The Heart of Music City: Town Tavern and the Saphire
The Town Tavern
The Town Tavern, Queen Street East, 1950s. York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds.
The Saphire Tavern, located at the northwest corner of Victoria and Richmond Streets, Toronto, 1972. Courtesy the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 2032, Series 841, File 17, Item 22.
Jackie Shane at the Palais Royale, 1967. Photography by Jeff Goode, courtesy of Toronto Star Photo Archives.
The city’s premier jazz venue
In 1949, Sam Berger opened his theatre restaurant, the Town Tavern. From Hawaiian singers to ragtime pianists, the Tavern offered daily live entertainment to guests alongside lunch and dinner. By the early 1950s, it was Toronto’s premier jazz venue, with legendary drummer Archie Alleyne performing on stage almost every night. In 1958, pianist Oscar Peterson and his jazz trio recorded On The Town at the Tavern.
Featuring guitar, piano, and bass, the song “Gal in Calico” from this live album captures the clinking glasses and whispered murmurs of a 1950s jazz club.
Norm Amadio
Several Canadian jazz legends got their start at the Town Tavern. Pianist Norm Amadio, who was the first and only Canadian to play New York’s famous Birdland jazz club with Duke Ellington, wowed Tavern audiences with his nimble playing for over nine years. Amadio also worked extensively with the CBC, serving as orchestra leader or musical director for several television shows, such as “Music Hop” (1963–1967).
His piano skills, on display in this version of jazz hit “The Skies”, can be heard in over one hundred recordings, including those featuring the Ed Sullivan Orchestra and Guido Basso.
Saphire Tavern
Opened in October 1947 at 89 Yonge Street, Torontonians dined on the Saphire’s steak and lobster dinners for two years before a fire gutted the restaurant, closing it down. By 1953, the Saphire had sprung up again, this time on King Street West, and by 1958, it moved again, to its final location, at the corner of Victoria and Adelaide Streets.
By the late 1960s, the Saphire was a swinging club that featured go-go dancers nightly as well as attracting jazz musicians like Tish Goode, Paul Rimstead, and Jim Galloway.
In addition to being a jazz drummer, Rimstead was a featured page 5 columnist for the Toronto Sun for twenty years. When not chasing down headlines, Rimstead often performed at the Saphire with legendary jazz musician Jim Galloway, founder of the Toronto Jazz Festival.
Jackie Shane
Jackie Shane was one of Toronto’s most prolific performers, a transgender soul artist who made waves on the Yonge Street music scene in the 1960s.
Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Jackie Shane joined trumpeter Frank Motley and his band, performing frequently on the Toronto nightclub circuit.
With her 1962 hit “Any Other Way”, Shane became a regular performer at the Saphire Tavern’s “Saphire A-Go-Go” nights in the late 1960s. She retired from performing early in the 1970s. She moved back to the United States where she lived a quiet, private life until her death in 2019.