Ash Grove
Venues
The Ash Grove was Los Angeles's preeminent roots music club, opened in West Hollywood on July 15, 1958 by Ed Pearl, a UCLA dropout in his early twenties with a few thousand dollars and no business experience. Pearl credited the New Lost City Ramblers with turning him on to old-time and bluegrass music, and over the next fifteen years he booked many multi-night residencies for pioneers like Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, and Jimmy Martin alongside younger bands like the Kentucky Colonels, the Dillards, and Country Gazette. It was at the Ash Grove that Doc Watson first crossed paths with Monroe, and where a young Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, and Linda Ronstadt sat at the edge of the stage learning from blues masters like Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins. Billed as "the West Coast University of Folk Music," the club also ran a daytime music school and became a meeting ground for progressive politics, which Pearl believed made it a target: after its third fire, the Ash Grove closed for good in 1973. Pearl revived the name on the Santa Monica Pier in July 1996, though that second Ash Grove lasted less than a year.
In the newsletter
- No. 11 Spring 1997