1956–1963
Vancouver’s legendary basement jazz club, and a formative scene for Gregg before the Sound Gallery years.
The Cellar was a member-run, unlicensed “bottle club” that operated out of a converted basement at 2514 Watson Street in Vancouver from April 1956, founded by a small group of amateur musicians including Ken Hole, Wally Lightbody, Bill Boyle, Jim Kilburn, John Dawe, Al Neil and others. Run on a shoestring budget with a $10-a-night house band fee, it grew from a handful of members jamming together into one of the most important jazz rooms on the west coast, hosting touring musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Art Pepper, Charles Mingus, Harold Land, Paul Bley and many more, and helping give rise to the Vancouver clubs that followed it, such as the Flat Five, the Blue Horn and the Black Spot.
Gregg Simpson maintains a fuller history of the Cellar, written by club co-founder John Dawe with Michael de Courcy and Gavin Walker, along with photographs, newspaper ads and musician profiles. Given the length and third-party authorship of that material, it isn’t reproduced here in full — get in touch if you’d like the complete history.