Is Chicago ready for the return of the Supper Club?

El Grotto- 6415 s Cottage Grove.

 There is an elegant hole in the heart of Chicago's nightlife.

Not for decades has Chicago's Black community been able to dine in polished ambiance and elegance while seeing a top flight musical act or dance show.

For decades in clubs such as the Rhumboogie Cafe', partly owned by Joe Louis and located at 343 e 55th, patrons could see top flight acts such as Sarah Vaughn or Chicago's own Dinah Washington. Also playing there before was "The Dream Band" which included Charlie Parker and other heavyweights. The famous Club DeLisa hosted the greats, such as Dizzy, the Duke, Satchmo and a host of others.

There are some small clubs hosting jazz events these days but these are mostly weekly series events where jazz is sometimes "spun" and not performed! There is no modern R&B or hip hop based equivelants to these great clubs of yeateryear, with their dapper dress standards and be there to be seen status.

Today's young Black adults seem to prefer a club like or lounge like atmosphere for event heir most formal affairs- would they be interested in dinner and a show?
Or is it that the Supper Club has never been presented to them?

The older, more laid back Blacks in the 35 and up range appear as the most possible purveyors of the new Supper Clubs and to them as well as the Twentysomething Sophisticateds we ask a few questions.,..

Would such a club interest you now? Has the concert replaced the supper club for good? What would be good locations for such venues now?

Circa 1971. First album release for Chicago based legends Earth Wind and Fire

 In 1969, Maurice White, a former session drummer for Chess Records and former member of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, joined two friends in Chicago, Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead, as a songwriting team composing songs and commercials in the Chicago area. The three friends got a recording contract with Capitol; they called themselves the "Salty Peppers" and had a marginal hit in the Midwestern area called "La La Time".[11] The Salty Peppers' second single, "Uh Huh Yeah", did not fare as well, and Maurice moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. He then added to the band singer Sherry Scott[12] and percussionist Yackov Ben Israel, both from Chicago, and then asked his younger brother Verdine how he would feel about heading out to the West Coast. On June 6, 1970, Verdine left Chicago to join the band as their new bassist. Maurice began shopping demo tapes of the band, featuring Donny Hathaway, around to different record labels and the band was thus signed to Warner Bros. Records.[11][13] Formation and early years (1971–1973) The cover of 1972 album Last Days and Time Maurice's astrological sign, Sagittarius, has a primary elemental quality of Fire and seasonal qualities of Earth and Air q.v. (Sagittarius in the northern hemisphere occurs in the fall, whose element is earth, and in the southern hemisphere, it is spring, whose element is air., the omission of Water, the fourth classical element). Based on this, he changed the band's name, to "Earth, Wind & Fire"