For its 16-year life, the Jazz Bakery invigorated jazz in Los Angeles, drawing good bands to its Culver City site that otherwise wouldn’t have had a place to play in Southern California. It also provided an experimental forum for local players. One of them is the versatile Larry Koonse, who became the house guitarist to innumerable headliners. “I’ve gotten so many opportunities to play at the Bakery, working with lots of singers and soloists like Lee Konitz. I probably would have never been able to have the same opportunity elsewhere.” 2008 did not begin well for jazz singer and Bakery proprietor Ruth Price. Her neck was broken in a car accident and she was laid up in traction for a couple of months. “My head was held immoveable by this thing called a halo,” says Price. “It had just been removed when my landlord came to my house and handed me a notice that nullified my lease. He told me I had to clear out at the Bakery at the end of May.” “I was numb,” Price reveals. “It took a good two months for me to fully grasp the reality. But I had to go on because I had contractual obligations to live up to.”
She learned the depth of the Bakery’s artistic capital when organizations like the GRAMMY Museum reached out to her, offering their sites. Price forged ahead by presenting scattered concerts—“Moveable Feasts”--with the vague idea of reopening somewhere. Offers to relocate in Pasadena, Chinatown, downtown L.A. and Beverly Hills were flattering but Culver City wanted the Bakery to stay. “It’s so surreal,” she says, “I’d driven by a space and thought that I’d really like for us to be right there. And that’s what the city gave to us.”
To add to her good fortune, the Annenberg Foundation— unsolicited—stepped forward and gave the Jazz Bakery two million dollars. Architectural plans are being drawn up and permits cleared, but Price says the next big step is to secure corporate funding: “I’ve hired a fundraiser on a six-month trial basis. The Annenbergs said there’s more available to us but it's still so surreal. When I was handed that two million dollar check in an envelope with a forty-two cent stamp, I didn’t think it was real.”
New York singer Tessa Souter played the Bakery each year, and three Moveable Feasts. She appreciates the intimacy between artist and audience. “I really love that the Bakery reflects Ruth’s taste,” she offers. “She books people whose work she personally likes. So many times club owners book people because they think they’re going to draw a lot of people. But when they do that, their place loses an identity. You’ve got to balance the money with the artistic vision, of course, but the Bakery has a particular flavor that you don’t find elsewhere.”
Kirk Silsbee, Downbeat, May 2011