Financial Times

Minton’s, reopened in 2013, was full and thriving in the current boom, and the house band that night was JC Hopkins’ Biggish Band. Like the Vanguard, there is a sense of history in this room; unlike the Vanguard, it serves food and is a rather shiny reincarnation of the original Playhouse. It is a small club, taking just 25 customers in the bar area at the back and 50 dining guests at tables in front of the minuscule bandstand. Just before taking his band on stage, Hopkins told me that the success of the new Minton’s was down to the “interaction between older cats and younger cats”. That applies not just to the audience, but to the musicians who play here — from 93-year-old Jon Hendricks to 19-year-old Solomon Hicks, the Harlem kid who has been lead guitarist of the Cotton Club band since he was 13.

It turned out that the band was also doing a tribute to Billie Holiday, 2015 being the centenary of her birth and, as Hopkins explained, because she had a special connection to Minton’s: “She was a felon in New York, so they took away her performer’s license, but she could play here because she was jamming and didn’t get paid for it.” So with Hopkins at the piano, the band swung and bopped behind three wonderful vocalists through the Billie Holiday songbook, including superb readings of “God Bless the Child” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”. Music created in another age that remains as affecting today must be regarded as serious art, and that was what I heard at Minton’s that night.