Boston’s South End was once a thriving pocket of lavish jazz clubs and a mecca for legendary performers. One by one, each venue closed its doors, giving way to pizza parlors, coffee shops and retailers. The golden age of jazz is nearly dead in New England.

But it lives on at Wally’s Café.

Nestled in an unassuming brownstone on Massachusetts Avenue, Wally’s Café boasts free live music seven nights a week.

On a recent weekend night, five musicians crowded on a dimly lit stage. Around sixty people packed in the narrow room, both at tables and along the bar. The young saxophone player kneeled toward a man bobbing his head and slapping an upright base. Black and white photographs and yellowed newspaper clippings were framed on an exposed-brick wall. A drummer sat to the side, his head dangling low as he lightly teased the drum cymbals.

Joseph Walcott opened Wally’s Café in 1947 as the first black man to own a nightclub in New England, according to the Bostonian Society. Walcott died at age 101 in 1998, but passed the club down to his daughter and grandsons.

Paul Poindexter, the eldest of Walcott’s grandsons, bustled his way through the crowd, serving drinks and greeting customers. Poindexter, 47, is a robust man with a goatee and a slight gap in his teeth.

“We’re not a family owned operation. We’re community owned. Without you guys,” he motioned to the crowd, “we would be nothing but four walls.”

An older black man and white woman sat back in their chairs, holding hands and sipping Merlot from tall glasses. Three middle aged Asian women laughed and talked over martinis. Several ebony-skinned men stood in the back of the bar, wearing newsboy hats and tapping their feet to the music. A horde of college-age men stood near the bar, drinking Sam Adams from the bottle.

Elynor Walcott, Joseph Walcott’s daughter, said in a phone interview that even in the 1940s, Wally’s Café drew an ethnically diverse crowd.

“My father always ran that kind of business,” she said.

Wally’s Café is also diverse with the staunch jazz lover and the casual bar hopper.

“I love the scene and experience of live jazz,” said Ross Norman, 28, a film producer from New York City. Norman, who described himself as a “social jazz listener,” said that he rarely listens recorded jazz. “But here, there is this energy and emotional depth to the music that I can’t help but get into.”

Norman said he also enjoys Wally’s Café for the laid back atmosphere. “Some bars have this manic quality to them, like they’re trying too hard to be cool.  It’s exhausting.”

People come to Wally’s Café to relax. The regulars know to leave pretense outside the metal-barred door and let loose to the music.

Wally’s Café is a no-frills bar, offering both reasonably priced drinks and a full selection of top shelf liquor, but no food—except for a few bags of chips pinned to the wall behind the counter.

The main draw is the music.

Wally’s Café rotates jazz bands each night of the week, featuring different musical styles such as Cuban jazz, funk, swing, bebop and blues, and a mix of students and professional musicians.

The nightclub has historically been a platform for student musicians to establish themselves. Twenty-eight year old Berklee College of Music graduate Justin Oliver said that he plays the drums at Wally’s Café on Monday nights.

“The history of this place is incredible,” he said. “It’s a great experience for students to play here.”

The musicians played for hours without breaking. When one needed water, he would pause and take a drink before fusing back in. They moved their bodies with the music, their movements growing more expressive as the music built momentum.

The crowd cheered when the trumpet player hit a flurry of high notes.

Elynor Walcott, 64, described what she remembers of Wally’s Café as a little girl, then called Wally’s Paradise. She said there was a kitchen, a dressing room, table clothes on every table, and a maître d’ at the door.

“And there was dancing,” she said, proudly.

She said that as a young girl, her family would host the entertainers in their own home, since during that time blacks were not welcome at many hotels in the city. They would come back after the club was closed and have parties in the living room.

“Boy, they were having a good time,” she said, laughing.

Walcott said she was in her early 20s the first time she took charge of the nightclub. After mother died, her father took his first trip in 40 years to his native country, Barbados.

“He let me be in charge of his baby. I was so honored.”

While he was gone, Walcott saved the building by putting out a grease fire started by a cook, who tried to put it out with water. Walcott grabbed a box of salt and poured it over the fire before smothering it with an old blanket, a trick she learned from her mother.

From that day on, she was the person her father counted on.

Walcott said her father always dazzled guests by dressing in suit, a tie and shiny shoes. But at night, he rolled up his dress pants and mopped the club’s bathroom floors.

Walcott said her father never talked about the challenges he faced as a black business owner in the 1950s and 1960s.

“He was tough,” she said. “He didn’t care what color you were, so as long you didn’t mess with him.”

Walcott said that her family gives credit to God for keeping the doors at Wally’s Cafe open for so many years.

Freelance novelist Christopher Shortsleeves, 29, was showing off the jazz club to his girlfriend visiting from New York City last weekend.

“Jazz can be a lot of nonsense. But when it’s on, it’s really on. But don’t listen to me, I’m no music connoisseur,” he said before taking a swig of his Blue Moon.

But jazz wasn’t meant for the music connoisseur, and the management at Wally’s Café seems to celebrate that.

“Jazz is music for the people,” Poindexter said, motioning to the crowd.

“It’s America’s music.”

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