Friday, September 14, 2012

Chet's Bar, 870 North High Street, Columbus, OH




Before or after Chet's Bar, it may have been called Irv-Nells.

It was called "The Box Lunch, a gentlemen's club at some point.(7)

In 2005, the bar was later called "The Full Monty", a Chippendale style bar with male dancers but that closed in 2007.(5)(6)
In 2012, Gallagher Consulting Group Inc. resides here in Suite 19 and the Gypsy Cafe is on the first floor.


Jerry performed here in
Spring 1964 Sandy Rothman, Robby Robinson, Sid Campbell

"In the spring of 1964 Jerry and I drove across the country in his '61 Corvair with our instruments and a reel-to-reel tape recorder to immerse ourselves in bluegrass. Jerry was 22 and I was 18. We visited one of our banjo predecessors from Berkeley, Neil Rosenberg, then getting his folklore degree at Indiana University in Bloomington. He took us to hear the Osborne Brothers at a real Ohio bluegrass bar, where we got a good dose of Sonny Osborne's incisive banjo wit along with the whole bluegrass bar culture. As Neil remembers, "Jerry was working hard on the latest banjo ideas, particularly the tricky melodic and rhythmic styling of Bill Keith. We had a lot of fun picking. Bluegrass jamming then (and now) can be a competitive sort of thing but Jerry wasn't into that stuff. He had confidence in his ability and an eagerness to try things that was very appealing."(3)

"But in Columbus also we did make our way to a bluegrass bar (at times named Chet's and Irv-Nell's; I can't be sure which it was then) and there we were invited to play with the band (Robby Robinson, legendary musician and luthier, with vocalist Sid Campbell and other local notables) onstage. That was clearly a venue, if just sitting in for a few tunes."(1)

Danny Milhon played resonator guitar in the Columbus and Central Ohio area from the early 1960s into the early 1990s.  An excellent musician who was in demand for recording sessions and as a band member, his membership in traveling bands was limited because he kept the same factory day job for 34 years.  He did travel for a short time with fiddler Benny Martin and singer Gene Christian.  Danny played with Sid Campbell’s Country Cutups, an early and excellent bluegrass band in the Columbus area that included Sid, Danny, Ross Branham, Bill Moore, and Chuck Cordle and sometimes John Hickman.  In the early 1960s they held forth at a bar known as Irv-Nells on North High Street in Columbus. (2)





1.)^Rothman, Sandy, 2012-03-18, email to author.
2.)^http://www.ham.muohio.edu/bluegrass/BGI_inviduals_i_m.htm
3.)^Rothman, Sandy, Jerry Garcia's Musical Roots:The Banjo Years - Part 3, http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Bands/Jerry_Garcia/Misc/Rothman/3_Jerrys_Banjo_Years.htm

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