Owner Turning Over Reins of Crazy Horse

The Crazy Horse Steak House & Saloon, lauded for years as one of the nation’s top country-western clubs, is being sold to a Los Angeles restaurant owner.

The intimate 250-seat club, which has hosted a remarkable talent parade for 18 years, will continue its current format, managing partner Fred Reiser said Wednesday.

The Crazy Horse is being purchased by Jay Nuccio, co-owner of Little Joe’s, a landmark Italian restaurant in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

“There were other parties who were interested, some very seriously,” Reiser said. “We elected to sell to Jay because we knew exactly his intentions to keep things the same.”

The sale is expected to close in August. Terms weren’t disclosed.

Reiser said the decision to sell had been worked out over a year by the private partnership that owns the club off the Costa Mesa Freeway, and comes at a time when it is debt free and business is strong.

“The timing was right,” he said. “Do it when you’re healthy.”

As Orange County’s top country-music venue, the Crazy Horse has hosted virtually every big name in the field, including Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Charlie Daniels and Tammy Wynette.

Before Garth Brooks hit it big, he serenaded dinner crowds in front of Crazy Horse’s neon bucking bronco logo. These days, he drops in regularly to eat when he’s in the area.

Nuccio said he may make small changes in food presentation and improve the wine list. But the basic fare, including the music, will remain. The Crazy Horse “is a first-class steakhouse as well as a first-class country-western nightclub,” he said.

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Nuccio’s family founded Little Joe’s about 1915 and has operated it in the same Broadway location since 1926. After working there during the 1980s, he and his wife tried franchising Carl’s Jr. outlets in Oregon. When that didn’t work out, they decided to return to Southern California.

“We were looking for solid business opportunities,” Nuccio said. “The Crazy Horse has a great track record. It was just too great an opportunity to pass up.”

Nuccio, 46, grew up listening to the Beatles and Beach Boys, but said he has liked country music for a long time. He said he was on hand when the Crazy Horse opened in December 1979 because two of Reiser’s partners, Jim Knapp and Brad Miller, were his skiing pals.

Nuccio said he is trying to educate himself in depth about various artists, but is convinced that “country-western music has never been more popular.”

Reiser, 55, said he has had other business offers but isn’t ready to discuss them yet. Highly regarded throughout the country music industry, he will advise Nuccio for the first few months of transition.

The Crazy Horse has been voted country nightclub of the year seven times by the Los Angeles-based Academy of Country Music. It has won similar honors from Nashville’s Country Music Assn., which has given Reiser its “SRO” award as the nation’s top promoter and talent buyer.

“There are a lot of sleazy operators in nightclubs, but Fred is just pure class,” Waylon Jennings said in a telephone interview from Nashville.

He recalled that Reiser once mailed him a check for two performances Jennings had canceled due to chest pains.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say anything bad about the man,” Jennings said.

The word that the country format would remain was sweet music to Nancy Russell, a Nashville publicist for Trisha Yearwood, Lee Roy Parnell and others who have played the Crazy Horse.

“That’s an institution there, we sure hope they don’t change it,” Russell said. “Everyone has played there on their way up and some people go back there and play even if they could play someplace bigger.”

Like many big-name artists, fans love the intimacy of the club. It may cost $50--dinner not included--to see someone like Haggard, but regulars pay up regularly for the chance to file past the cabinet full of awards and sit near their favorite acts.

The big-name attractions typically have been booked three or four times a month, always on Monday or Tuesday nights. Local bands played the barroom the rest of the week--at least until recently.

“It seems to me they’re not getting as many of the “B” and “A-minus” acts coming through there,” said Laguna Beach musician George Dubin, who performed frequently at the Crazy Horse on Fridays and Saturdays in the past with the local band Buck Naked and the Chapped Cheeks.

“There was a time when Mondays and Tuesdays were pretty much booked up full time [with nationally known acts],” Dubin said.

Now, bands like Dubin’s (recently realigned as the Chapped Cheeks featuring Patty Booker), along with successful locals like Chris Gaffney and Jan Brown, are being invited to play on Tuesday nights.

“And even some Mondays have gone to the local talent nights,” Dubin said.

Nuccio and Reiser dismissed the notion that big-name bookings were in decline, saying it was just a summer lull while major acts play fairs and outdoor arenas.

Times staff writer Mike Boehm also contributed to this report.