Cigarette in hand and saxophone on lap, jazz icon Dexter Gordon seems lost in thought, while smoke billows gently from his lips. It rises in a cloud above him -- white, misty patterns set against an The iconic 1948 shot, by celebrated jazz photographer Herman Leonard, has come to signify the nocturnal ambience and romance of the music. Smoke and jazz, it seems to say, are as inseparable as Gordon and his horn, each Yet as the Illinois Senate on Thursday passed a ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places statewide, the mythology of the Until now, smoke has blown freely in many of this city's jazz joints, from Uptown's historic Green Mill to downtown's rambunctious Andy's Jazz Club, from and restaurants with bars until July 1, 2008.
And even then, a passage in the Nevertheless, Chicago club owners know which way the wind is blowing, with states such as California, New York and Massachusetts having banished smoking Some Chicago clubs, such as the avant-garde Velvet Lounge on East Cermak smoking long before the law will require it. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, their owners say. Other venues, such as the aforementioned Green Mill and Andy's, have put off the (seemingly) inevitable, the rooms usually as thick with fog as anyplace from the earliest days of jazz, when smoke was the least of the vices No matter how they feel about the changing aesthetic of smoke, however, reasons, and others.
"I'm not for this no-smoking rule. I'm way against it -- it's a jazz joint," says Green Mill owner Dave Jemilo, who revived the historic club in "You get people here from Paris, and there's going to be no smoke? I don't think there's anyone in Paris who doesn't smoke," Jemilo said.
"So they're in the Green Mill, they're from Paris, they're listening to jazz, and they've got to go outside to smoke? "Clean air in a jazz joint? No nicotine on the paintings at the Green Mill?
"Come on." Adds Jemilo, "I'm very nervous about it." Specifically, Jemilo fears repeating what happens on Monday nights, when of the club at the urging of musicians with various health woes.
During the non-smoking shows liquor sales plummet by half, says Jemilo, even though the Other club owners, however, celebrate the cultural shift over smoke. "If we'd kept smoking, I'd probably be dead by now," says Jazz Showcase founder Joe Segal, 80. "And, anyway, smoke has nothing to do with music.
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