Biography
After serving in the Navy and completing his term in 1945, traditional jazz clarinetist Bill Reinhardt launched preparations to establish his Dixieland club, Jazz Ltd., in Chicago, IL. He and his wife, Ruth Sato—a onetime Broadway chorus performer who had appeared alongside Fred Astaire and Milton Berle—opened the doors on June 11, 1947. Though the couple had viewed the 85-patron space as only a temporary site, Jazz Ltd. proved so immediately popular that it remained a permanent fixture. Reinhardt later calculated that the club had employed more than 700 musicians across the years, among them Sidney Bechet, Muggsy Spanier, Doc Evans, Miff Mole, Art Hodes, Don Ewell, Wally Gordon, Sid Thall, Munn Ware, Barrett Deems, Albert Nicholas, and Jim Beebe. In addition to presenting live music, Jazz Ltd. operated its own record label during the late ’40s and documented numerous sessions on the premises. Delmark later compiled classic material from those years on the 1994 release Jazz Ltd., Vol. 1, drawing from dates in 1947, 1949, and 1951. Reinhardt died in San Diego, CA, on January 23, 2001.