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Jazz Beacon

For six decades, Hermosa Beach’s historical Lighthouse brings the genre’s best acts to the South Bay.

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If you have a taste for jazz on a Sunday, a trip to 30 Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach will satisfy your craving. Hearing the long-established pros and emerging youngsters that Gloria Cadena books is not only a pleasant way to spend the shank of the day, it’s a way to touch a 60-year legacy.

In the spring of 1949, Howard Rumsey was a young man at a crossroads. As bassist for the Stan Kenton orchestra, he had traveled across the country many times. Rumsey knew the taste of fame with that band; he even had a feature number titled for his instrument: “Concerto for Doghouse.” But he’d left the road behind and had kicked around Los Angeles. He got a little work sidelining in films: Howard wrestled the bass behind Lauren Bacall as she mimed her way through a song in The Big Sleep. But jam sessions and occasional movie work didn’t look like a solid career choice. He seriously considered leaving music altogether and going to work in his family’s potpie restaurant.

Rumsey knew the South Bay from his Kenton days. “Back then,” he says from his Newport Beach home, “every beach city had a ballroom.” He walked into a sleepy bar near the Hermosa Pier and found the owner, John Levine. When Howard proposed Sunday jazz for the room, Levine—a street-smart gambler—was nonplussed. “Everybody else tells me what to do with this place,” said Levine, before adding, “Sunday afternoons are the worst time for the liquor business.”  Levine reluctantly agreed to Sunday jam sessions.

Rumsey thought he had found a temporary refuge for his struggling musician friends. What he didn’t know was that he was founding a jazz institution that would live long and echo around the world. What began as Sundays evolved into a full-time music policy that turned a rough, waterfront dive into one of the most famous clubs in jazz history. 

Rumsey’s house band, the Lighthouse All Stars, featured some of the greatest L.A. jazz musicians for more than a decade. Teddy Edwards, Hampton Hawes, Sonny Criss, Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Shelly Manne, Frank Rosolino, Stan Levey and many others formulated new sounds that were as novel as the Hawaiian shirts and the bamboo interior. Along with the Gerry Mulligan-Chet Baker band at The Haig on Wilshire Boulevard and Dave Brubeck at San Francisco’s Blackhawk, the Lighthouse was the third leg of the emerging West Coast jazz aesthetic.