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In the 1930s, French record collectors and enthusiasts of le jazz hot began record listening groups under the name of the Hot Club of France, a major institution for jazz listening and appreciation in Europe when rare imported records were scarce and threatened by the imminent rise of Fascism. Listening to jazz 78s was a communal and rarified ritual, replete with the fun of discussion and replay.

The current Hot Club of New York is a music appreciation group that preserves and presents classic jazz on 78rpm records. With free weekly meetings on Zoom, the Hot Club’s mission, as stated by legendary jazz DJ Phil Schaap, is to “bring people in touch with classic jazz recordings.”

Jazz archivist and educator Matthew “Fat Cat” Rivera (WKCR-FM) hosts the weekly Hot Club meetings on Zoom and presents the Hot Club on the Air on WKCR, with classic jazz recordings from the 1920s-50s from original 78rpm records. Fat Cat brings his passion for collecting and research to each meeting, offering a chance to hear scarce records in their historic and aesthetic contexts, and to enjoy jazz records, classic and obscure alike, in a relaxed and welcoming environment.

With top-notch equipment and thousands of precious 78s, The Hot Club of New York is a home for the original performances of jazz, by the original pioneers, and on the original format. Fall in with the pack and dig the shellac!

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Music you might hear at a Hot Club meeting:

  • King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band — “Jazzin’ Babies’ Blues” (1923)

  • Miles Davis and his Orchestra — “Budo” (1949)

  • Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five — “Sugar Foot Strut” (1928)

  • Billie Holiday and her Orchestra — “No Regrets” (1936)

  • Charlie Parker All Stars — “Cheers” (1947)

  • Chick Webb and his Orchestra — “When Dreams Come True” (1934)

  • Bix Beiderbecke and his Gang — “At the Jazz Band Ball” (1927)

  • Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra — “Take the ‘A’ Train” (1941)

  • Count Basie and his Orchestra — “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” (1938)

  • Coleman Hawkins and his Orchestra — “Body and Soul” (1939)

  • Dizzy Gillespie — “Groovin’ High” (1945)

  • Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers — “Doctor Jazz” (1926)

  • Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra — “Mood Indigo” (1930)

  • Bennie Moten and his Kansas City Orchestra — “Prince of Wales” (1932)

  • Benny Goodman and his Sextet — “Air Mail Special” (1941)

  • Chu Berry and his ‘Little Jazz’ Ensemble — “Stardust” (1938)

 
 
 
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History of the Hot Club of France

By Melissa Jones

“Aside from promoting Jazz listening groups, an insertion stated the club’s purpose: ‘Disseminate this genre, make it appreciated, defend it and win it the place it deserves among the expressions of art of our time.’ In theory, the purpose of the Hot Cub of France was simple. Spread the Jazz gospel to as many as possible. In reality, the task was not so simple.”

In Loving Memory of Melissa Jones

On Saturday evening, February 13th, our group felt a great loss as Melissa Jones passed away in her home, surrounded by her family playing records. She had been fighting cancer since late summer, though her tireless championing of jazz betrayed almost any sign of that fight. Charles Iselin put it best: we've lost the best of us.

For those wondering, Melissa is the reason this community exists. She restarted the Hot Clubs of yore and remains the inspiration for the Hot Club of New York. She supported us in every possible way. Read her essay on the history of the Hot Club of France and you'll know everything she represented: https://www.hotclubny.com/history.

There will be endless memories of her kindness and tolerance, of her absolutely earnest love of jazz and her work to spread the gospel that honestly good music comes from honestly good people. She was warmhearted and not overly sentimental. She was a great great friend to all jazz people.

To a 78 collector, the habit of reaching back to the shelf for three more minutes of the past undoubtedly changes your sense of the present. Sometimes you find yourself yearning to reach back to the proverbial shelf of your memories to play it again as if it were a Bluebird or a Brunswick—all in vain. But with Melissa, who signed her emails with "in the groove," many of those three minute performances do let us relive moments with her. I'll wrap up my thoughts with one of those records and moments.

Around the beginning of the Hot Club of New York in the spring of 2019, journalists from the Times, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker all came to learn of our group and expressed interest in coming to a meeting. Melissa had a great idea: host a press event at Freehold, a club in Brooklyn owned by her son, Brice, and make it a birthday tribute to Billie Holiday. We invited the journalists, Freehold pulled out all the stops in setting a classy stage for the event with some drink specials, and I announced the event on WKCR. I invited everyone I knew. Having put everything I had into building the portable Hot Club sound system, I was stretched past the point of affording a dime store 78 at its original price in the '30s let alone a cab ride to get the equipment to Freehold, so Melissa generously covered me. On that warm kind of spring night when everything seems to be moving, the joint ended up totally packed elbow to elbow by both KCR listeners, Hot Club regulars, and my fellow undergraduate humanities majors who all knew we had to impress these journalists.

I put on the first Billie Holiday disc. The sound through that oily smelling tube amp and Acoustic Research speaker crackled and rolled around into the very definition of "it's like she's in the room with us." It was overpowering. Lloyd Rauch brought "I Wished on the Moon" on the original Brunswick which knocked us out. Charles had some golden Billie and Prez. Eventually Melissa presented her copy of "Riffin' the Scotch." We quieted the room and announced that we were about to hear Billie Holiday's second record, made when she was only 18 years old, from a rare original.

It sounds ridiculous now, but everyone there absolutely lost it. We weren't listening too reverently or too carefully, in many ways it was the exact opposite of some of the parochial Zoom Hot Club meetings of late. We just had a rip roaring good time. (I guess the drink specials helped too.) At one point even Melissa's son popped his head into the room just to make sure we were actually playing jazz and hadn't been colonized by a different kind of hot club. I saw Melissa nod to Brice, sharing his awe, and Brice mouth back, "This is a party!" A few hours rolled by and I realized the press hadn't shown. Eventually people started to peter out. The evening came to its natural close and I looked at Melissa, ready to head out herself. I was pretty embarrassed that the press leads had fallen through. She looked at me and I'll never forget how she said, still floating from the absolute wonder of having heard something you always knew was there but never thought you'd hear, "18 year old Billie Holiday worked that crowd. She took the room. She knocked those kids out." We left it at that.

-Matthew