Baker's Keyboard Lounge is closed for renovations. When it reopens, the room on Livernois will have new bathrooms, a refreshed stage, an updated bar area, and a new patio. It will also come back under new management.
Jacquelyn Vaughn Whitaker, whose husband Eric Whitaker co-owns the club alongside Hugh William Smith, told The Detroit News the plan is to reopen in June. The venue's social media confirmed the management change. Whitaker framed the transition as continuation, saying the club is "going forth with 93 more years."
The club has run continuously since 1934. Baker's is widely recognized as the world's oldest operating jazz club, and by most accounts, the last of its kind from that era still standing in Detroit. A small listening room from the period when the genre was still being worked out in spaces exactly this size.
The room seats fewer than a hundred people. Art Deco furnishings, good acoustics, and tilted mirrors positioned so you can watch the pianist's hands from almost any seat. The bar is shaped and painted to resemble a piano keyboard — a detail said to have inspired Liberace to build a piano-shaped swimming pool at his Beverly Hills home.
Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis. The list of musicians who played here is long and serious. The room's intimacy was always part of the draw. Close quarters, nobody talking over the music, the piano filling the space without a fight.
The club came close to closing when a prior owner declared bankruptcy in 2010. Smith and Whitaker bought it the following year and kept it running as a jazz venue. In 2016, Detroit City Council established the Baker's Keyboard Lounge Historic District, a designation that prevents demolition or exterior alteration without approval from the Detroit Historic District Commission. The bones of the place are protected.
No specific date beyond June has been announced. The marquee on Livernois will be back.
