ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on clubs organised around particular musical genres—jazz, folk and variety. It shows that whatever difference rock was making to Britain’s live music economy, clubs and pubs remained central to it. A club is a venue for live music with three characteristics. First, it is relatively small, offering a degree of intimacy between performer and audience. Second, a club’s audience size is therefore restricted and how the audience is restricted defines how the club works. Third, in clubs both listening to music and dancing to music are suitable behaviours as are drinking, eating, talking, courting and gambling. The rock which ‘swept’ jazz away first emerged from jazz and blues clubs, and its unexpected commercial success—its attraction of large young audiences—was to the immediate benefit of these clubs and their players. Folk/country blues clubs were acoustic alternatives to jazz/urban blues clubs, but also challenged the conventions of the established ballads and blues clubs.
