Cafe Lido Closes on a Quiet Note : Jazz: The Balboa Peninsula club owner cites the economy and shifting musical tastes.

In the short-lived world of nightclubs, Cafe Lido had a life like Methuselah’s. For 14 years on the Balboa Peninsula, the handsome supper club was one of Orange County’s last bastions of straight-ahead jazz.

But no more. Last month, the Lido shut its doors, a victim, says owner Joe Sperrazza, not just of current economic conditions but of shifting musical tastes, declining alcohol sales and other changes in ways that the public spends its entertainment dollars.

The latest and certainly the most unsettling in a series of local jazz club failures, “it’s a profound loss,” says trumpeter Ron Stout, who held Sunday afternoon jam sessions there. “It’s almost too hard to face.”

It’s not just jazz rooms that are closing. Bogart’s, the club in Long Beach that had been the hub of the local grass-roots rock scene, closed in December. The Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana folded a year ago in the face of mounting losses, ending an ambitious but brief attempt to present high-profile musicians from many fields.

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Traditionally, in Orange County and nationally, clubs tend to come and go at an almost seasonal pace. But in Orange County, for the past several months, jazz clubs have been closing far more rapidly than usual. And while rock clubs in the county have been replaced by new ones--the no-frills Electric Circus in Anaheim, Our House in Costa Mesa and Club 369 in Fullerton all have sprung up recently, offering local bands at low admission prices--no new jazz clubs have come along.

The Lido was the last jazz club here that anyone expected to close. Located on 30th Street since 1988, and on Newport Boulevard before that, it was “was the No. 1 jazz spot in Orange County,” says Dee Dee McNeil, a former Motown songwriter who had been a fixture there on weekends. “Its passing is going to be a real loss for the music and musicians as well as the fans.”

“Things had been tough for the last two years, but we thought it would turn around eventually,” said Sperrazza, a trumpeter who on rare occasions was known to join the musicians on his bandstand.

Sperrazza, who closed the club on Feb. 27, said he’s not necessarily finished with the business. “We’re going to relax a couple weeks, play some golf and then start looking for a new place. We’re optimistic that in a year we’ll have another location.”

But “there are so many expenses that don’t contribute anything to the business, like ASCAP and BMI fees (royalties for the use of particular pieces of music), worker’s comp charges and the various licensing fees from the city. We had to pay all those whether we were full or empty. They weren’t a lot by themselves, but it all added up.

“Also, the current trend in drinking less, with sobriety checkpoints and all, and people drinking wine instead of cocktails. Let’s face it, this is a whiskey business, and the times were changing.”

He attempted to change with them--offering wine tastings with dinner, featuring happy hour prices on appetizers rather than drinks, even adding a few rhythm & blues bands to the lineup--but such efforts failed to do the trick.

“And our neighborhood has become less desirable,” he added. “At one time, people used to walk from place to place down here. But there aren’t so many places to go to now.”

Mucho Gusto, a restaurant in Costa Mesa that offered fusion, Brazilian and Latin jazz, closed in January. The month before, Vinnie’s Ristorante, almost across the street from Mucho Gusto, stopped booking jazz; owner Vincent Colandrea’s Laguna Niguel club closed the previous September. That summer, the music stopped at Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach, which had been presenting such respected names as saxophonist Teddy Edwards and pianist Cedar Walton.

This isn’t part of a national trend, according to bassist Luther Hughes, who booked jazz into Vinnie’s. Hughes says he sees busy clubs as he travels the country with pianist Gene Harris’ quartet. “It isn’t jazz that’s dying. We played a weeklong engagement at the Jazz Alley in Seattle recently, and the club was packed every night.”

“I don’t believe the jazz scene is dead by a long shot,” agrees Randell Young, whose club, Randell’s in Santa Ana, is one of the few jazz rooms in Orange County that is doing well. “Our business has picked up steadily since we opened in 1992,” said Young, noting that his February attendance surged ahead of expectations, leaving him shorthanded at times.

“We bring in different audiences, the straight-ahead fans, the fusion fans, the funk fans on different nights. And we expose people to different kinds of music that way,” Young said.

“Some of these places (that closed) had poor sound systems, rinky-dink lighting and the kitchen door swinging open all the time right next to the bandstand. That just isn’t very good presentation.”

Others--including Frank Amoss, president of the Orange County Musicians’ Assn. Local 7, American Federation of Musicians--say the declining number of jazz clubs is a reflection that “the audience for jazz is disappearing. The people who are coming of age now were reared on electric rock ‘n’ roll. They never had the chance to develop an appreciation for jazz. Therefore, they don’t support it.”

Ken Phebus presents all sorts of popular music as concert director of the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, by far Orange County’s most successful club, and he estimates that attendance at jazz events is down 20% to 30% from a few years ago.

He noted that he had to cancel one of two shows last fall by Joshua Redman, one of the hottest young jazz musicians in the country, because of inadequate ticket sales. “I’m a jazz fan and would like to say that it’s because of the economy, but that’s not the case. Our other shows continue to sell.”

In its heyday, the Lido offered music six nights a week, and such acts as pianist-singer Mose Allison, the Four Freshmen and Poncho Sanchez’s Latin jazz band played on Sunday afternoons. Perhaps the club’s finest moment came in 1987 when the Cafe Lido All Stars--led by saxophonist Wayne Wayne, a club stalwart since its earliest days--went all the way to the Final Four in the Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search. The competition is an annual nationwide battle of jazz bands that rewards the winner with the opening spot at the Hollywood Bowl’s Playboy Jazz Festival.

At the time, Wayne credited the club and Sperrazza with the band’s success. “We were a working band,” he explained. “We played together four nights a week, every week. We were ready.”

“Wayne was the backbone of the club in those days,” recalls Sperrazza. “He probably worked harder to keep jazz flowing here than anyone else.”

Trumpeter Stout credits Sperrazza. “He was never anything but terrific to us,” Stout said. He is “a real true friend of jazz. It’s rare to have the kind of rapport with a club owner that we had with him.”

Sperrazza admits to getting “choked up” on the club’s last day but said not all of his feelings are sad ones. “I’m walking away happy, really,” he explained. “I’ve worked with so many wonderful people over 14 years. And we had such wonderful music.”

Times staff writer Mike Boehm contributed to this report.