Remember when Hendrix didn't play La Cave?

La Cave's Stan Kain (left) with Steve Katz, who played at La Cave several times with two popular bands, the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. This picture is from a few years ago, taken at a concert venue in Cleveland Heights, where Katz performed his solo show. [photo: Steve Traina]

I won’t see you at the B-Side on March 16, when Mac’s Backs presents a book discussion and signing with Steve Traina, celebrating the release of his book La Cave: Cleveland’s Legendary Music Club and the ‘60s Folk-to-Rock Revolution. I’ll be out of town that day. But I’m in the book. So, it will almost be as if I’m there. Kind of.

Anyway, I’m mentioned and quoted a few times in Traina’s book. I spent a lot of time at La Cave, Cleveland’s major venue for presenting national and local folk musicians, and then also folk-rock musicians, and then also rock musicians, from 1962 to 1969. I performed there a few times and attended hundreds of shows there. For about the last eight months before I left Cleveland, in February 1968, I hung out at La Cave almost every night.

I usually walked from Coventry to La Cave, which was at E. 107th Street and Euclid Avenue, just west of University Circle. It was kind of a long walk, especially in the winter, but it was always worth the effort. The cave-like, fairly unadorned basement club hosted a very long list of now-legendary performers, and also kept a roster of the best local talent working.

In the mid- and late ‘60s, you could see most of the top singer-songwriters there, like Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, Gordon Lightfoot, Arlo Guthrie, Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin and Eric Andersen; and the great folk interpreters, like Judy Collins, Tom Rush, Richie Havens and the duo Ian and Sylvia. And also the top blues-rock bands, including the Paul Butterfield Band, the Blues Project, the Siegal-Schwall Blues Band and Lynn County. Then came the then-new rock artists, like Neil Young, the Velvet Underground, Jeff Beck, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Cleveland’s James Gang.

Everyone who was there remembers the artists they saw there. Many remember it so well that they even remember seeing performers there who never played the club—like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix. There are more than a few people who “remember” seeing them at La Cave. I guess that’s one of the reasons the place is legendary.

Since I won’t be there on the 16th, here’s a story you won’t hear me tell: Soon after I quit high school, in the summer of 1967, I got hired by La Cave to open for someone named Jim Hendricks, a semi-well-known folk musician who had been in a folk group with “Mama” Cass Elliot. Then they told me that he had cancelled, so I would, instead, be opening for the Stone Poneys, which I did. But it turned out that the guy who cancelled was not Jim Hendricks, but Jimi Hendrix, who was still unknown—till that June when he appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and then in August, when his first album came out. And when I opened for the Stone Poneys for five nights, it was just as their first hit single, “Different Drum,” was climbing the charts, and beginning to make a star of their young lead singer, Linda Ronstadt. Linda and I exchanged phone numbers and then we both hit the road. I never heard from her.

There is at least one good story about Linda in Traina’s book, as told to Traina by Stan Kain, the person who made La Cave legendary. But I’m not going to tell you that story right now. Kain, who was La Cave’s manager and part-owner for much of its existence, was a Heights High graduate who had worked several summers at Cain Park.

About 20 years ago, Kain became friends with Steve Traina, who had also attended many La Cave shows (though maybe a bit underage for some of that time) and has hosted the local radio show Steve’s Folk, currently on WRUW-FM 91.1, for many years. Traina put together a La Cave Reunion in 2010. The three-night event, at a downtown club, featured national and local artists who had performed at La Cave. Subsequently, Kain gave Traina all of La Cave’s files (including contracts, ads, articles, receipts, etc.). Later, La Cave’s second manager, Larry Bruner, also handed over his La Cave archives to Traina, who then started this book, which took years of sorting through all of the papers and conducting interviews.

The book tells not only the colorful story of La Cave and its performers, but also the history and culture of the wild era in which the story is set. Mac’s Backs, one of the longest-operating businesses on Coventry Road, often holds its book signings up the street at the B-Side, which is below the Grog Shop, at 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd. This one, which will include light appetizers, will take place 5–7 p.m. on Saturday, March 16. For tickets, go to macsbacks.com/event/la-cave-steve-traina.