baritone Sax – Dennis Ruello
Piano – Antonio York
Bass – Al Arthur
Drums – Reed Vaughan (RIP 2011)

Some of the featured musical acts required a larger orchestra which on rare occasions would add an additional trumpet, trombone, and sax player to the orchestra’s size. And, sometimes an act would carry their own guitar player. Also, some of the acts carried their own musical director or conductor who sometimes was a piano player.

With the exception of the piano player who started playing ‘cocktail’ music for the Blue Room supper club diners at 6:30 PM, the ‘call time’ or ‘time to show up’ was 7:00 PM on a Monday – Saturday basis.

Including the piano player, the entire Blue Room Orchestra began playing the first of four sets of music suitable for dining and dancing at 7:30 PM. After a break from performing dance music, the Blue Room Orchestra would back the first of two “Headliner Act” musical performances with an approximate 75 minute show. The Blue Room Orchestra would conclude the evening musical entertainment with music suitable for dancing at 12:30 PM.

Each of the featured “Headliner” musical acts were normally booked for a two week stand. Every other late Monday afternoon, the Blue Room Orchestra would have an approximate 90 minute rehearsal that included the featured musical act.

All of the musicians including all musical acts were required to enter the Blue Room through the round about ’employee’s entrance’. The employee’s entrance to the Blue Room was through the famous Sazerac Bar and out of the bar via the rear double doors which opened into the large, main Fairmont Hotel restaurants kitchen.

Then walk at least 150 feet through the restaurant kitchen to a walkway behind the Blue Room Orchestra stage. Facing the Orchestra Stage, the orchestra’s two room dressing room with lockers that also had a bathroom was off to the right of the Orchestra – Blue Room stage.

For a sideman musician, the Blue Room Orchestra was a desirable place to be employed. A long term, year round, steady weekly paycheck was the major draw that attracted some of New Orleans finest musicians to work at the Blue Room. The musicians pay scale was negotiated by the New Orleans Musicians Union. The Fairmont Hotel also provided an excellent major medical health insurance plan as well which required little or no
employee co-contributions. The Fairmont Hotel also provided an outstanding ‘all you can eat’ employee’s cafeteria several stories below ‘street level’ at the hotel. The Musicians could pay $2.00 a week for a one meal a day ‘all you can eat’ pass to the hotel employee cafeteria. And, the food was fantastic. With the exception of premium beef and seafood dishes served at the hotels ‘high end’ restaurants, the cafeteria would serve a variety of chicken and seafood entree’s. And, famous New Orleans side dishes including shrimp étouffée, chicken and sausage étouffée, gumbo, dirty rice, and red beans and rice along with a huge salad and desert bar.

Also, sometimes the hotel restaurants would have left over ‘premium’ food dishes at the end of a Saturday night performance in particular. The food was probably left over unused form large private parties or banquets that were routinely scheduled in one of the Hotel’s upstairs multiple large ballrooms. On multiple occasions, at the end of a Saturday night performance, the Blue Room waiter staff would pass out fully cooked top of the line ‘beef -filet’ for the musicians to bring home to their own families.

Although the dance band music book arrangements were rather stale and not very challenging, the vast majority of the featured musical acts utilized musical arrangements that were scored by top professional arrangers that were more often than not challenging to perform well. The bi-weekly change up of musical entertainers broke the musical monotony of performing stale dance band arrangements to a significant degree.

The normal seating capacity at the Blue Room supper club was 300. However, the seating capacity could be increased to as many 550 seated dinner performance attendee’s if needed.

Up until the 1970’s, the Blue Room broadcast-ed all of the live shows around the United States on the “Clear-Channel” 50,000 Watt WWL-AM radio and the CBS Network.
In the 1970’s, the radio broadcast gear situated in the Blue Room was damaged by an electrical fire and was never repaired.

Beginning in the mid, and certainly by the late 1970’s, audience attendance to the 12 show a week musical performances at the Blue Room gradually began to dwindle.
With few exceptions, even Friday and Saturday night performances no longer drew a packed house.

In 1981 and 1982, the Fairmont Hotel management tried increasing paid supper club attendance by hiring ‘big name’ popular music acts that performed on a ‘self-contained’ basis.

These ‘self-contained’ acts performed without the need of the ‘full time’ paid Blue Room Staff Orchestra. The self-contained musical acts caused the full time Blue Room Orchestra members to take two approximate 75 minute breaks nightly. One of the two most notable ‘self-contained’ musical acts that performed at the Blue Room in 1982 for full two week engagements were the entire Buddy Rich Big Band.

Pretty much the entire Blue Room Staff orchestra listened to all 12 weekly performances of the Buddy Rich Big band during this bands two week run at the Blue Room. However, the overall attendance to the Buddy Rich Big Band performances was poor to fair. The other notable ‘self-contained’ musical act that performed at the Blue Room in 1982 was the James Brown Band. James Brown drew very enthusiastic, packed houses to all 24 Blue Performances. In fact, James Brown drew by far the largest crowds to the Blue Room in all of 1982.

In 1982, the number of headliner acts that were hired by the Fairmont Hotel to appear at Blue Room that required the use of the staff, Blue Room Orchestra dropped to around twelve acts over a 52 week period that were not fully self-contained.

By the end of the 2nd quarter of 1982, it became rather obvious that the Blue Room was BLEEDING MONEY!  It was only a matter of time that the Fairmont Hotel would need to find a way to cut the losses and the most obvious way to do so was to close the Blue Room for good.

Frequently, when the staff Blue Room Orchestra was needed for musical performances, Segrid Giarratano (the real estate agent wife of lead alto sax player, Steve Giarratano) would swing by the Fairmont Hotel in her large, green Cadillac and pickup a car load of musicians which typically included, Willie Singleton, Bob Amato, Wayne Starnes, and Drummer, Reed Vaughan.)

The five Blue Room Orchestra staff musicians would cruise out around New Orleans beautiful historic neighborhoods and listen to the delightful Segrid tell jokes. The car load of musicians would sometimes stop at short order joints such as Tuesday Morning, Dragons Den, or Port of Call in the lower French Quarter and grab a hamburg and a beer to go.

In early 1983, Blue Room Orchestra bandleader, Bill Clifford died at home from a heart attack. Native New Orleanian Trumpet player, Herb Tassin was hired as the Blue Room Orchestra bandleader.

Including trumpet player Herb Tassin, the Blue Room Orchestra was scaled back from 14 men to six men. Without fanfare, the Blue Room Supper club stopped featuring ‘head line’ musical acts on a night to night basis and the “Herb Tassin Combo” was now a thing of the past. The Blue Room tried to experiment by featuring local ‘Pop Music’ bands. A New Orleans pop band called ‘Pilot’ made a final appearance without fanfare in 1989

In its heyday, the Blue Rom was a venue that commanded respect. Men showed up in suits, and, when hats were still fashionable, women wore their best millinery and often sported corsages. Children in their Sunday best were often in the audience because the Blue Room was a site for special family celebrations where people knew they would eat well and be royally entertained.

For decades, the Christmas decor for the massive 300 foot plus long hotel lobby which extended a fully city block featured a tunnel effect with an abundance of angel hair and big trees. This over the top Holiday display drew untold thousands of locals and tourists who toured the lobby annually between Thanksgiving and New Years Day.

For more historical info on the New Orleans Blue Room and the Roosevelt – Fairmont Hotel go to>>>
http://www.demajo.net/roosevelt/
http://viemagazine.com/article/christmas-at-the-roosevelt-new-orleans/
http://old-new-orleans.com/NO_Roosevelt.html
http://old-new-orleans.com/NO_BlueRoom.html
http://www.offbeat.com/articles/blue-room-blues/
https://www.nola.com/300/2017/06/blue_room_roosevelt_hotel_new_orleans_06112017.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roosevelt_New_Orleans
https://nomenu.com/42868/
https://hdtalks.hospitalitydesign.com/2016/06/hotel-flashback-the-roosevelt-hotel-celebrates-new-orleans.html
https://www.eturbonews.com/158602/roosevelt-hotel-new-orleans-site-cave-one-americas-first-nightclubs
https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/1304
http://www.fantasticalandrewfox.com/2012/02/12/a-stay-at-the-historic-roosevelt-hotel/
https://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2009/08/the_roosevelts_reborn_blue_roo.html