Teen-age Jazz Club?

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

I was reading through an old issue of Downbeat magazine from November of 
1956 and in it, there is an article about the "Teen-Age Jazz Club," which 
was founded in April of 1955 by WHDH jock John McLellan-- now, if memory 
serves me, didn't he do a jazz show on WHDH for a while?  Anyway, the club 
met at Storyville, which I believe was in the Hotel Buckminster in Kenmore 
Square, and evidently the Rev. Norman O'Connor was involved with the club 
too.  Does this ring any bells with anyone on the list?  I wrote to Bill 
Buchanan, former Boston Globe radio editor and a big jazz fan from those 
days (he did a jazz show on WBZ in 1956, in fact), but I thought some of 
you might also know something about the Teen-age Jazz Club.  The article 
claimed the club was up to a membership of 700 young people by late summer 
of 1956, and a few well-known jazz musicians had already entertained at 
meetings; many of them were performing elsewhere in Boston and dropped in 
to perform for the young jazz fans.  Among those who had entertained were 
Teddi King, Shelly Manne, Herb Pomeroy, Roy Haynes, and Woody 
Herman...While I am sure musical tastes were different in the big band era, 
I can't imagine a time in the 50s when teenagers would have been interested 
in jazz-- when I was growing up, everybody I knew liked rock and roll and 
was listening to top 40.