Legendary Birdland Jazz Club celebrates its 60th anniversary

(AFP PHOTO/BORIS HORVAT)

Charlie Parker called Birdland "the jazz corner of the world." To mark the 60th anniversary of the renowned Birdland Jazz Club in New York City, a week's worth of performances and a photo exhibit will commemorate the great jazz players who played on its stage.

On December 15-19, drummer Roy Haynes, "the father of modern drumming," as guitarist Pat Metheny dubbed him, who performed at Birland the first night it opened on December 15, 1949, takes the stage again.

He has recorded with Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Ella Fitzgerald, and Charlie Parker. In fact, Haynes was the drummer in Parker's group on Birdland's opening night, December 15th, 1949.

Fittingly, this engagement is the cornerstone of Birdland's 60th Anniversary celebration. In December 1949, on opening night, the illustrious Parker headlined the club, then located on Broadway, west of 52nd Street, a hotbed of jazz during the 1930s and ‘40s.

The alto saxophone player, known as "Bird," was the inspiration for the name of the iconic club, where jazz greats famously jammed all night and into the morning. Regulars included celebrities like Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Through the end of the December at the Affinia Hotel, The Birdland @ 60 exhibit, will show color and black-and-white photographs of new and never-before-seen images of some the century's best jazz musicians captured on the Birdland stage. On display in the Madison Room are photos of artists such as Tony Bennett, Michael Brecker, Ron Carter, Christine Ebersole, Kurt Elling, Chita Rivera, and Phoebe Snow.