Resident musicians

The Sutherland Lounge, on the first floor of the Sutherland Hotel at 4659 South Drexel Boulevard, was one of the city’s swankiest jazz rooms in the 1950s and 1960s. The space had plush carpet, crystal chandeliers and a big square bar with a large raised stage in the middle of it, where the likes of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and Nina Simone performed. Even Miles Davis spent many a Christmas playing here. In 1991, Chicago jazz trumpeter Malachi Thompson used the historical room as the namesake and periodic venue for his Sutherland Community Arts Initiative, an effort to bring high-quality jazz back to the South Side; and in 1997 playwright Charles Smith wrote The Sutherland, a play loosely based on Thompson and his efforts to save the lounge, which closed in 1982. In 1989, the space was converted into affordable housing units, which are still intact today. Nonprofit group the Heartland Alliance is in the process of renovating the Sutherland’s ballroom for use as an arts and community space. For info on future programming, call 312-660-1381.