Who We Are

During the early 1970s, New Jersey jazz fans would gather at the Chester Inn to hear Chuck Slate’s Traditional Jazz Band or at the Hillside Lounge (also in Chester) to see cornetist Wild Bill Davison, or alto saxophonist Rudy Powell, or guitarist Al Casey. In fact, The New York Times’ John S. Wilson, having visited those venues in 1972, wrote, “If there is such a thing as a ‘jazz center’ in New Jersey, it must be here.”

Slate, Wilson wrote, is “the founding father of both jazz rooms.” While Slate was the musical inspiration for the New Jersey Jazz Society, the organization was actually founded by Bill Cleland and Jack Stine. Warren Vache, Sr., who became Editor of Jersey Jazz, after the Society was created in 1972, wrote that, “Bill Cleland and his wife Dorothy were devoted jazz fans and constant boosters of the Chuck Slate band. It was Bill who got together with Jack Stine with the idea of molding the hard core of the band’s fans into the nucleus of a jazz society.”

If not for Jack Stine’s leadership, the New Jersey Jazz Society would probably not have been created. Despite the fact that Stine wasn’t a musician, veteran cornetist Ed Polcer would refer to him as “The Bandleader.” “We were a happy bunch of souls with one thought in mind,” Polcer told Jersey Jazz Magazine shortly after Stine’s death in June 2018. “There were doctors, teachers, lawyers, an ice cream truck route man, mechanical engineer, and a liquor store owner.” It was the liquor store owner, Stine, who molded the group into an organization to promote live jazz.

The New Jersey Jazz Society was organized in October 1972. According to a December 1, 1974, article by The New York Times’ Ray Warner, “the NJJS members would turn up to hear pianist Jimmy Andrews at O’Connor’s Beef and Ale House in Watchung, or Chuck Slate at the Widow Brown’s in Madison, or perhaps Bucky Pizzarelli on Monday (guitar night) at Gulliver’s in West Paterson. These are among the half dozen or so Jersey places regularly presenting small jazz groups these days.”