Bradley’s, Home to Me

Though Wendy Cunningham, Bradley’s owner, once called it a saloon with music, to me, Bradley’s was the epitome of a jazz club. There were usually duos, playing piano and bass, though in the late 80’s they added trios (with drums) and quartets (with saxophones or trumpets). The room was a small, intimate place with just a few tables and a long bar but it was the great musicians that played there that gave Bradley’s its life.

I never thought I’d be a regular at a bar but after going to Bradley’s for 20 years, I felt at home. Though it was a slog from where I lived on the Upper West Side, I’d go a couple of times a week, taking the 2 or 3 train from 72nd street to 14th and then walking across Greenwich Village to University Place. I’d usually arrive around 11 PM, in time for the second set. Sometimes, after the last set at another jazz club, I’d get there at 2 AM and a few minutes later the musicians that I had just seen at the other club would trickle in. Because Bradley’s was also a hangout for musicians, occasionally there were incredible jam sessions that might start at 3 in the morning.

I met Bradley Cunningham when Harry Madsen, the cousin of my best friend Eugene, was having drinks and smoking cigars with Bradley at one of the back tables near the kitchen. Bradley, in turn, introduced me to Macanudo cigars. When he died in 1988, the New York jazz scene lost one of its champions but under Wendy’s guidance, the club continued to support the music. For years, I listened to great music, had great conversations with friends and strangers, drank a lot Scotch whisky and smoked many cigars at Bradley’s. I was living — I even met my future ex-wife there.

When Bradley’s closed in 1996, the jazz journalist Russ Musto wrote, “The demise of Bradley’s signaled the end of an era in the history of jazz in New York City. The room was much more than just another jazz club. It was a social center where the music community came together [creating] an atmosphere of camaraderie.”

Hanging on the wall at the end of the bar, there was cartoon, a gift to Bradley by the New Yorker cartoonist Frank Modell. In it, a businessman in a suit was standing in the open front doorway of the bar, his fedora tilted slightly back, with his two suitcases at his side. The caption read, “Hi Everybody, I’m home!” Modell signed the print, “Bradley’s, Home to Me”

The great writer, Nat Hentoff, wrote a this paen to Bradleys.