This Thursday, Club Waziema will enter the neighborhood's live music scene as it starts playing weekly host to The Greer Rockett Quintet, a local jazz ensemble led by the group's namesake. Music will go from 9pm to 1am, and it's free of charge.
The space now inhabited by the popular Ethiopian restaurant and neighborhood watering hole is no stranger to musical performances. During Divisadero's heyday as a hotbed of live music, the place was called Club Morocco, and hosted big names including BB King, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday and Tina Turner, along with countless jazz acts.
Greer Rockett (Photo: Stephen Jackson)
Rockett, a San Francisco native who grew up in both Hunter's Point and the Fillmore, has been in love with jazz music since he was a young man, after the first time he heard Freddie Hubbard playing at Both/And Jazz Club on Divisadero (where Hybrid Training is today).
"When I saw him and I heard that beautiful sound, I thought, 'Man, I wanted to make that,'" Rockett told us. After that, he took up the trumpet and has been following his passion ever since. He was at one point under the tutelage of Woody Shaw, another jazz great who, according to Rockett, was recommended to Colombia Records by Miles Davis himself. Shaw was living in North Beach at the time, and Rockett studied with him for about two and a half years.
Over the years, Rockett has sat in with other notable musicians, including Dexter Gordon, Count Basie, and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, playing both in the US and abroad in Canada and Europe.
Rockett approached Waziema owner Nebiat Tesfazgi about doing a weekly gig after his friend and KPOO DJ Harrison Chastain ran into him on the bus and encouraged him to do so. It turned out that Tesfazgi had been looking for someone to do live music for some time, and they struck up a deal.
Rockett (center) pictured here with Wynton Marsalis (left) and Jerome "JJ" Parsons at KPOO Studios
"I'm looking forward to it," she reported. "It was a jazz club in the past, and a lot of people have asked me to bring in live music. People are excited and we can't wait to see how many people show up. I like jazz myself! I used to go see jazz when I was younger and had time to go see live music."
The quintet consist of local players, some of whom Rockett plays trumpet with weekly at Le Joulins Jazz Bistro downtown, with Sam Peoples on the piano (although Eugene Pliner will sit in this Thursday), Charles Unger on the tenor sax, Tony "The Steamroller" Coleman on drums, and a man who goes by "Numur" on the bass.
Rockett told us that he's excited to start playing consistently in a neighborhood he remembers at one time to be a lively epicenter for jazz music.
"Walking though here brings back a lot of memories. The music scene was jumpin', man. You had the Half Note, The Playpen across the street from there. Then there was another one up the street on McAllister, and the Both/And down on Fell. It was jumpin', it was a scene like that."
If you're not busy on Thursday and feel like seeing some jazz in a place that used pump out a whole lot of it, swing by Waziema, head to the back room and watch the Greer Rockett Quintet do its thing.
