Hip-Hop Lands a Lethal Kick to Defunct Jazz Note : Clubs: Owner of the Pacific Beach nightspot says the noise downstairs drove him away. But he may reopen elsewhere.

Hip-hop music, rap with a body-whomping bass, apparently delivered a knockout punch to the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach, one of San Diego’s two top jazz venues. (The other is the Horton Grand Hotel downtown.)

After shows July 24, 25 and 26, Jazz Note operator Steve Satkowski decided to close and search for a new location, citing noise and crowds at the Club 860 downstairs, which features hip-hop, as a primary reason.

Satkowski opened the Jazz Note 14 months ago in a loft-like, wood-beam-ceilinged room above Diego’s restaurant, which owns both the Jazz Note space and Club 860 next to the restaurant.

“I wasn’t in control of my own fate at that location anymore, due to the hip-hop format,” Satkowski said, adding that Club 860 began featuring hip-hop earlier this year.

“It generated an incredible bass rumble throughout the Jazz Note and really compromised my presentation of the music. Louder acts like Jimmy Witherspoon or Les McCann, you didn’t really hear it much. But when we had someone sensitive like Joanne Brackeen or Henry Butler, the bass was distracting. It actually shook the floor of the Jazz Note.

“Also, the hip-hop craze drew a large underground crowd that did not appeal to the more sophisticated clientele that patronized the Jazz Note. There was a direct correlation between what happened downstairs and the deterioration of my business.”

Satkowski said audiences at the 80-seat venue dropped steadily, from several sellouts early in the year to much smaller crowds recently. Saxophonist Joe Henderson drew about 140 people for two shows on a Saturday night in April, for instance, while Brackeen attracted 74 for her sets on the club’s final Saturday.

The shaky financial status of Diego’s also contributed to the Jazz Note’s demise. The restaurant is in the midst of a bankruptcy reorganization. Court-appointed trustee Michael Mack took over management about a month ago, and he and Satkowski didn’t see eye to eye.

“I lost control of my finances, including how and when my bank deposits were being made,” said Satkowski, who spent tens of thousands of dollars in his own money on the club.

He is looking at three existing San Diego clubs as possible new locations for the Jazz Note. He wouldn’t name them but said one is downtown. He also didn’t rule out a return to Elario’s, the La Jolla nightclub where he booked jazz for several years before opening the Jazz Note.

Whatever the location, Satkowski plans to reopen in September, and has tentatively lined up acts including saxophonist Eric Marienthal and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.

The Jazz Note’s name may also live on through live recordings made at the club. One by Laurindo Almeida came out earlier this year, and San Diego jazz buff Jim Merod has digitally recorded performances by Brackeen, Benny Golson, Tom Harrell, Art Farmer, Charles McPherson and several other artists. Golson and Brackeen are marketing their tapes for release as live albums, Satkowski said.

Despite the club’s closure, Satkowski puts a mostly positive spin on his experience with it.

“I am disappointed, because I showed that jazz in Pacific Beach could succeed with the right type of presentation. We offered a non-smoking atmosphere, and people in the audience didn’t talk during the performances. When we recorded Laurindo Almeida, it was like a studio.

“I spent 14 months of 100-hour weeks building the reputation of that club. But I know the owners of Diego’s are trying to survive, doing anything (including hip-hop) to bring in the dollars. So I don’t blame them for that.”

The Jazz Note isn’t the only significant casualty on San Diego’s jazz scene this summer. Time Is Records, the city’s only jazz recording label, closed last month after two years and a dozen releases ranging from a rare Charlie Parker/Chet Baker collaboration to debuts by several new, young artists including San Diego groups Common Ground and Reel to Real.

“I remember saying two years ago I was going to go for broke, and that’s exactly what happened,” said Time Is President Otto Gust, who estimates he sank more than $200,000 into the label and says he is in danger of losing his heavily mortgaged home in Bankers Hill.

Gust blames a music industry dominated by dishonest distributors, large recording labels and giant music store chains such as Tower Records for his label’s failure to turn a profit.

He said he still has $25,000 to $30,000 worth of CDs out to distributors, who have continually been slow to either pay for them or return them. Gust said he recently visited a New York music store that stocked the whole Time Is catalogue, but he has yet to be paid by the distributor who serves the store.

“From day one, I had to chase distributors constantly,” he said. “That was almost a full-time job for one of the people on my staff. In a lot of cases, I had to make personal visits, and I still never got paid in full. I’d give them 60 to 90 days, and they would take 160 to 180--to come up with partial payment.”

Large chains like Tower make money by selling sizable numbers of CDs in a hurry, Gust noted, not a handful over a longer stretch of time, the way most jazz recordings sell. A lot of jazz releases are removed from shelves after a short period to make room for recordings that sell more quickly, Gust claimed.

“All these things mount up,” he said. “When you’re listening to all this craziness month after month, you start to think, ‘What am I, insane? It was like I was living in the ‘Twilight Zone.’ It became impossible to function. I put in the last of the money I had saved, so I figured now was the time to pull the plug.”

Meanwhile Gust, who also works as an operations manager and deejay at KSDS-FM (88.3), is looking for work, preferably in one of his three areas of interest: radio, jazz or fitness training.

RIFFS: San Diego saxman Steve Feierabend, a member of Common Ground, moved to New Jersey last weekend to take a teaching assistant’s position at Rutgers University, where he’ll work toward a master’s degree in jazz performance in a program run by legendary jazz pianist Kenny Barron. Feierabend starts classes in the fall. Common Ground is shopping a new recording around to labels . . . .

San Diego music promoter Rob Hagey said he still hopes, eventually, to open a new San Diego club that would feature some jazz, but the closing of the Jazz Note won’t speed his plans. He’s too busy with Street Scene, the September music orgy he produces in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: RITENOUR AT HUMPHREY’S

Guitarist Lee Ritenour is laying low in Los Angeles this summer, working on a new recording to be released next year, a tribute to the late jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery 25 years after his death.

“But I couldn’t pass up Humphrey’s, my usual summer haunt,” said Ritenour, who holds the all-time record for most performances at Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay--19--and will add two more at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday.

Ritenour’s band at Humphrey’s will feature vocalist Phil Perry, as an integral band member, not just a guest singer.

“He’s been featured on several of my records, back to the ‘Color Rit’ and ‘Portrait’ albums,” the guitarist said. “I like to have great players, and he is a player. He has a strong voice that intermingles easily with my guitar.”

Perry will join Ritenour on several songs from albums by both artists, including some Brazilian tunes, and the singer will get his share of space for improvising, alongside such band members as saxophonist Eric Marienthal.

Ritenour’s last release was 1991’s all-acoustic “Stolen Moments.” Meanwhile, JVC, his former label, last year reissued three of his recordings from the late 1970s. They offer a great opportunity for a then-and-now comparison.

The verdict? Ritenour has grown immensely, and so has the sophistication of the electric brand of jazz he is known for, classified back then as fusion, today, as contemporary jazz. “Gentle Thoughts” and “Friendship,” two of the old JVC re-releases, sound like primitive efforts at fusing funk, rock and jazz when compared with the seamless, rich, melodic sound that dominates newer recordings made by Ritenour, including last year’s debut by the all-star group Fourplay, of which he is a member.

Tickets for both Humphrey’s shows will be available at the gate. They cost $20.