In the 1960s The Club transitioned from a nightclub to a lively private party house. But if you listen closely you can still hear the music and the stories that made The Club what it is today. That history can still be found hanging on the walls through autographed pictures of the many of stars who have performed there.

The scene is Club 86, a party house. Photos and contracts bearing well-known signatures line the walls near the door. Ghosts from the days when the place drew internationally known entertainers seem to fill the air. You can almost hear the music echoing if you listen hard enough, unless those drums are really just the crash of platters and serving trays in the kitchen.

There was a time when music knit this nation together. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a circuit of performers traveled from New York to Los Angeles and back again, making its way through small towns that dotted the nation’s largest railways. Radio, televsion, and film appearances had made some of these performers international celebrities; but with the mass-production and analog distribution of music still a pipe-dream for the future, these artists still made their living on the road, one local appearance at a time.

Between 1946 and 1955, despite being nestled in a small town, Club 86 played host to some of the greatest talents of all time – performers like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Jane Russell, Lionel Hampton, Sarah Vaughn and Louis Prima, just to name a few. With these big-city names came big dreams for small-town inhabitants of Geneva, NY. New ambitions seemed within reach, especially for young aspirants like Scott LaFaro, a Geneva native who grew up on the music of these traveling shows and later became one of the world’s greatest bass players.

But big-town influences also brought questions, confusions and conundrums. Jane Russell was best known for her X-Rated turn in The Outlaw when she arrived at Club 86. Nat King Cole, one of the most famous men in the world when he arrived in town, was forced to stay in a railroad car on the nearby tracks due to a lack of accommodations for black performers. The self-proclaimed “Drag King of Greenwich Village” blurred gender lines, dressing like a man while managing burlesque acts that came through the club. And organized crime families from both New York and Chicago took note of the burgeoning business, tempting local youth into relationships with local extensions of the “Black Hand” and threatening the relative peace of the small town.