When jazz rocked Harwich: The story of Storyville

We’ve been spending a lot of time at Harwich Conservation Trust’s Hinckleys Pond — Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project site in recent months, and along that journey you learn a lot about the history of the area.

But it was astounding to find out that the Hinckleys Pond/Long Pond neighborhood was once home to a legendary jazz club, where musical luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington once graced the stage.

According to a 1999 retrospective published in the Register newspaper, the club, known as Storyville-Cape Cod, opened in the summer of 1958. George Wein, who owned a successful Storyville club in Boston, partnered with Paul Nossiter on the Cape Cod endeavor.

They decided that the former Robinhood Inn, located on a hill above Long Pond in Harwich, would be a suitable site for the new club and enlarged it so it could hold about 600 people.

The club opened in the summer of 1958. In May of that year, the Cape Codder newspaper published this preview:

“Cape Cod visitors will find new entertainment this summer, when George Wein moves his Storyville Jazz nitery to Harwich… (the club) will open with George Shearing on June 28; Dave Brubeck, July 6; Errol Garner, July 21st. Attractions to follow will include Dakota Staton, Tom Lehrer, the Four Freshmen and others.”

In August of that year, the Dennis-Yarmouth Register newspaper published a glowing review of a Storyville performance by musician and satirist Tom Lehrer, the kind of top-drawer talent that appeared regularly at the club.

The review called Lehrer “a destuffer of shirts, a pricker of balloons and a salutary taker-downer of the smug and prig; a delightfully depraved antidote for the poison of this earnest, laughterless, romanceless age.” 

The review also offered an intriguing description of the Storyville vibe: Here are excerpts:

“As for Storyville itself; it is a barnlike place, but an urbane barn. You are served by a battalion of waiters and things and a nice man outside helped us park our car and there is plenty of parking space.”

“It is, to be frank, no place to go if you are penny pinching. But again, it is worth it if the main attraction is something you very much want to hear. In a word, you are not paying for food and drink only, you are paying for entertainment of a high caliber.”

“It is primarily a place aimed at enticing the summer folk, but don’t get me wrong; it is a boon to people like us who never go to a nightspot, well hardly ever…we who live here like an occasional dose of urbanity too.”

If we could choose one night to travel back in time and slide into a front row table at Storyville-Cape Cod, it would be July 3 or 4, 1961. The opening act was Phyliss Diller, a fabulously eccentric comedian with a hilarious self-deprecating delivery and zany costumes.

But the star of the night would be the big deal: Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars. It’s amazing to think that Armstrong, perhaps the greatest American musician of the 20th century, played in Harwich. 

Storyville-Cape Cod closed after the 1961 season. According to the 1999 retrospective in the Register newspaper, the club had never been a real money maker. The matter was exacerbated during the club’s final season, when the popular Kingston Trio was set to be the centerpiece act of the summer. 

Paul Nossiter told the Register in 1999 that the group broke up before their scheduled performances, likely referring to the acrimonious departure of original Trio member Dave Guard. This forced the club to shut down for 10 days, and that lost momentum contributed to the permanent demise of the nightspot.

Today, private homes occupy the area where Storyville-Cape Cod once stood. But it’s nice to imagine that the echoes of a Louis Armstrong trumpet solo might still be skipping across Long Pond.

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