Dakota Jazz Club celebrating 40 years of jazz music and beyond
Shelby J. performs at the Dakota Jazz Club back on March 18, 2017. Photo by Emmet Kowler for MPR.
Johnson, Cecilia
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Audio transcript
[TINA SCHLIESKE, "THE GOOD LIFE"] Oh, the good life full of fun
Seems to be the ideal
NINA MOINI: That is "The Good Life" by Minneapolis musician Tina from Tina and the B-Sides. She's one of the many performers lined up to celebrate 40 years of the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. The Dakota has featured thousands of acts, from celebrated jazz musicians to local up-and-coming bands, and even beyond the Jazz genre.
The venue's holding an anniversary block party this Saturday. And joining us to talk about the Dakota's legacy is its founder, Lowell Pickett, in the studio with us. Thanks so much for your time today.
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, thanks for having us. Thanks for having me on.
NINA MOINI: And happy birthday, I guess, to this lovely establishment. Take us back, if you would, to 1985. That's so funny that we just talked about Farm Aid's 40th birthday as well. We were just saying it's going to be quite a weekend in Minneapolis, Lowell.
LOWELL PICKETT: I didn't realize that until I was listening in the other room that--
NINA MOINI: Yeah!
LOWELL PICKETT: --Farm Aid and the Dakota are both 40 years old.
NINA MOINI: Wow, wow. How lucky are we to have all of that? So 1985, and you decide to open a jazz club. What happened?
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, that's idiocy. I mean, the two of the hardest businesses in the world, I think, could be a music venue or jazz club and a restaurant. So why not combine them into one?
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: Actually, the Dakota was originally a restaurant with jazz in the bar. We didn't really open it up as a jazz club, per se. It was just trying to think of things that-- it was in. Bandana Square. Bandana Square wasn't exactly in the commercial crossroads of the world. And it was-- I was trying to think of why I would go to a place that wasn't in my normal path of-- and what would draw me--
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: --sort out of my comfort zone. I thought the building was magnificent. That old railroad repair garage was really-- it is a very special place. But most people weren't familiar with where it was. And I would go to W.A. Frost for outdoor dining. I would go to Night Train to listen to jazz in the bar after a great dinner. Pam Sherman's food was being cooked there.
I would go to a restaurant that had a chef-driven menu and good food, or a restaurant that had good wine by the glass list. So I just wanted all those things incorporated into the Dakota, something that I would go to. And the Dakota originally just had jazz in the bar, and people would dine and they'd go over to the bar and listen to Shirley Witherspoon or Debbie Duncan, Moore by Four.
And after a couple of years of doing that, it was-- they were all musicians that lived in the Twin Cities or all regional musicians.
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: And we're so blessed to have such remarkable talent here.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah.
LOWELL PICKETT: So we had no shortage of great music. But then, through a series of coincidences, I had worked in another sort of lifetime earlier, I'd arranged a concert at the Guthrie Theater for the Walker Art Center with a pianist named McCoy Tyner, who was one of the seminal pianists in the history of American music.
And McCoy ended up coming to the Dakota to play as a favor. And I'd gotten a call from a booking agent saying, you're a jazz place. Do you want to have McCoy Tyner? And I said, no, we don't do that. We're not set up to do national shows. We're not set up for those kinds of ticket prices.
And he kept pushing on it. And McCoy and I had become friends after this concert that I'd arranged at the Guthrie. And at the time, I was making documentary films, it was completely different life--
NINA MOINI: Cool.
LOWELL PICKETT: --for me. And McCoy and I had become friends. We tried to do a film together. We'd stayed in touch and had dinner whenever he was in town to play. One time, I mean, I just-- he was doing a double bill with Miles Davis in downtown Minneapolis. And he invited me down to that, and I watched it from backstage, which is an incredible experience for a kid, for anybody.
Anyway, we got this call, and I said, we don't do it. And the agent called me back and said that McCoy said that you're friends, and he'll be happy to come and play in your restaurant if you just get him a good piano. Pay him what you can and get him a good piano. And I'd never seen a New York jazz club, I thought that music belonged to the Guthrie Orchestra Hall.
So McCoy came and it worked out really well. And he ended up talking to the agent and said the room was wonderful and people were great to him. And the chef's a genius. I'll go back any time. And because of that, other people who were connected with him or knew him or connected with his agent started calling and coming.
And so Ahmad Jamal came and Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Horace Silver, Joe Williams, all within the first year, we had those.
NINA MOINI: Wow.
LOWELL PICKETT: And so suddenly we were producing or presenting national jazz artists. We didn't really aspire to do it. It just sort of evolved naturally.
NINA MOINI: Well, sometimes, that's the best way to do it, right, is organically. And I was reading some prior interviews that you've done about how just important it was to you to make sure that you treated everybody well who came in through there. And then the artists that came through there, and how it sounds like through word of mouth and community, things started to build. And the rest is history.
I mean, do you ever just Marvel at the 40 years of not only the amazing acts that have come through, but the amazing memories that you've created for the people in the audience? Just people's first dates and wedding proposals and this, and just these formative memories? You've just been a part of so much.
LOWELL PICKETT: I don't know. I think we're really fortunate to live in this community, in the Twin Cities, for a lot of reasons. Because we have such a vibrant cultural scene here.
NINA MOINI: Yes.
LOWELL PICKETT: And I feel fortunate that we're a part of that. The fact that people have come in, and had special moments in their lives that they've celebrated or created at the Dakota. I'm grateful for that. And I'm happy that we've been able to be a part of it.
But I don't stop and think about that because there are-- I'm just grateful that we're in this community and that we've got such an incredibly vibrant place to be a part of. And I hope that we can contribute to it in some regard. That's-- and try to make-- you mentioned this thing about trying to create an environment where artists were treated well. That just seemed to be the natural thing to do.
NINA MOINI: Well, sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: That if you're inviting someone to come in and share what they do, and then you're inviting guests to come in and listen to that, and they're actually paying money to listen to it, wouldn't you want to treat everybody as well as you could?
NINA MOINI: Yeah.
LOWELL PICKETT: I mean, that just seems--
NINA MOINI: Well, if you want them to come back.
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, not even that. It's just the right thing to do. I'd hear these stories about the way people were treated in other venues, in other parts of the country. And it was kind of shocking to me. John McLaughlin, who I'm a huge fan of, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. He actually played at the Dakota 20 years ago, which was beyond anything. I don't think he'd played in a small room like that--
NINA MOINI: Oh, OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: --for decades. I first saw him at the Guthrie Theater in the early 1970s and transformed what I thought music could be. I heard a story about them playing at a pretty well-known place in New York that's not there anymore. But it was a household name place in New York.
NINA MOINI: OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: And his tour manager told me that they were given a bill for everything they consumed backstage, including a $10 charge for the pitcher of Coca-Cola they had. And I'm thinking--
NINA MOINI: You can't do that!
LOWELL PICKETT: You can't give that.
NINA MOINI: So I want to make sure, Lowell, it's so important to talk about the acts that have come through for all of these 40 years. And I just want to about this block party this weekend. We have about a minute left. How are we going to experience the whole 40 years in this weekend? What's it going to be like?
LOWELL PICKETT: The Dakota was founded originally on regional artists and local artists, and so 90% of the people that are playing on Saturday are from the Twin Cities area.
NINA MOINI: Beautiful.
LOWELL PICKETT: And one act from New Orleans. And New Orleans is really very much a part of the music that we're presenting. We present blues, jazz, rock. We present all sorts of music now. But the bands that will be performing that day, there'll be 10 bands-- 5 outside, 5 inside the Dakota. Room 3, young band. We're covering generations and we're covering genres.
NINA MOINI: Cool
LOWELL PICKETT: Room 3 is a young band that was one of First Avenue's best bands of the year in 2024.
NINA MOINI: OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: Amazing young collective. Jamecia Bennett from the Sounds of Blackness. Tina Schlieske with Tina and the B-Sides.
NINA MOINI: That's right.
LOWELL PICKETT: The Suburbs, Davina and the Vagabonds.
NINA MOINI: Oh, I'm excited!
LOWELL PICKETT: Nachito Herrera.
NINA MOINI: All right, happy 40th birthday to you! Lowell Pickett, thanks for coming in person. I wish we had more time. Congratulations to you. Lowell Pickett is the founder of the Dakota Jazz Club.
That is it for "Minnesota Now" this week. Thanks to the entire team who puts the show together for you. Hope you have a great weekend, and hope to see you back here Monday at noon.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Seems to be the ideal
NINA MOINI: That is "The Good Life" by Minneapolis musician Tina from Tina and the B-Sides. She's one of the many performers lined up to celebrate 40 years of the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. The Dakota has featured thousands of acts, from celebrated jazz musicians to local up-and-coming bands, and even beyond the Jazz genre.
The venue's holding an anniversary block party this Saturday. And joining us to talk about the Dakota's legacy is its founder, Lowell Pickett, in the studio with us. Thanks so much for your time today.
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, thanks for having us. Thanks for having me on.
NINA MOINI: And happy birthday, I guess, to this lovely establishment. Take us back, if you would, to 1985. That's so funny that we just talked about Farm Aid's 40th birthday as well. We were just saying it's going to be quite a weekend in Minneapolis, Lowell.
LOWELL PICKETT: I didn't realize that until I was listening in the other room that--
NINA MOINI: Yeah!
LOWELL PICKETT: --Farm Aid and the Dakota are both 40 years old.
NINA MOINI: Wow, wow. How lucky are we to have all of that? So 1985, and you decide to open a jazz club. What happened?
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, that's idiocy. I mean, the two of the hardest businesses in the world, I think, could be a music venue or jazz club and a restaurant. So why not combine them into one?
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: Actually, the Dakota was originally a restaurant with jazz in the bar. We didn't really open it up as a jazz club, per se. It was just trying to think of things that-- it was in. Bandana Square. Bandana Square wasn't exactly in the commercial crossroads of the world. And it was-- I was trying to think of why I would go to a place that wasn't in my normal path of-- and what would draw me--
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: --sort out of my comfort zone. I thought the building was magnificent. That old railroad repair garage was really-- it is a very special place. But most people weren't familiar with where it was. And I would go to W.A. Frost for outdoor dining. I would go to Night Train to listen to jazz in the bar after a great dinner. Pam Sherman's food was being cooked there.
I would go to a restaurant that had a chef-driven menu and good food, or a restaurant that had good wine by the glass list. So I just wanted all those things incorporated into the Dakota, something that I would go to. And the Dakota originally just had jazz in the bar, and people would dine and they'd go over to the bar and listen to Shirley Witherspoon or Debbie Duncan, Moore by Four.
And after a couple of years of doing that, it was-- they were all musicians that lived in the Twin Cities or all regional musicians.
NINA MOINI: Sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: And we're so blessed to have such remarkable talent here.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah.
LOWELL PICKETT: So we had no shortage of great music. But then, through a series of coincidences, I had worked in another sort of lifetime earlier, I'd arranged a concert at the Guthrie Theater for the Walker Art Center with a pianist named McCoy Tyner, who was one of the seminal pianists in the history of American music.
And McCoy ended up coming to the Dakota to play as a favor. And I'd gotten a call from a booking agent saying, you're a jazz place. Do you want to have McCoy Tyner? And I said, no, we don't do that. We're not set up to do national shows. We're not set up for those kinds of ticket prices.
And he kept pushing on it. And McCoy and I had become friends after this concert that I'd arranged at the Guthrie. And at the time, I was making documentary films, it was completely different life--
NINA MOINI: Cool.
LOWELL PICKETT: --for me. And McCoy and I had become friends. We tried to do a film together. We'd stayed in touch and had dinner whenever he was in town to play. One time, I mean, I just-- he was doing a double bill with Miles Davis in downtown Minneapolis. And he invited me down to that, and I watched it from backstage, which is an incredible experience for a kid, for anybody.
Anyway, we got this call, and I said, we don't do it. And the agent called me back and said that McCoy said that you're friends, and he'll be happy to come and play in your restaurant if you just get him a good piano. Pay him what you can and get him a good piano. And I'd never seen a New York jazz club, I thought that music belonged to the Guthrie Orchestra Hall.
So McCoy came and it worked out really well. And he ended up talking to the agent and said the room was wonderful and people were great to him. And the chef's a genius. I'll go back any time. And because of that, other people who were connected with him or knew him or connected with his agent started calling and coming.
And so Ahmad Jamal came and Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Horace Silver, Joe Williams, all within the first year, we had those.
NINA MOINI: Wow.
LOWELL PICKETT: And so suddenly we were producing or presenting national jazz artists. We didn't really aspire to do it. It just sort of evolved naturally.
NINA MOINI: Well, sometimes, that's the best way to do it, right, is organically. And I was reading some prior interviews that you've done about how just important it was to you to make sure that you treated everybody well who came in through there. And then the artists that came through there, and how it sounds like through word of mouth and community, things started to build. And the rest is history.
I mean, do you ever just Marvel at the 40 years of not only the amazing acts that have come through, but the amazing memories that you've created for the people in the audience? Just people's first dates and wedding proposals and this, and just these formative memories? You've just been a part of so much.
LOWELL PICKETT: I don't know. I think we're really fortunate to live in this community, in the Twin Cities, for a lot of reasons. Because we have such a vibrant cultural scene here.
NINA MOINI: Yes.
LOWELL PICKETT: And I feel fortunate that we're a part of that. The fact that people have come in, and had special moments in their lives that they've celebrated or created at the Dakota. I'm grateful for that. And I'm happy that we've been able to be a part of it.
But I don't stop and think about that because there are-- I'm just grateful that we're in this community and that we've got such an incredibly vibrant place to be a part of. And I hope that we can contribute to it in some regard. That's-- and try to make-- you mentioned this thing about trying to create an environment where artists were treated well. That just seemed to be the natural thing to do.
NINA MOINI: Well, sure.
LOWELL PICKETT: That if you're inviting someone to come in and share what they do, and then you're inviting guests to come in and listen to that, and they're actually paying money to listen to it, wouldn't you want to treat everybody as well as you could?
NINA MOINI: Yeah.
LOWELL PICKETT: I mean, that just seems--
NINA MOINI: Well, if you want them to come back.
LOWELL PICKETT: Well, not even that. It's just the right thing to do. I'd hear these stories about the way people were treated in other venues, in other parts of the country. And it was kind of shocking to me. John McLaughlin, who I'm a huge fan of, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. He actually played at the Dakota 20 years ago, which was beyond anything. I don't think he'd played in a small room like that--
NINA MOINI: Oh, OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: --for decades. I first saw him at the Guthrie Theater in the early 1970s and transformed what I thought music could be. I heard a story about them playing at a pretty well-known place in New York that's not there anymore. But it was a household name place in New York.
NINA MOINI: OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: And his tour manager told me that they were given a bill for everything they consumed backstage, including a $10 charge for the pitcher of Coca-Cola they had. And I'm thinking--
NINA MOINI: You can't do that!
LOWELL PICKETT: You can't give that.
NINA MOINI: So I want to make sure, Lowell, it's so important to talk about the acts that have come through for all of these 40 years. And I just want to about this block party this weekend. We have about a minute left. How are we going to experience the whole 40 years in this weekend? What's it going to be like?
LOWELL PICKETT: The Dakota was founded originally on regional artists and local artists, and so 90% of the people that are playing on Saturday are from the Twin Cities area.
NINA MOINI: Beautiful.
LOWELL PICKETT: And one act from New Orleans. And New Orleans is really very much a part of the music that we're presenting. We present blues, jazz, rock. We present all sorts of music now. But the bands that will be performing that day, there'll be 10 bands-- 5 outside, 5 inside the Dakota. Room 3, young band. We're covering generations and we're covering genres.
NINA MOINI: Cool
LOWELL PICKETT: Room 3 is a young band that was one of First Avenue's best bands of the year in 2024.
NINA MOINI: OK.
LOWELL PICKETT: Amazing young collective. Jamecia Bennett from the Sounds of Blackness. Tina Schlieske with Tina and the B-Sides.
NINA MOINI: That's right.
LOWELL PICKETT: The Suburbs, Davina and the Vagabonds.
NINA MOINI: Oh, I'm excited!
LOWELL PICKETT: Nachito Herrera.
NINA MOINI: All right, happy 40th birthday to you! Lowell Pickett, thanks for coming in person. I wish we had more time. Congratulations to you. Lowell Pickett is the founder of the Dakota Jazz Club.
That is it for "Minnesota Now" this week. Thanks to the entire team who puts the show together for you. Hope you have a great weekend, and hope to see you back here Monday at noon.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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