Town Tavern: Music, Gaming and Community on Jackson Avenue

Earl Turman's new club

The city's historic-resource survey dates the building to 1955 and identifies Earl Turman as its builder and operator. Some accounts spell his surname differently, and a precise July opening date appears in secondary chronology. The secure starting point is the mid-1950s club at this corner.

The business combined gaming with a cocktail bar, coffee shop and performers. It offered a place for customers to eat and linger, not simply make a wager. Early matchbooks and chips connect Earl's personal branding with the Town Tavern name and top-hat imagery.

Music and civil rights shared the room

A documented 1957 NAACP cocktail party brought an exceptional group of entertainers into the club's social history, including Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Cab Calloway, Arthur Lee Simpkins, Bob Bailey, Dorothy Dandridge and the Ink Spots. Their connection to that event should not be mistaken for a long residency by every artist.

Jimmy Witherspoon is documented as a regular blues performer in 1958. Other photographs and accounts connect the venue to the circulation of stars through Westside nightlife after Strip engagements. Town Tavern could function as entertainment room, informal meeting place and civic gathering space in the same evening.

This dual role explains its importance. It was not merely an alternative to a segregated casino; it was a place where relationships, employment networks and collective activity developed.

Regulation and the New Town Tavern

The original owners' liquor and gaming licenses were revoked in 1959 for unsupervised gaming, a significant interruption rather than a cosmetic name change. New Town Tavern followed under new ownership, with Sam Fong identified by 1960. Building permits show remodeling of the front entry and interior.

The later ownership sequence included Florence Elmore and an investment group associated with Elijah Green and Danny Curtis. Oral histories describe pooling money to preserve the business, but exact remembered debts and ownership shares are not equivalent to a verified corporate ledger.

Repairs after fire and a two-story addition in 1981 changed the structure again. The surviving building history is one of repeated reinvestment, not a frozen 1955 nightclub.

A full night out

Later advertising promised twenty-one, craps, keno, slots and poker alongside round-the-clock service, dining, live entertainment and reception facilities. Those advertisements give a more complete visitor picture than the phrase neighborhood casino alone.

Customers might arrive for a meal, stay for music and move onto the gaming floor. Employees included dealers, managers and food-service staff whose names and photographs survive in collections such as the Q. B. Bush Papers. The club's history therefore includes ordinary work as well as celebrity appearances.

The game mix changed over time. An official 2009 record documents removal of poker tables while slots remained; other counts describe different dates or operating conditions. No single late machine count should be presented as the casino's lifetime inventory.

The long afterlife of a community address

Later Ultra Town Tavern and proposed redevelopment phases belonged to a neighborhood very different from the segregated 1950s. Integration expanded access to Strip and downtown hospitality, while older Westside businesses faced changed customers, capital pressures and physical deterioration.

Preservation surveys identify the property as a long-standing community meeting place. Its value is not exhausted by the question of whether gaming survived under a particular name. The address holds the history of Black nightlife, Chinese-American entrepreneurship, ownership groups trying to maintain a local institution and generations of people who remembered eating, playing and hearing music there.

Surviving chips, matchbooks, advertisements and photographs help distinguish these eras. Read together, they show how a relatively small club could carry a large share of a neighborhood's public life.