Jazz is alive and well in the suburbs, thanks in part to the Illiana Club of Traditional Jazz, says Eddy Banjura, founder.
As the club nears its 25th anniversary in September, it continues to draw an average of 300 people to concerts held just about every month at the Glendora Ballroom in Chicago Ridge. Starting with just 31 members in 1973, it now has a membership of more than 1,000. Of the original 31, 12 members are still active, four on the club’s board.
Banjura said the music that draws them defies description.
“Some think of it as Dixieland music, and others include swing and Big Band music. The Illiana club recognizes them all but hasn’t featured avant garde jazz or fusion music — yet,” he said. “But we are thinking it might be wise to draw a younger audience.”
The club, which educates prople about jazz and provides a forum for listening, presents nine concerts each year as well as a picnic every June and a Christmas party in December. This year’s picnic is June 28 at Stephens Park in Schererville, Ind., with Mark Biegel’s Dixie Dogs providing entertainment.
Admission to concerts and events ranges from $10 to $18. Annual dues are $10 per person, or $15 per family, a fee that hasn’t increased since 1987. “I’d rather have 1,000 members who can pay $10 and be informed about jazz than have 500 members at $20 each,” Banjura said.
Members receive a newsletter, membership card, decals for car windows and free entry to the annual picnic that always features a jazz band and refreshments. A monthly raffle of record albums or compact discs adds to the coffers, as does the sale of such items as jewelry, watches, floor mats, umbrellas, note cards, stationery and other novelties bearing a musical motif. This not-for-profit group has an annual budget that ranges from $20,000 to $22,000, Banjura said, which is spent on hiring musicians, renting performance space and producing the club newsletter.
Banjura said he was in high school in Staunton, Ill., in 1935 when he bought his first jazz record on a trip to St. Louis.
“It was Jelly Roll Morton, and I fell in love with the sound. But when my mother heard the music, she said, `This is not something you should be listening to,’ and cracked the record and tossed it out,” he said.
Determined to listen to jazz, Banjura bought another record on his next visit to St. Louis, “only this time my mother never found it.”
Banjura — who grew up to be a respectable owner of auto parts stores despite his love for the undefinable, freestyle kind of music — married and settled in Munster, Ind. He and his wife, Gloria, often traveled to Chicago to hear jazz. They would drive home late at night, fearful of falling asleep at the wheel.
“I knew I had to do something,” he said.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Hasso and Ute Schiele, natives of Hamburg, Germany, spent their first date at a Louis Armstrong concert in their hometown in 1959.
“Many of the clubs in Germany featured jazz, and most of our dates were jazz influenced,” Ute Schiele said.
Their musical bond led to marriage, and the couple moved to Chicago Heights in 1963 when he got a job at Ford.
“We began looking for jazz music here, but it was hard to find,” she explained. “Then I read that Lil Hardin, Louis Armstrong’s wife, who played piano with the King Oliver Orchestra, was going to appear at the Golden Horseshoe Lounge in Chicago Heights.”
Club owner Eddie Warner often featured jazz artists at the Golden Horseshoe in Sunday afternoon concerts in the 1960s. The late jazz pianist Art Hodes of Park Forest often played there, and the Schieles were always in the front seats. Eddy and Gloria Banjura were there, too, but the couples hadn’t met.
Then Hasso Schiele and three friends from Germany discovered the regular Sunday jazz sessions at The Inn Place, a roadhouse on the east side of Chicago Heights that also counted the Banjuras as regulars. “I thought the four guys from Germany were on some kind of work exchange program at the Ford plant where they all worked,” Banjura said.
Clarinetist Jerry Fuller had been hired as house musician by The Inn Place in 1970, with a free hand to select musicians to accompany him. Soon the club was drawing a regular jazz clientele four or five nights a week. When Fuller announced he had accepted a one-night gig with the Indianapolis Jazz Club in mid-1973, two busloads of local devotees went with him. Impressed by the enthusiasm of the patrons at the central Indiana club, the visitors were certain that a Chicago/Illinois/Indiana area jazz club would be a success.
The Blind Pig Room of The Inn Place was the scene of the first meeting, on Aug. 20, 1973. Temporary officers were selected, and the club was launched.
“The first event was a fundraiser for (Chicago) pianist Earl Washington, who had suffered a heart attack and faced large medical bills,” Banjura recalled. “Twenty-eight musicians participated. Each month the club picked up more members. By the end of 1973 we had 242 members, and by the end of 1974 we had 534 members.”
Hasso and Ute Schiele were among the first to join the fledgling club, and the next January she became club secretary.
February 1974 saw the debut of the club’s newsletter, Notes to You, which keeps members informed about nearby jazz clubs and jazz festivals in the U.S. and abroad (there are 50 to 100 festivals per year).
Club members informally travel across the country together attending jazz functions. Last year a group took a jazz cruise aboard the S.S. Norway with 120 jazz musicians. They make their vacation plans to revolve around jazz.
“I have no relatives in this country, but I have the largest family of all,” said Ute Schiele, whose husband died a few years ago. “This club is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
To mark the club’s 25th anniversary, there will be a celebration Sept. 18-20 in the Regency Ballroom of the Ramada Inn/Chicago South in Harvey. Among the artists scheduled to perform are the Original Salty Dogs, Marty Grosz’s Orphan Newsboys and The Inn Place Reunion Band.
Tickets are $18 per session ($20 at the door), or $65 for an all-session ticket.
“This club remains viable after 25 years,” Banjura said, “because of loyal, dedicated fans who want to share their love of jazz music with others.”
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Jazz Hot Lines have been established with Ute Schiele, 708-755-8312; Vi Defauw, 773-646-0411; Eddy Banjura, 219-923-6775; or Don St. John, 708-425-4596.
