There used to be a chain of jazz clubs in Pittsburgh owned by numbers king and sports promoter Gus Greenlee. They were called the “Crawford Clubs” and the same famous musicians played in them, and the same sort of swanky scene evolved as is depicted in these wonderful pictures. They are all gone now, as are other jazz clubs that were around when I was a kid. When jazz went to be-bop it lost all popular appeal because you couldn’t dance to it, and it hasn’t changed back since. You need popular appeal to make enough money to run a club.