“The entrance is between Sam Ash and Manny’s. You have to remember Manny’s,” Cobi Narita says over the phone to the person delivering the cake for her
husband Paul Ash’s 76th birthday party. A wise tip, because if you only remember that Cobi’s Place is above Sam Ash you’ll be perplexed once you turn off 7th Avenue onto 48th Street. Sam Ash stores
practically cover the block. But if you forget, just stop into any Sam Ash store and ask. They’ll know because Cobi’s husband Paul is one of the Ash brothers, and a co-owner of the music store chain.
Once you find the entrance, take the slow elevator up to the fourth floor, and enter Cobi’s homey, but professional club. Relax in one of 50 chairs set up in front of the stage, watch the dynamite performance going on before you, and forget about all that hustle and bustle happening on street level. Events only take place on weekends, so if it’s a Friday or Saturday, something fantastically entertaining is most likely going on at Cobi’s Place, be it tap dancing, theater, film, or jazz, just don’t expect to hear anything too avant garde.
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“The entrance is between Sam Ash and Manny’s. You have to remember Manny’s,” Cobi Narita says over the phone to the person delivering the cake for her
husband Paul Ash’s 76th birthday party. A wise tip, because if you only remember that Cobi’s Place is above Sam Ash you’ll be perplexed once you turn off 7th Avenue onto 48th Street. Sam Ash stores
practically cover the block. But if you forget, just stop into any Sam Ash store and ask. They’ll know because Cobi’s husband Paul is one of the Ash brothers, and a co-owner of the music store chain.
Once you find the entrance, take the slow elevator up to the fourth floor, and enter Cobi’s homey, but professional club. Relax in one of 50 chairs set up in front of the stage, watch the dynamite performance going on before you, and forget about all that hustle and bustle happening on street level. Events only take place on weekends, so if it’s a Friday or Saturday, something fantastically entertaining is most likely going on at Cobi’s Place, be it tap dancing, theater, film, or jazz, just don’t expect to hear anything too avant garde.
“I’m at the age I’m at, which is almost 80, and I happen to like straight ahead music, and so that’s what I book. I don’t understand progressive music,” she explained. Of course she makes an exception for her very good friend Ran Blake. Last February the
eternally adventurous pianist/composer traveled down from Boston and packed the place. “He plays with his own twist. He’s just an amazing performer,” she said, adding that he’ll probably return this fall.
Narita’s tastes may be set, but the founder of the Universal Jazz Coalition encourages artists to take risks. “My daughter and I wrote a play about
ourselves,” said Jazzberry Jam pianist Bertha
Hope-Booker. “We had never written a play before in our lives,” she said. “Cobi said put in on here. We packed the place once, we did it again, we packed the place again. We did it three times!”
“If she sees somebody trying to do something she helps them,” explained Paula Hampton who plays drums in Jazzberry Jam. “This is a beautiful idea of [Cobi and Paul’s] to give the public a chance to show themselves.”
The club has been open for three years and Narita barely breaks even financially. So this year she started a policy where the artist contributes to the cost of their event. “Most people will say no, they just want to be presented in a club, where the club presents them and they get paid a nominal fee. And they would enjoy that because there’s no obligation on their part.” Asking them to contribute is her way of forcing them
to be responsible for their own show and since the artist takes home whatever he or she makes at the door, they sometimes walk away with more money than a regular club would pay them.
Narita works the door at each event, and provides the artist with a thorough evaluation of who came and what they paid. “I’m pretty serious about that,” she said. “I want them to have a clear picture of who came. When I first started helping young people play at the clubs I helped them with their publicity, they would have a guest list of 50 people and I said ‘what about the club?!’ The club wasn’t paying them. They would get the door and they were asking 50 people to come as comps. What were they getting paid? So I teach my people, friends pay. Everywhere I go I pay. I try to teach my kids that friends pay.”
Most shows are about 20 dollars, but every third Saturday, audiences can partake in an afternoon of education and entertainment for only five bucks. Beginning at 2:30 pm, the historian Delilah Jackson presents jazz films followed by an open mic led by the gregarious pianist Frank Owens and an open tap with tap dancer Toes Tiranoff.
“In the beginning I wasn’t doing too much, but I’m getting into a groove now,” Narita explained. “It’s not like a full time job for me, it’s something I want to do - to present music and dance. But it’s not like a
livelihood, it’s just fun for me.”
Don’t expect to find a bar to sidle up to at Cobi’s Place or any lofty “two drink minimum” charges you might find at other clubs. Narita provides free
refreshments for all events, and for extra special friends she brings in soul food and sushi. Artists are even welcome to bring their own food and drinks, including beer or wine. “But they have to behave,” she warned. “No smoking though. Definitely no smoking. Sometimes we serve wine, but nobody seems to care. It’s not a liquor place. They don’t come for the
drinking.”
What they appear to be coming for is the magic that happens on stage, because they have an inherent appreciation for it. “The audience is special,” explained trombonist Benny Powell, who plans to have his record release party for Two Of A Kind, his upcoming album with pianist Jane Jarvis, at the club this spring. “You can look out and everybody there is an artist. It’s not a very big place. It doesn’t hold a lot of people, but it’s got a five-star audience,” he said.
~ Celeste Sunderland
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