Lennie’s On The Turnpike
“You had to work to get here, but it was always a happy ending.” So said the late Lennie Sogoloff, owner of his eponymous, legendary jazz club, Lennie’s on the Turnpike. While most of the region’s jazz scene focused on Boston venues like the Jazz Workshop, The Stable, The Hi-Hat, Wally’s Paradise (now Wally’s Café Jazz Club) and Storyville, Lennie’s North Shore location on Route 1 in Peabody was a comparatively remote but genuine destination, and one to which many jazz greats made a pilgrimage.
Background, Opening, Notable appearances
In the mid-1940s, Sogoloff and his friend Penny Abell opened a club in West Peabody called The Turnpike, according to Route 1 News magazine, and they became well-known for having a jukebox well-stocked with jazz records (from Lennie’s day job as a salesman for Columbia Records). While collecting as many discs as he could over the following years, around 1950 he and Abell opened a new club off Route 1 in Peabody and, in 1953, he bought Abell’s half of the business, becoming the sole owner of what he then renamed Lennie’s on the Turnpike. As the venue’s reputation grew, so did the club itself, expanding its capacity from 56 to around 200.
By 1963, nationally-known artists were adding Lennie’s to their tour itineraries. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge, saxophonist Sonny Stitt and trombonist J.J. Johnson were among the first national acts to play there and jazz greats like Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Earl Bostic, Jaki Byard and Gary Burton soon graced Lennie’s small stage. Byard’s April 15, 1965 performance at Lennie’s yielded two live albums on Prestige: 1965’s Jaki Byard Quartet Live and ‘66’s The Last From Lennie’s.
Workshops, Non-jazz Acts, Jay Leno, Fire, Sogoloff’s death
Lennie’s also hosted instrument-focused workshops, starring trios of guitarists, pianists and drummers – including a well-known May ‘67 drum night featuring an, uhm, “over-tired” Elvin Jones. As the ‘60s turned into the ‘70s and the jazz crowd waned while rock ascended, Sogoloff expanded his bookings to include pop/rock singers like Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Ricky Nelson and Kris Kristofferson (and, notably, comedian Jay Leno, an Andover, Massachusetts native who got his first break at Lennie’s and remained a friend of Sogoloff’s throughout the latter man’s life), but jazz heavyweights’ names continued to grace the venue’s marquee.
Lennie’s met an abrupt demise on May 30, 1971, when a fire gutted the building in the hours after an Earl Hines concert. Sogoloff soldiered on, re-opening first at a nearby Holiday Inn, and later that summer at the Village Green in Danvers, but to diminishing returns. After two decades in the nightclub business, he closed the doors on the Village Green after a Tom Rush concert on September 17, 1972, and spent the next 23 years managing Empire Clothing in Salem.
