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Pit Inn (jazz club)
The Pit Inn (ピットイン) is a jazz club in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The original opened in 1965 and was forced by demolition to close in 1992. It re-opened at a different site in Shinjuku later that year. DownBeat wrote in 2019 that the Pit Inn "is almost universally regarded as Japan's most important jazz club".[1] First Shinjuku Pit InnThe first Pit Inn was located in Shinjuku 3-chōme. It was named by its owner, Yoshitake Sato, who was a car enthusiast.[2] The first manager was Goro Sakai, who had experience of running jazz clubs.[3] The Pit Inn opened on 24 December 1965,[2][4] as a jazz coffee shop.[5] By March of the following year, it was hosting live jazz every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and on other days was being let out to theatre groups and for happenings.[6] Two years later, it became even more focused on jazz and was in the style of a Greenwich Village hangout.[5] From its early days, both domestic and international musicians played at the Pit Inn. In 1968, for instance, The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra played there.[7] Other activities also took place: a photography exhibition in 1968 was an early example.[8] Some of the most prominent Japanese jazz musicians played at the club early in their careers. Many continue to play there regularly, including Terumasa Hino, Sadao Watanabe and Yōsuke Yamashita.[9] Trumpeter Hino played there in 1969.[10] In 1970, the standard entrance charges were 450 Yen for the 2pm show and 500 Yen for the 7pm one, with one drink included.[11] It was described as "A comfortably dingy, often smoke-filled niche for the serious jazz fan [...] over the years it had been home to performances and recordings by some of the world's greatest jazz musicians".[12] In January 1992, it was forced to close, as the building it was part of was being demolished.[12] Second Shinjuku Pit InnThe Pit Inn reopened on 5 July 1992,[4] at a new location at the edge of Shinjuku 2-chōme.[12] It continued to offer an afternoon and an evening performance, with the former being for less-well-established musicians.[9] The fortieth anniversary celebrations featured performances by Hino, Watanabe, Yamashita, Keiko Lee, Otomo Yoshihide, John Zorn and others, playing in a nearby rented hall, as the club was too small to accommodate all the fans.[9] Other Pit InnsThere have been other jazz clubs with the same name in other parts of Tokyo and Japan. The Roppongi Pit Inn was open from at least 1978,[13][note 1] and was at Shimei Building B1, Roppongi 3-17-7.[15] In 2003, it contained wooden pews and chairs, and "ceiling-high speakers angle[d] in to cover the entire audience space with crisp sound resolution and exceptional clarity".[16] It closed on 26 July 2004.[14] Concert recordingsAn asterisk (*) indicates that the album was recorded at the Roppongi Pit Inn.
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