2015

Our 2015 show introduced us to Barney Josephson (played by Darrell Yates), whose dream was to open a jazz club for everyone – one he affectionately said would become “the wrong place for the right people.”  Through telling the story of Barney’s Place, audiences enjoyed performances of such hits as Honeysuckle Rose, Basin Street Blues, Mood Indigo, and The Joint is Jumpin.  And then came World War II, changing everything.

Songs like Straighten Up and Fly Right and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy celebrated American pride in the war efforts, a pride that was soon met with the McCarthy era in 1948, shifting Barney’s Place from a jazz club to a supper club which would celebrate such greats as Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.

And as Barney said, “you either crash or ya bounce – has to do with how ya look at things.”