Dublin Core
Title
The Rendezvous Tavern
Subject
Historic jazz venues in Windsor/Essex
Description
Being a border city (and the home to one of Canada's first Whiskey distilleries), Windsor's history is very much linked to American Prohibition in the 1920s ... And prohibition played a huge role in the rising popularity of jazz music, having a large impact on its history...
As C.H. (Marty) Gervais puts it:
"They came to the Canadian shoreline to feast upon the hearty seafood and chicken dinners, soak up the lush, elaborate speakeasies and toss away easy-come, easy-go money in long, bustling, upstairs rooms crammed with gambling table sand flappers...
On those nights, music filtered out from wide verandas and gingerbread barrooms of fabulous roadhouses. Everyone within was caught in amid whirl of music and dancing, safe in the knowledge that although it was illegal to guzzle and gamble, trusty beady-eyes “spotters” stationed in second-storey windows or makeshift towers were ready to sound the alarm, warning of a police raid."
This speakeasy atmosphere greatly contributed to the branding of jazz as "America's music," but many Americans sometimes seem to neglect the fact that it is not ONLY America's music...
There were many venues on BOTH sides of the border in which live jazz could be heard on any given day of the week. One such venue on Windsor's side of the border was the Rendezvous Tavern.
As C.H. (Marty) Gervais puts it:
"They came to the Canadian shoreline to feast upon the hearty seafood and chicken dinners, soak up the lush, elaborate speakeasies and toss away easy-come, easy-go money in long, bustling, upstairs rooms crammed with gambling table sand flappers...
On those nights, music filtered out from wide verandas and gingerbread barrooms of fabulous roadhouses. Everyone within was caught in amid whirl of music and dancing, safe in the knowledge that although it was illegal to guzzle and gamble, trusty beady-eyes “spotters” stationed in second-storey windows or makeshift towers were ready to sound the alarm, warning of a police raid."
This speakeasy atmosphere greatly contributed to the branding of jazz as "America's music," but many Americans sometimes seem to neglect the fact that it is not ONLY America's music...
There were many venues on BOTH sides of the border in which live jazz could be heard on any given day of the week. One such venue on Windsor's side of the border was the Rendezvous Tavern.
Source
http://www.walkervilletimes.com/33/roadhouses.html
Publisher
Austin Di Pietro