Smitty: Yes, it’s very cool. Now talk about what it was like for you seven, eight years ago coming into this great family of music and atmosphere. What was it like for you coming into this business, with Scullers?
DAS: Well, you know, the funny thing is when I first started I really had no idea what I was getting into. It was the Spring of 2000, it was under interesting circumstances. Personally I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to run a live music venue. That wasn’t really what I had in mind. I was working within Hilton and they called me and said “Do you want to run a jazz club?” And I said “You know, I love Ella [Fitzgerald] and Louis [Armstrong] and everybody, but I don’t think I’m ready for this.” They said “Well, we need a person that understands hotel dynamics yet is flexible enough to work with the entertainment folks and within the community,” so I took the job. I always tell this story; fast forward two weeks later I was trying to get my old job back because it was so different than anything I had ever really dealt with. It was a juggling act with a lot of very different constituencies.
We had a lot of outside vendors, from advertising, to our direct mail design and PR teams as well as our webmaster and I wasn’t particularly happy with the way things were going. There were some challenges in communication between all of the moving parts and I knew my first priority would be to build a strong relationship between the hotel and club and make sure we all knew what was expected of us. So it took me, I would say, a good two years to not only realize where we wanted to go but how to get there.
But the one thing that always was there was the music, and Fred Taylor, who is really the force behind Scullers—he’s the Entertainment Director here. He has been here since the very beginning, he’s well known in Boston and to people all over the country as the owner of Paul’s Mall and The Jazz Workshop, which were very famous clubs from 1963 to 1978 in Boston. As a matter of fact, Jay Leno’s autobiography mentions Fred and Paul’s Mall for helping launch his career. Fred was the person who debuted Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, and Bob Dylan in Boston. To have this jazz impresario at the helm it really kept my fire burning, I knew we had what it took, we just needed to take things to the next level.
Smitty: Absolutely. And you mentioned Fred. And he’s just a great guy, you know? He has such a warm appeal when you meet him and I think people just gravitate to him because he’s just a fantastic person along with all of his great talents.
DAS: Oh, absolutely, he understands both sides of the coin and he has really been a great mentor to me. Fred understands balance, trying to make everyone happy, to support the music and the artists yet knowing a bottom line has to be met. He’s been doing it for 50 years and I’ve yet in the seven years that we’ve worked together hear anyone ever say a bad word about him, so he’s got the right measurements, the right mix.
Smitty: Yes he does. So as General Manager and Publicity Director, you must have at some point, and I would imagine still are, just floored by the talent that you have seen come through your doors and grace your stage. You mentioned some of those greats as well already, but talk about some of the highlights of what has just overwhelmed you and just excited you about some of the performers coming in there.
DAS: Well you sit in Scullers long enough and you’ll catch so many incredible things. You may see a living legend perform a rare intimate club date, perhaps their last, you might see one of the biggest names in jazz just show up one night to jam on stage or you might just catch the next big star.
I remember the last performances of Bobby Short, Shirley Horn, Ray Brown and Stanley Turrentine at Scullers. They were exceptional evenings and in every instance we all expected to see them again. To this day I have people come up to me and say they were so glad they were in attendance and have these last memories of these final performances.
Of course, everyone seems to remember when Tony Bennett showed up, unexpected after his Symphony Hall show and sat in with Freddy Cole. No one could believe their eyes, or there ears for that matter. We had no idea he was going to walk in.
For stars on the rise, when Diana Krall was still at Berklee she would perform at the club and all of those in attendance knew this girl was going places. In more recent times we had Norah Jones January of 2002 just three weeks before she was on The Today Show as a person to watch and then two months before she just burst onto the scene with “Don’t Know Why.” She was so incredibly shy, she turned her back to the audience and barely said a word but played a great set. We all looked at each other and thought “Hmmm…”, but Blue Note had just signed her a few weeks earlier so we weren’t alone even then. Jamie Cullum made his Boston debut in Scullers in 2003 and since that time has become one of today’s most celebrated new artists. We debuted Michael Buble in Boston in 2003 and his Dateline NBC special was actually filmed at Scullers. He just played the Opera House in Boston and mentioned how his first Boston shows were at Scullers.
Smitty: Very cool.
DAS: And then it’s those initial relationships you build with the artists that you develop over years and allows you to get them to return even when they are commanding big money in very large venues. In 2004 we had both Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. return. These relationships are priceless to us and have set us apart from so many other venues in the country. That’s really a fascinating thing, as the General Manager, as a jazz fan, to be a part of this.
Smitty: Yes, you have such a rich and priceless tradition there at Scullers. Now, I have to mention the food at Scullers! You have a great chef and a great staff in the kitchen. (Laughs.)
DAS: If he wasn’t great, we’d have him outta here in no time. (Both laugh.) Tony Frechette is the chef here. He’s terrific! He’s been here for three years and he has so many great ideas. As a matter of fact, he’s the one who started changing the menu every month, so people are always shocked when they come in and there are all of these new selections. It’s pretty tough to keep up that pace, but Tony and his terrific team thrives on it. We sell a lot of food here at Scullers and people just love it whether it’s in our Boathouse Grille restaurant, our Terrace Lounge or in the club itself.
Smitty: Yes, and everyone always leaves Scullers smiling and I think that’s just a consistent, fantastic thing that you don’t get everywhere.
DAS: It’s certainly what we strive for and if for some reason someone’s not, we usually get down to the bottom of it pretty quick. I’m very fortunate because I have a base here of clients who really are very communicative, they let us know what they expect, what they’d like to see. And now with the Web site, Scullersjazz.com, our newsletter, the blog, I’m getting constant feedback and I always want more. And, really, so many of the things that have come from Scullers, and the packages that we do—the travel series, the Latin music series—were all born from clients suggestions.
Smitty: You are doing something that’s truly unique in that you are constantly communicating with, and more importantly, you are listening to your clientele. That’s special stuff.
DAS: I feel that you must do that and I enjoy it. It helps me do my job better, and I really do appreciate all those comments.
