The Cavern Reaches 50
On the 16th January 1957 The Merseyside Jazz Union officially opened drawing substantial crowds.
It wasn’t long before this latest hangout became better known by its unofficial name – The Cavern.
The Cavern was owned and operated by Alan Sytner, the son of a local doctor, and an old school friend of one Brian Epstein. Sytner, like many young men of the time, was a jazz enthusiast. He organized the occasional jazz night at the Temple restaurant in Liverpool but wanted to find a location with more ambience suited to the sounds and mood of the jazz crowd. Jazz filled the gap between the war-time big band sound and the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll. By the late 1950s jazz was the favorite musical genre for people in their early twenties, especially those of a more “artistic†inclination. In common with many other jazz enthusiasts from prosperous families, Alan Sytner made a pilgrimage to Paris, the epicenter of European jazz innovation at the time. There, in 1956, he became enamoured with one particular club, “La Caveau.†Sytner became convinced that a similar city-center, cellar type club would be a success in his native Liverpool and on his return began to search for a suitable location.
He found it in Mathew Street. Or to be strictly accurate, underneath Mathew Street in central Liverpool. The area had been the original “fruit packing†area of Liverpool given its proximity to both the docks and the city center. Mathew Street at the time was a dark, dingy, little-used thoroughfare with seven story warehouses on either side and, as a consequence, little natural sunlight penetrated as far as the narrow sidewalk. Many warehouses had vacant cellars that had been used at one time or another for activities such as storing wine or egg-packing. During the war most had been used as air-raid shelters and now lay in disuse. Warehouse owners were offering rental on them for as cheap as 10 shillings a week.
Alan Sytner rented the cellar spaces underneath numbers 8, 9 and 10 Mathew Street and began the task of converting them into a jazz club. Entrance was to be through a “hole in the wall†at number 10.
The Club was also alcohol free with only soda being served from its small bar. Alan Sytner’s original plan was to have Traditional Jazz on Saturday, Modern Jazz on Thursday with Skiffle relegated to Wednesday nights. Opening night was headlined by resident house band “The Merseysippi Jazz Band.†It’s estimated that around 1000 people lined up in Mathew Street on that opening night waiting to crush into the club, which had a nominal capacity of 600. That was a foretaste of what was to come
You can read more about The Cavern’s early days in Before They Were Beatles.
