Getting Down at the Upbeat Saxx : Night Life: The 3-year-old Southeast San Diego club has become the place to hear jazz and blues, and its owners hope to expand soon.

East of Interstate 805, Imperial Avenue pushes past blocks of fast food stands and apartment buildings ringed by high cyclone fencing. Eventually, Southeast San Diego’s major thoroughfare arrives at one of the area’s hottest hangouts: Saxx Nightclub.

In this predominantly black part of town, Saxx is one of the few establishments offering live music, probably the only place besides Cynd’s on 54th Street where you can hear live jazz and blues.

People come from miles around to hang out at Saxx. San Diego City Councilman Wes Pratt, the Rev. George Stevens and television personality Herb Cawthorne are among the well-known regulars.

They come to hear first-rate jazz by San Diego bands such as Pieces, eat heaping platefuls of Southern-style barbecue, mingle at the long bar or around the pool table, and, as the night wears on, dance to deejayed, funky disco sounds.

“I live in the Skyline area (of Southeast San Diego), and Saxx is about 4 miles from my home,” Pratt said. “I go down Imperial to get home (from downtown), so it’s on my way. I stop in every so often.

“Quite a few folks are down there from my council district, so it gives me a chance to rub shoulders with them. It’s a place where everyone knows you, and you can let your hair hang down. There used to be a club called the Black Frog at 47th and Federal, but it’s no longer there, so Saxx is becoming a hip place to be.”

The proprietors of this increasingly popular, 3-year-old social hot spot are Gil and Karen Brown.

Karen Brown spends afternoons at the club, handling bookkeeping and other day-to-day business. By day, Gil Brown is deputy director of the city of San Diego’s Equipment Division. But, on many nights, you’ll find him strolling among old friends at Saxx, which he named in honor of his late father, Leroy, a well-known jazz saxophonist who ran a club of his own in Pittsburgh.

For the first 21 years of his life, Brown, 46, lived in the family apartment above his dad’s club and restaurant, the Crawford Grill, which hosted most of the top jazz players of the 1940s and 1950s.

“I can still go up to just about any band at Elario’s (the San Diego jazz club) and get into a long conversation about the old days,” Brown said, relaxing at a table beneath a neon Budweiser sign as his club began to fill on a Friday evening. Brown was dressed nattily, but conservatively: Navy sport coat, slacks and a tie, rounded out by sharp designer glasses and a stately streak of white in his hair.

“I met George Benson when he was just a kid. He was still too young for the union, and my dad used to sneak him into the club and let him play a few songs with the band, Leroy Brown and the Brown Buddies.”

The Browns live in Bonita, but they take pride in offering something to the predominantly black community of Southeast San Diego. Patrons of Saxx are mostly black, but whites who visit can dissolve easily into the throng.

Brown, an entrepreneurial type who, in the past, has owned a gift basket business and a video store chain, knew about the building that houses Saxx for several years before he took over the lease.

In the past, the building had housed disco nightclubs known as TNT, Disco 4000 and The Safety, which was owned by football player Dave Grayson.

“I’d been to a lot of cities, and I knew this had potential,” Brown said. “I’d been to worse parts of town and worse clubs. The guy that had this place wasn’t making it, and I knew I could.”

Karen Brown supervised the transformation of the interior, using a soothing palette of soft sherbet colors. Gil Brown said they spent $40,000 to $50,000 on the initial face lift and have since plowed several thousands more of their profits back into the club.

Brown at first envisioned Saxx as a straight-ahead jazz club, but has broadened the entertainment to keep the place humming.

“My intention was to be strictly a jazz club, but not as many folks, especially black folks, are jazz fans as there used to be. They seem to enjoy it here, but I have to stay with more modern (light) jazz so it’s more entertaining.”

Pieces, the San Diego jazz band fronted by three vocalists, plays Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday nights from 6 to 9. From 4 to 9 p.m. on the first and third Saturdays of each month, there is a blues jam featuring Yo Band, led by Los Angeles soprano saxophonist and flutist Shelly Minafee, the daughter of well-known San Diego singer Peggy Minafee.

There are other diversions, too, after the jazz band finishes its stint. Wednesday nights, Saxx fills up with tables of patrons playing bid whist, a card came similar to bridge. Thursdays are comedy nights.

“People from the community sing, tap dance, tell jokes,” Brown said. “Some are excellent, others should have stayed in the shower. We’ve had acts come through that are now famous around San Diego, like First Choice, a vocal trio. They are doing big things.”

According to Brown, Saxx Nightclub is a veritable gold mine. He said he and his wife make more money each year from the club than he earns in his job with the city.

On nights when there is a live jazz band, such as Pieces, the group finishes by 9 or 9:30 so that the disco deejay can take over to accommodate the rowdier young set. Younger people who come to party to disco sounds tend to drink more than jazz fans, so the bar’s cash registers ring happily during late-night hours.

Brown envisions bigger things for his club. He owns two lots next door and hopes to firm up a deal to buy the Saxx building next year. He would like to add a parking lot and hopes to convert Miz Kizzie’s Kitchen, the restaurant in the back room at Saxx, into a jazz club.

Along with the sheer satisfaction of owning Saxx, a hub of Southeast San Diego night life, Brown said there is another reason that he is hooked on the business.

“Of all the businesses I’ve been in, this is the most enjoyable,” he said. “There’s something appealing for your ego. You end up being a person that many, many people know. I think it just gets in your blood.”