It is late Saturday afternoon on Passaic Street in Trenton. While a few blocks away the State of New Jersey and most of the shops are closed, a musical tradition is just warming up at the Candlelight Lounge.
For several decades this flat one-story building next to an auto repair shop and across the street from the D&R Canal has been the home base for Trenton’s jazz scene — where weekly sessions with guest performers and opportunities for area musicians to sit in have been an oasis for jazz creators and aficionados.
Presiding over the weekly labor of love is Larry Hilton, a 69-year-old man who has quietly helped connect Trenton with East Coast jazz musicians and important American visual artists.
“I’ve been involved 20 years,” says Hilton, during breakfast at a nearby cafe. “I don’t know how it started. I came in on it. Bill Powell is a friend of mine. He used to be the owner of the Candlelight. I knew him from going to it. I coordinate the jazz now.”
Hilton produces a list of musicians that he will present over the next several months. Included are Trenton saxophonist James Stewart, Trenton-born (now Philadelphia based and nationally known) pianist Orrin Evans, New York saxophonist Darryl Yokley, and others (see list below).
“The musicians come from New York and Philadelphia, people who work in the main jazz clubs. That’s what (the Candlelight audiences) want to hear. They want to hear the people they read about in the paper and hear about on the radio. This keeps people from having to go to New York or Philadelphia. It is very costly to go to New York. You got the turnpike fares, gas, tunnel, and parking,” he says.
Hilton explains that the selection process comes about a few different ways. Some musicians he has heard during visits to New York (curtailed by a few recent health problems). Patrons also make recommendations. “Most of the guys I know, so I call them up and ask them if they want to work. It’s kind of difficult because New York is so far and it costs so much for them to get here. Philadelphia is not as bad.”
The arrangements are simple. “We pay everybody the same thing, a flat fee. They play from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. A lot of time the guys have other gigs. In New York they don’t start ‘til 10 p.m. That gives them time to get back.”
The formula seems to work, and Hilton says he has a waiting list. “People call me up and want to play there.” The reason is artistic rather than financial. “They can come and play what they want to play: just straight up jazz. They like the atmosphere. They don’t like playing at famous clubs sometimes, that’s because of the management, the atmosphere. Here they eat. It’s free food.”
The free food is the Candlelight’s hot buffet, served during jazz presentation. Admission is a $10 bar minimum. The Candlelight can accommodate 90, and Hilton says that attendance is good with a balanced, mixed-race audience with people coming from central New Jersey, Bucks County, the shore, and Atlantic City.
Hilton, like the other “jazz disciples” at the lounge, volunteers. “It’s to promote the positive side of Trenton. I like jazz. My friends come there, they like jazz. They support it. We’re helping musicians, keeping them working.”
The Candlelight’s current owner, EC Bradley, supports it too. “EC has owned it about seven years. He’s from Trenton. He carries on the tradition. Doing jazz is a losing cause financially. But he likes jazz,” says Hilton. “If you went to hear the same group in Philly you pay a cover charge, high priced drinks, travel cost, parking. In New York you pay for parking. When you pay for drinks in Trenton, you get food.”
Hilton’s roots are also in Trenton. The son of a cook at the Lawrenceville School and a housewife mother, Hilton attended Trenton Central High School, studied electronics at Trenton Junior College, and then worked for the State of New Jersey IT department for 35 years before retiring.
He says that his connection to the music at the Candlelight is also linked to the alto sax that he played in junior and senior high school — noting that he took lessons from well-known area sax player and public school teacher Tommy Grice.
“I played with bands — over on Willow Street, East Trenton, the Sahara Club, the Cordial Inn. We played with a jazz organist and played what was in the clubs at the time, rhythm and blues type of thing mostly. But when we played for ourselves we played avant-garde, like Ornette Coleman. We were into the way-out stuff,” says Hilton, adding later, “Guys today can play very well, but a lot of it just sounds alike. The teachers kind of took the spontaneity out of it like it was in the 1960s. The same is true in art.”
Hilton’s opinion on art has some weight. He has run his Bellevue Gallery of Fine Arts (named after the street where he lives) for decades and was involved with the New Jersey State Museum as an active member of the Friends of the Museum and the Minority Arts Assembly.
Hilton says that his interest in visual arts began when he started the Serendipity Workshops for children in the basement of a church that had been on Pennington and Princeton avenues. In addition to well-respected area newspaper writer Bill Dwyer, Hilton says that other participants included New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth and well-known Trenton watercolorist Tom Malloy.
Hilton became more interested in visual arts, started acquiring works, and then arranged for sales, especially of work by African-American artists. He adds that he started attending openings, meeting artists, and increasing his circle, which included associations with several major American artists: famed photojournalist Gordon Parks, collage artist Romare Bearden, painters Jacob Lawrence and Sam Gilliam, and others. One event was with the photographer who took the iconic pictures of life in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, James Van Der Zee.
It was his relationship with Gordon Parks that began his involvement with the New Jersey State Museum. “The museum wanted to do a Gordon Parks exhibit, and Parks wouldn’t call them back. Gordon was a friend of mine, and I called him,” he says.
With Hilton’s deepening involvement the museum enhanced its African-American arts collection and its ability to host projects that included Bearden, Parks, and others. He says that the effort was helped by other committee members, including the Assemblyman John Watson (father to Congresswoman-elect Bonnie Watson Coleman).
Hilton also helped establish the museum’s policy of treating art by artists of African ancestry as simply American art and exhibiting the art throughout the year, rather than just during African-American History month in February. “It’s American art,” says Hilton emphatically.
In addition to the State Museum, to which he has recently donated several works of art by Sam Gilliam and Tom Malloy, Hilton has also been involved as a board member of the Lewis Museum in Baltimore and Cleveland African-American Museum. He is also involved with the Rosettes, a Trenton-area group that provides scholarships to Trenton-area students.
“I want to make life better for the people around me,” he says, thinking about how small things can make a difference to a person and a community. “You don’t realize it until you look back. My parents had exposed me to a lot of stuff. The supported me on saxophone. My mother was a reader so we had books.”
So on Saturdays Hilton does his part, takes his seat at the Candlelight Lounge, listens, watches the crowd, plans, and keeps the flame burning in Trenton.
Jazz at the Candlelight Lounge, 24 Passaic Street, Trenton, Saturdays, 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., no cover ($10 minimum). www.jazztrenton.com.
Candlelight Schedule:
Saturday, January 3: New York trombonist Andre Mutherson.
Saturday, January 10: Trenton saxophonist James Stewart.
Saturday, January 17: Philadelphia pianist Orrin Evans.
Saturday, January 24: New York saxophonist Darryl Yokley.
Saturday, January 31: New York saxophonist John David Simon.
Saturday, February 7: Newark jazz vocalist Lady CiCi.
Saturday, February 14: Philadelphia sax and drum playing Landham Brothers.
Saturday, February 21: Philadelphia drummer Chris Beck.
Saturday, February 28: Philadelphia drummer Vince Ector.
Saturday, March 7: Newark vocalist Carrie Jackson.
Saturday, March 14: North Brunswick trumpeter Lee Hogans.
Saturday, March 21: Trenton guitarist Bob Smith.
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