Pit Inn (jazz club)

The Pit Inn (ピットイン) is a jazz club in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The original opened in 1966 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]

Pit Inn (ピットイン)
Second Pit Inn street entrance
LocationAccord Building B1, Shinjuku 2-12-4, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan
TypeNightclub
Genre(s)Jazz
OpenedFebruary 1966
Website
http://www.pit-inn.com/index_e.html

First Shinjuku Pit Inn

The first Pit Inn was located in Shinjuku 3-chōme. It opened in February 1966, as a jazz coffee shop.[2] Two years later, it became even more focused on jazz and was is in the style of a Greenwich Village hangout.[2] From its early days, both domestic and international musicians played there. In 1968, for instance, The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra played at the Pit Inn.[3] Other activities also took place: a photography exhibition in 1968 was an early example.[4] 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.[5] Trumpeter Hino played there in 1969.[6] In 1970, the standard entrance charges were 450 Yen for the 2pm show and 500 Yen for the 7pm one, with one drink included.[7] 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".[8] In January 1992, it was forced to close, as the building it was part of was being demolished.[8]

Second Shinjuku Pit Inn

The Pit Inn reopened in July 1992, at a new location at the edge of Shinjuku 2-chōme.[8] It continued to offer an afternoon and an evening performance, with the former being for less-well-established musicians.[5] 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.[5]

Other Pit Inns

There 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,[9][note 1] and was at Shimei Building B1, Roppongi 3-17-7.[11] 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".[12] It closed on 26 July 2004.[10]

Concert recordings

An asterisk (*) indicates that the album was recorded at the Roppongi Pit Inn.

Year recorded Leader/Band Title Label
1974 Sadao Watanabe At "Pit Inn" CBS/Sony
1974 Cedar Walton Pit Inn East Wind
1978 Tatsuro Yamashita It's A Poppin' Time RCA Records
1979*[13][14] Steps Ahead Smokin' in the Pit Nippon Columbia
1979*[15] Phillip Walker Blues Show Live at Pit Inn Yupiteru
1980*[16] Lowell Fulson The Blues Show! Live at Pit Inn 1980
1984 Elvin Jones Elvin Jones Jazz Machine Live at Pit Inn Polydor
1985 Mal Waldron and Yōsuke Yamashita Piano Duo Live at Pit Inn Village
1986 Manhattan Jazz Quintet Live at Pit Inn King
1988 Sun Ra Cosmo Omnibus Imagiable Illusion DIW
1990 (released)*[17] Fusanosuke Kondo Heart of Stone BMG Victor
1990 (released)*[18] Fusanosuke Kondo Go Back to de Basic Thing BMG Victor
1991 (released)*[18] Fusanosuke Kondo Unchained Rhythm BMG Victor
1992 (released)*[18] Fusanosuke Kondo My Innocent Time BMG Victor
1992 Material Live in Japan Jimco
1992 Elvin Jones Tribute to John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" Columbia
1994 Masahiko Togashi So What Venus
1994 Choi Sun Bae The Sound of Nature Universal
2001 Akira Sakata and TOY Live at Pit Inn Q-Train
2005 Akira Sakata Explosion P-Jazz
2005 Satoko Fujii Live!! Libra
2005 Kei Akagi Live – Shapes in Sound Video Arts
2007 The Thing Shinjuku Crawl Smalltown Superjazzz
2007 The Thing Shinjuku Growl Smalltown Superjazzz
2009 Ted Brown Live at Pit Inn Marshmallow
2009 First Meeting Cut the Rope Libra
2010 Guerino Mazzola, Heinz Geisser, Shiro Onuma Dancing the Body of Time Cadence Jazz
2010 Peter Brötzmann, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke Two City Blues 1 Trost
2010 Peter Brötzmann, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke Two City Blues 2 Trost
2011 Mari Yamashita Live at Pit Inn Erato
2012 Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love Extended Duos Audiographic
2012 Jazz Hijokaidan (Akira Sakata) Made in Japan Doubtmusic
2013 Masahiko Satoh and Paal Nilssen-Love Spring Snow PNL
2014 Takeo Moriyama Straight Edge Pit Inn
2014 Otomo Yoshihide Live at Shinjuku Pit Inn Pit Inn
2014 Shingo Okudaira This Is New Pit Inn

Notes
  1. Facebook's page gives 25 August 1977 as the opening date.[10]

References
  1. Catchpole, James (February 2019). "Tokyo". DownBeat. Vol. 86 no. 2. p. 55.
  2. Atkins, Everett Taylor (1997) This Is Our Music. (Doctoral thesis). p. 223.
  3. Lash, Max E. (14 July 1968) "Big Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band Packed with Power". The Japan Times. p. 5.
  4. Pearce, Jean (31 August 1968) "Readers' Exchange". The Japan Times. p. 5.
  5. "Listening Post" (20 January 2006). The Japan Times. p. 20.
  6. Lash, Max E. (29 December 1968) "Jazz, Groups Sounds on New Year's Eve". The Japan Times. p. 5.
  7. Lash, Max E. (19 April 1970) "Mamoru & Charles... New Record Stars??". The Japan Times. p. 6.
  8. Moses, Marc (25 July 1992) "Pillar of Japan Jazz Stands Once More". The Japan Times. p. 17.
  9. "What's Happening in Town" (11 April 1978). The Japan Times. p. 9.
  10. "Roppongi Pit Inn". Facebook. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  11. Brand, Jude (1993) Tokyo Night City. Charles E. Tuttle.
  12. Pronko, Michael (9 March 2003) "All of It... Why Not Hear All of It?". The Japan Times. p. 13.
  13. Grey, Hilarie (March 1, 2000) "Steps Ahead: Smokin' in the Pit". JazzTimes.
  14. Barakan, Pete (12 December 1980) "Rock 'n' Roll". The Japan Times. p. 9.
  15. "Phillip Walker – Blues Show Live at Pit Inn". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
  16. Leggett, Steve "Lowell Fulson – The Blues Show! Live at Pit Inn 1980". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
  17. Hale, James (13 August 1991) "Kondo Creates a Unique Blend of Blues and Soul". The Japan Times. p. 15.
  18. Hale, James (31 July 1993) "Blues-Lovers Assembled for Tribute". The Japan Times. p. 15.
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