One step along the journey… that’s the wonderful Dorothy Lefkovits at the mic. She moved back east to be near her daughter a few years ago. Howie Dudune, who passed away the night after a beautiful evening of music at B&B several years ago ,is on clarinet at the left. That’s Don Prell in the shades, still playing his music every Tuesday night down at the Bayview Boat Club. Scott Foster, guitar, is the guy smiling broadly at Dorothy’s left shoulder. Scott leads a group here every third Friday, always concocting a new aggregation with a new approach or theme each time. Chuck himself is next to Scott, taking in the divine Dorothy. And to his left is trombonist Rick Elmore, aka Professor Gizmo, who lives in the east bay and doesn’t get in here often enough anymore — we’ll see about getting him booked soon. Many others have rotated through Chuck’s band through the years; we’ll give a special nod to the late drummer Jimmy Ryan who was here from the beginning for a decade and a half and always swung for the fences; and to saxophonist and arranger Bill Perkins who added so much beauty to the music. And so it goes!

The 230 Jones Street Band represents a continuous line of descent from the earliest days of Friday evening jazz in the bookshop!

Saxophonists Jerry Logas and Ray Loeckle, guitarist Glenn Deardorf, bassist Dean Reilly and drummer Tony Johnson play great jazz from swing to bop and beyond every fourth Friday at Bird & Beckett. They make up the legacy band that was handed the mantle by series founder and saxophonist Chuck Peterson when he retired up to Santa Rosa a couple of years ago.

A weekly gig for the Chuck Peterson Trio beginning in October 2002 at Bird & Beckett’s original location around the corner on Diamond Street initiated a tradition of live jazz in Glen Park that has continued ever since, with never a missed Friday in all those years.  Chuck’s original trio grew to a quartet and then a quintet and sometimes boasted as many as eight players — and that was in a shop that was two-thirds the size of the current store!

After some years, Chuck’s core quartet spawned four separate groups, and Chuck’s band evolved as a quintet, staying steady to this day with this configuration of two reeds up front plus rhythm. He dubbed it the 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band about a decade ago, in honor of the union headquarters where he and his confederates championed many protections for San Francisco’s working professional musicians so they could earn enough from their labors to live reasonably in this expensive city.

Your contributions at the shows and your tax-deductible donations to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (a 501(c)3 nonprofit) are crucial to our efforts to pay reasonable and consistent guarantees to many dozens of San Francisco’s fine professional jazz players, as well as musicians from many other genres, poets, etc. With your considerable help, we’ve managed to push compensation up bit by bit, and the job isn’t done yet. So thanks for continuing to support us in our efforts to do our part in keeping San Francisco culture alive and healthy!