Making Ronnie Scott's cool again

Sally Greene is determined to restore jazz's spiritual home to its former glory. She talks over her plans with Ian Burrell

"I'm Sally," says the London impresario, informing the great organist that she is the "new owner" of the club. Fame already knows this; it is a great talking point in jazz circles.

Shortly after Christmas, Sally Greene will be closing Ronnie Scott's for the first time in its 45-year history and re-launching it two months later. In so doing, she will be attempting to re-brand jazz for a new generation. Certainly this musical genre, once the last word in cool with its sharp dressing and risqué dancing, needs to get back its edge.

Greene must meet this marketing challenge while at the same time not offending her core market of die-hard, fiercely knowledgeable, Ronnie's regulars. But if she is intimidated by the prospect, it doesn't show. Greene has already re-packaged London theatre by button-holing Kevin Spacey outside the Old Vic (the ailing but historic playhouse she has also bought) and talking him into becoming its artistic director. In doing so, she scored a marketing coup, generated reams of publicity and managed to lure many West End theatre-goers to previously uncharted territory. Now she wants to do the same for the British jazz scene by overhauling its spiritual home.

"We've got to keep up with the times and go with the flow," she says, promising to book acts from more modern musical genres influenced by jazz. "I want everyone who loves jazz and all the offshoots of jazz to be satisfied."

Greene thinks Ronnie's profile could be improved. "I'm very strong on heavyweight marketing," she says. "This is the best club ever and we have to build on that. I want to have people come through the airport and know that Ronnie Scott's is here."

She will not just target tourists but young Britons as well. Soon she will announce a new young booker to take over from Pete King, the former partner of the late Ronnie Scott (who died in 1996). King is due to start a well-earned rest from this week but will remain involved with the club. "He's a legend," says Greene of King. "He knows more about jazz than anyone."

The current packaging and branding of Ronnie Scott's underlines the scale of Greene's task. The austere newsletter that the club issues to members resembles the sort of newspaper that used to circulate in London coffee houses in the 18th century. A visit to ronniescotts.co.uk is a journey into how the internet may have looked had it been invented in 1959 (when Ronnie's opened). It includes an à la carte menu offering, among other things, prawn cocktail and chicken kiev. Improvement of the culinary offering will be a significant element of Greene's repackaging, in spite of one of Ronnie Scott's quips in response to a complaint: "My dear sir, a thousand flies can't be wrong."

When told about plans to improve the menu, Georgie Fame tells Greene that he thinks "Ronnie gave up on the food years ago".

Sally's assistant, Nick Moss, has uncovered a cupboard full of live recordings from classic nights at Ronnie's. He sees the potential for CDs and downloads offered from a revamped website. T-shirts and customised iPods branded with the Ronnie's saxophone logo and live webstreaming of shows are other options under consideration.

Greene is conscious that Ronnie's unique selling point is its history and atmosphere. When she is building her buzz she has to be extremely careful not to damage that. But even the club's longest-standing patrons are becoming a little tired of the sticky carpet and the bad food, she says.

The front-of-house branding of the club is virtually non-existent and she wants to bring in "something more eye-catching... something you can see as you go past". Inside, the iconic jazz portraits will be captioned with the dates of when they played Ronnie's, to let punters know the history of the building in which they're sitting.

One of the key changes will be the transformation of the upstairs floor of the club from a tired-looking salsa room into a fashionable DJ bar where people can meet up before heading downstairs to catch the main show. Greene also sees a need to improve the sound quality of Ronnie's, which has long been due an upgrade. She will change the hours, so that bands come on earlier during the week, making the club more user-friendly for those who have work in the morning - "but you will still be able to come to Ronnie Scott's and listen to music at two in the morning," she adds.

The jazz brand is increasingly struggling to have a media presence. Guardian Media Group recently renamed the radio station Jazz FM as Smooth FM because the old title was putting off too many potential listeners.

Greene is not put off. She was educated at a strict Surrey convent, once running away at 15 to illegally drive her sister's car to the south of France. She had ambitions of becoming an actress, went to drama school and managed "a bit of television, a bit of theatre... but nothing talkable about".

When her break came in 1990 she didn't need an audition. Her father, a lawyer and the manager of the trust running Richmond Theatre in west London, told her that the playhouse was up for sale and suggested she put together a bid. Greene's successful purchase and subsequent restoration of the venue saw her interests in theatre and marketing converge. "I was always interested in the marketing and selling of the shows and how the PR was done," she says. "I was more interested in what was happening backstage than on stage."

Among her innumerable other projects, she is a co-producer (with Eric Fellner of Working Title films) of the hot West End musical Billy Elliot.

Greene, after her experience with Spacey, knows that big names are the best way of creating a buzz around a repackaged venue. She learnt last year that Ronnie Scott's was coming on to the market. "I thought there was great synergy between the brand names of the Old Vic and Ronnie Scott's," she says.

She has already written to the actor, comedian and accomplished singer Jamie Foxx and offered him a residency. And she hopes to persuade Woody Allen to return to the club to play the clarinet. "There's no one I wouldn't call. I'm definitely not scared of that."

Greene wants more youthful players on stage, to attract a younger audience. "I think there's a real chance for the new young jazz musicians to play here. We had Jamie Cullum the other day and some people would say he is not strictly jazz," she says. "But he packed the place with 20- to 30-year-olds." Fame reveals that he spoke to Cullum and that the young pianist was worn out by his week's residency. But, says Fame, Cullum was also proud to say: "I played Ronnie's."