BY DAVID KRONKE >LA.COM

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Dave Alvin vividly recalls the night in 1970 when he, at the age of 14, first stepped into the Ash Grove - and discovered what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Alvin, his brother and some older friends trekked the 25 miles from their home in Downey to the seminal nightclub on Melrose (where the Improv is today).

"I was into people like Little Walter and Muddy Waters, and my brother's friends said, `You gotta go to the Ash Grove,' " recalls the Grammy-winning roots rocker, who even titled a solo album "Ashgrove" in tribute to the club.

"Finally, we did. I remember my first show: Big Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker. I can even tell you the names of all the guys in the orchestra. For us junior record collectors, to go to a place where the people you listened to on old 78s really were - was wow!"

He adds, "I thought, `Oh my God. This is amazing; this is what I want to do.' It was sort of a personal crossroads, where everything came together. That combination of the music, the sensuality of music and the historical political aspect - you could dance and think at the same time. From there on, I was there constantly, by hook or by crook. I'd hitchhike, whatever it took to get there. It was Mecca."
From 1958 until its demise at the hands of arsonists in 1973, the Ash Grove was L.A.’s preeminent venue for roots music — folk, country, the blues and world music — in their raw, unfettered forms. Bluesmen from the Mississippi Delta, and country crooners and gospel singers from the rural South performed there. Politics and poetry were discussed there. Photo exhibits examining the black struggle of the ’60s were displayed in the lobby. Icons of ’60s and ’70s folk rock hung out and hooked up there. Had there been no Ash Grove, there may never have been a band called the Byrds, as one example.

“One of things that made it so unique was, it was the kind of place where everybody rubbed shoulders with everybody,” Alvin notes. “Today, there’s such a stratification to clubs. That wasn’t the case there. People would come from South Central, from Beverly Hills, from the Valley — it was a melting pot.” The club’s legacy is so enduring that UCLA Live is devoting a weekend to celebrating its 50th anniversary, with two all-star concerts at Royce Hall, and three afternoons of workshops and free concerts throughout the campus. Friday’s show features Alvin, Ry Cooder, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Neuwirth, Culture Clash and Holly Near; Saturday’s includes Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Michelle Shocked and the
Watts Prophets.

“What set it apart was the quality of the music — its trueness to theform, to the culture,” says Taj Mahal, who worked as a doorman, met his first wife and even lived at the club for a while before his own career as a blues musician took off. “All of the other places had room for the commercial stuff,” he continues. “That alone made it unique — the level of music was incredible. You didn’t need to hype it. The audience was well-informed.”

The Ash Grove was the brainchild of Ed Pearl, now 79, who managed the club, booked its acts, organized political events, fended off death threats and in general tried to shape order from chaos. He has spent three years organizing the weekend event. “Ed was eccentric,” says Taj Mahal. “He was a political guy who had an incredibly great heart, just had a big heart. He really loved to put the music out there where it belonged. He saw to it that people ate, because they could work at the Ash Grove. Take Clifton Chenier — not that he was destitute, but there were not many places in Los Angeles where he could play zydeco. But he could spend a week at theAsh Grove and make decent money and be exposed to a good audience.”

Sitting in an Echo Park coffee shop in a navy turtleneck and jeans, Pearl relates the history of his labor of love in long stories that name-drop (Bob Dylan never returned a harmonica rack he borrowed for a performance), traverse years, arc back upon themselves and improbably blend culture, politics and conspiracy theories. (Was it mere coincidence that such a hotbed of liberal activism was struck by arsonists three times during the Nixon administration?)

“I floundered around at first a little,” Pearl remembers. “I had people who were really good, but more developed from the Kingston Trio than from the Mississippi Delta. When I changed the character of the music, I drew a younger group that was really passionate about
the music.”

Once Pearl — and his club — found their voice, the Ash Grove became “a home for and a reflection of the movement of the ’60s in Los Angeles,” Pearl says. “We attracted people who were in favor of change. We had this combination of presenting and teaching the art of the great masters of black and country music almost from the
beginning.”

Of course, it was still a nightclub, so not everything that occurred there was so high-minded. Alvin remembers dice games in the alley. Pearl and Taj Mahal both have fond memories of the club’s testy cook — Pearl recalls a hammer hurled through the venue when a Canned Heat soundcheck woke the guy from a nap; Taj remembers, “He was really cool, then at some point he’d snap, and spaghetti pots would go flying and he’d storm out during a performance.”

There were more serious moments, as well, including the three incidents of arson. The first came two days before a film and
discussion about Cuba was scheduled; it shut the place down for several months. The second wasn’t as damaging, but it was more terrifying — anti-Castro Cubans stormed in and terrorized employees preparing for the evening’s show. Some were captured when a father of one of the club’s waitresses, a retired fireman, chased them down and pinned their car against the curb on Crescent Heights as, conveniently, a police cruiser happened to be motoring by.

By the time of the third fire, in 1973, Pearl was too burned out to rebuild again, and the Ash Grove became but a fond memory for a generation of music-loving Angelenos. By his own admission, he spent a decade drinking heavily; he cleaned up in 1983. An attempt to resurrect the Ash Grove in Santa Monica in the late ’90s lasted only a year. Still, Pearl’s memories of running an influential club during a pivotal time in American history seem reward enough.“It was a maelstrom behind the scenes constantly,” he says. “Money was never in abundance; it was always scarce. People were paid
modestly, but they were loyal. But for the audience, it was a great experience.”

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com
www.insidesocal.com/tv/

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Taj Mahal will be ubiquitous at shows around L.A. this weekend. In addition to several appearances at UCLA Live's 50th anniversary celebration of the Ash Grove, he'll also perform in one of a series of nationwide concerts commemorating Earth Day.

Which represents a pretty busy schedule for a man whose Web site (www.tajblues.com) is touting his 40 years in the music industry.

(Technically, he and Ry Cooder formed the band the Rising Sons in the mid-'60s, which would make this his 42nd or 43rd anniversary, but his first solo album came out in 1968, so we'll let him mark any anniversary he likes.)

On Saturday, he'll not only headline UCLA Live's Ash Grove concert, he'll also discuss the club's history (he served as a doorman at the club and even lived there for six months) at 12:30 p.m. at UCLA's Jan Popper Theater. On Sunday, he'll participate in two separate free concerts at UCLA - one starting at 12:30 p.m., the other at 2:15 p.m. - and then head to the Santa Monica Pier for a free concert beginning at noon (obviously, given his UCLA commitments, he'll appear far later in the day) for environmental awareness sponsored by Earth Day Network and the Green Apple Festival that will also include Ziggy Marley and actress Juliette Lewis with her band the Licks.

Though he has been celebrated for his blues liberally incorporating World Music stylings for four decades, the thing he wants to discuss, right out of the box, in a phone interview, is how he was quickly disabused of his music-industry naiveté when he first came to L.A. from his home in Massachusetts.

"You know what I found out that people did that I was horrified at?" he asks. "Say you've got a group with your name on it, and it turns out you're using studio musicians to play your music - what is that? How can you call yourself a musician if you have someone playing for you? Major artists had to learn the charts from the recording session. I was shocked.

"You claim to be a guitar player, and you're signing autographs and your picture's in magazines, and you're using studio musicians? Believe me, I was blown away."

Of course, Taj - who was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks - had plenty of reason to be offended, having mastered the guitar, piano, clarinet, trombone and harmonica at a young age. But, drolly, he recalls how he learned to cope with such hypocrisy.

"Look at their point of view - those guys at least knew how much talent they didn't have. At least they understood that."

>David Kronke

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THE ASH GROVE 50TH ANNIVERSARY

>Where: Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

>When: 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, plus various workshops and free concerts Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons throughout the UCLA campus. See www.ashgrovemusic.com for a complete schedule.

>Tickets: $56 to $28; uclalive.org or ticketmaster.com.

>Info: (310) 825-2101.

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