PAUL’S MALL

1965-1978

733 BOYLSTON STREET, BOSTON, MA

NEXT STOP: The Eliot Hotel (370 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA)

Years: 1965-1978
Opening: Barry Manilow/ Herbie Hancock
Feature: Bob Marley/ Miles Davis

Paul’s Mall, along with its sister venue next door, known as The Jazz Workshop, was a jazz stage with indie, folk, and rock acts; it became a place where like-minded artists and creative people would gather.

In the ‘60s and ’70s, Boston was a counterculture hub. Paul’s Mall contributed to that movement because of its variety of music and the cozy and more intimate room that brought the audience closer to the musicians. Like many others, this venue could not afford to stay open, not simply because of the rent and city fees, but because the performers were too expensive to pay for such a small space. (1) Being just down the street from Berklee College of Music, the students sometimes made up much of the audience and could not afford expensive tickets.

The Story

By the mid-1960s, though, jazz was well on its way to becoming a cottage industry compared to rock, its crass musical cousin. While venues like Music Hall and The Boston Tea Party capitalized on the seismic shifts in the public’s musical tastes, most jazz clubs were either struggling to stay afloat or out of business altogether. And with few exceptions, the owners of the remaining clubs had no bloody idea how to manage the new cultural and commercial realities.

But Fred Taylor did. And that’s because he understood an essential element of concert promotion that his club-owning contemporaries didn’t: the paramount importance of artists’ “crossover appeal,” a concept as common today as multi-track recording but one that promoters and producers rarely considered very seriously in the 1950s and early ‘60s. By presenting a buffet of jazz greats, blues masters, up-and-coming rockers and budding pop stars at The Jazz Workshop and Paul’s Mall – the clubs he owned between 1965 and 1978, located side by side at 733 Boylston Street – Taylor became the driving force behind two of the most storied venues in New England’s musical history.

The seeds of The Jazz Workshop were planted in 1953, when saxophonists Charlie Mariano, Varty Haroutunian and Serge Chaloff, trumpeter Herb Pomeroy and pianists Ray Santisi and Dick Twardzik cofounded it as a music school on Stuart Street in Boston. In 1954, they relocated the Workshop to the basement of The Stable, a popular bar and jazz joint on Huntington Avenue.

In 1963, after The Stable was torn down to allow room for the Massachusetts Turnpike extension, the partners moved The Jazz Workshop once again, this time to the basement of The Inner Circle restaurant at 733 Boylston Street. Most significantly, they began hosting acts; Stan Getz and his band appeared on opening night.

Getz had been booked for the debut Workshop gig by Fred Taylor, whose legacy as one of New England’s most legendary promoters is rivaled only by George Wein (founder of the Newport Jazz Festival and Newport Folk Festival), Manny Greenhill (founder of Folklore Productions) and journalist-turned-folk-blues impresario Dick Waterman. In 1965, Taylor and his business partner, Tony Mauriello, bought The Jazz Workshop and the space directly beside it, which they named Paul’s Mall; one set of stairs led down to the adjoining clubs. Taylor, who became known as “Mr. Jazz” in Boston jazz circles, booked the talent and Mauriello – who Tayor called “Mr. Facts and Figures” – handled the administrative side of the business.

Taylor’s strategy was as simple as it was novel at the time: to present a wide variety of acts between the two venues, hoping that their physical proximity would draw the broadest possible audiences – “crossover crowds,” to use the modern term that Taylor popularized, albeit unknowingly. “My whole idea was to have two sides,” he said in 2012. “You could have ‘the real thing’ in The Jazz Workshop and the more popular, contemporary stuff in Paul’s Mall.”

The 245-capacity Paul’s Mall was larger than The Jazz Workshop, which held around 170, and had a significantly bigger stage. For those reasons, big bands always played at the Mall, not at the Workshop, as did all non-jazz performers; some jazz artists who drew crossover crowds, such as Miles Davis, appeared at both venues. 

Source:
Monahan, D.S. "Paul's Mall." The Music Museum of New England. October 27, 2023. https://doi.org/https://www.mmone.org/the-jazz-workshop-pauls-mall/.

We will take a break and head to The Eliot Lounge at The Eliot Hotel to chat.

Continue on to the stopover: The Eliot Hotel. This is about an 15 minute walk. (1.3 miles) 

1. Kripke, Scott. "Paul's Mall/Workshop Closes; Fifteen Years of Jazz End." The Crimson. March 10, 1978. https://doi.org/https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1978/4/10/pauls-mallworkshop-closes-fifteen-years-of/.

Performers (partial list)

Charles Mingus
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Sonny Rollins
Art Blakey
Ramsey Lewis
Chuck Mangione
John Scofield
Al Di Meola
Tony Williams
Pat Metheny
Ron Carter
Chick Corea
Ahmad Jamal
Mose Alison
Larry Coryell
Pharoah Sanders
Eumir Deodato
Joe Farrell
Grover Washington, Jr.
Keith Jarrett
Bill Evans
Erroll Garner
Joe Williams
Betty Carter
The Modern Jazz Quartet
Cannonball Adderley
Les McCann
Mose Allison
Herbie Hancock
Charlie Byrd
Elvin Jones
Duke Ellington
Don Ellis
Sun Ra and his Arkestra
Pat Patrick
Bruce Springsteen
Barry Manilow
Chuck Berry
Bo Diddley

"Breckers at Paul's Mall Boston." TheSwamison. December 8, 2012. Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6ApWJJSFM.