Photograph of Etta James by Anthony Montes de Oca

EXCERPT | By Etta James

Uncle Frank showed up in his car and whisked us up to San Francisco when I was 12. We dropped [my mother] Dorothy off in the Fillmore District, which looked like a hell-hole to me. L.A. was a vine-covered cottage compared to these slums. After the sunny skies of southern California, the Bay Area looked seedy and sad — the fog-covered sky, the bums on the street. Maybe it was my mood or just the neighborhood where Dorothy lived, but my first impression was grime and crime.

I wound up in a couple of gangs — one in the Fillmore, where my mother lived, and one in the projects by Uncle Frank. We wore baggy jeans, just like today, with the legs dragging on the ground. A white shirt was also part of our uniform — an oversize man’s shirt worn tails-out to cover your ass. Then you had your white socks rolled all the way down below your ankles and beat-up tennis shoes. I let my hair grow long and put it in a ponytail. I thought I was bad. I guess I was the classic case of a kid who, lacking a real family, was looking for a family feeling in gangs.

I started bouncing from school to school. I’d been going to Girls High School in the Fillmore, but they threw me out of there. I was a wiseguy and a clown, always cutting up, never minding no one. So they put me in Continuation School, which is your last stop before they kick your ass out of the system altogether.

This was when Dorothy had moved into a rooming house in the Fillmore owned by Reverend Wilson, a gay preacher. I liked the man. He was an animal lover, always feeding his cats — and me. He was especially kind and gave Dorothy the front apartment with lots of light. He reminded me of the “secret angels” I had known. Dorothy, on the other hand, hated him. She was convinced he was a child molester and warned me to stay away from him. My own instincts, though, told me the man was good-hearted and God-fearing, and I did as I pleased. When I got home from school he’d always have food waiting for me. He made me feel safe. In my crazy new world, Reverend Wilson was an island of sanity.

Around the corner from Reverend Wilson’s rooming house in the Fillmore lived Sugar Pie DeSanto, whose real name was Umpeylia Balinton. She was my age, a gorgeous four-feet-eleven dynamo with a Filipino father, a black Philadelphia mother with a Puerto Rican temper, and 10 brothers and sisters. This was one crazy family. I liked hanging around them. You never knew what would happen next. When the old man got mad at the kids, he’d put them in these big overalls and hang them on the door from a nail. Leave them hanging all day. Sugar Pie and I ran in a gang together — later we’d wind up recording together — and she was so fine that every dude in the neighborhood was looking to get next to her. Quite a few succeeded.

Our girl gang was bold — in the Fillmore, we called ourselves the Lucky 20’s — and I pulled off some cold-blooded stunts. I’m not proud of what I did, but I did it all the same. I’m thinking of those times when we’d chase after white girls. Sometimes we beat up on gals from foreign countries, anyone different from us. That’s how I wound up in the school for juvenile delinquents. It was all about jealousy.

I no longer wanted anything to do with my mother, Uncle Frank, Aunt Mary or any other family member. This is when I started getting close to the Mitchells — two sisters and their superfine brother. It’s also the start of the musical story that led me away from home.

I met Jean Mitchell at the recreation center at Army and Third in the projects by Uncle Frank’s apartment. That’s where we’d have dances. Jean stayed in another group of projects built by the navy up in South Basin. She, her sister Abysinia, and their brother Alfonso all lived together. There was no mother or father. They came from New Orleans and were light-skinned Creole-looking people. Jean was my age; Alfonso — known as Fons — and Abysinia — known as Abye — were eight or nine years older.

Jean and I started singing together at the rec center. Soon Abye joined in and, just like that, we became the Creolettes. We were project girls imitating the young rhythm and blues of the time, but we were also deep into jazz. West Coast jazz was all the rage, and we dug Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck and Shorty Rogers. To me, Chet Baker looked like James Dean and was the coolest thing this side of Miles Davis. Naturally we knew about Miles and, being from Los Angeles, I had heard Dexter Gordon and Charles Mingus. Modern jazz was in my blood. Mainly, though, we were intrigued with vocal harmony. We developed a tight three-way blend, imitating groups like the Spaniels, the Swallows, the Chords, who had “Sh-Boom” before the Crew Cuts, and the Spiders, who had “Beside You.” We studied the Moonglows, Soony Til and the Orioles, all the hippest doo-woppers. We also listened to the McGuire Sisters — white girls who copied black songs — and white boys like the Hi-Lo’s and Four Freshmen. The Freshmen were especially slick — they sang like instruments — and soon we learned to do the same, even down to the trumpet trills and shakes.

Me and the Mitchells had so much in common that I wound up moving in with them. It was during one of those times when Dorothy was in jail and I was on the outs with Aunt Mary. Beyond singing together, I also ran in their gang. The Lucky 20’s from the Fillmore were considered a more citified gang. Jean and her bunch were a bit tamer. But the Mitchell who interested me most was Fons. He was my main motive for moving there. I was dying to get next to him.

The boy was extra cool. He controlled a gang called the Good Rockers that operated on the outskirts of town. He was also a piano player who fashioned himself after Horace Silver or Hampton Hawes. He wanted to be like Thelonious Monk, an out-there-on-the-edge player, but he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. When it came to looks, though, he was even better. He had these long eyelashes that laid down over almond-shaped eyes, sleek wavy hair, and a tall slim frame. He looked a little like Billy Dee Williams, only more rugged.

Meanwhile, music was still happening hot and heavy. The Creolettes were getting to be a pretty popular girl group around town. We were winning amateur shows and drawing good crowds. We’d tightened up our harmony, figured out a few stage moves, and put on a halfway-decent 20-minute set. Gaining confidence.

Around that time, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a smash with “Work With Me, Annie.” What Louis Jordan was to the 40s, Hank was to the 50s. He had the clever words and the funky grooves. Hank got you dancing. His “Work With Me, Annie” was a little lewd and a lot of fun. Work, of course, was a code word for screw. All the kids were crazy for that tune, a nasty jam for grinding. Some of the parents wouldn’t even let us play the record at home, which naturally made us play it even more.

Well, one afternoon the Creolettes were singing at a record hop when who should show up but Hank and all his superfine Midnighters. We were thrilled. When they heard us sing, they said something encouraging and, man, that’s all we needed to hear. When they sang “Work With Me, Annie,” the place went wild.

Next day the song was still on my mind. Answer songs were big back then, and it occurred to me — why not answer Hank’s hit? So I wrote “Roll With Me, Henry,” a pushy little jiveass reply to Hank. The girls and I worked it up and put it in our repertoire. Didn’t think nothing about it till the next week, when Hank and his Midnighters showed up at our sock hop for the second time. We couldn’t wait to sing our spicy song right in their faces.

“What do you think?” we wanted to know.

“Cool,” said Hank.

Abye was a groupie, and the Midnighters were legendary ladies’ men. So you can see how anxious she was to hook up with Hank’s boys. Jean and I were wannabe groupies. At 23, Abye was sure-enough ready to rock while, at 14, we were girls wanting to look like ladies. Abye was on the prowl. That’s why she slipped into the Primaline Ballroom [at 1223 Fillmore] a few weeks later to catch the Johnny Otis show. Didn’t know it then, but that was the night that changed my life.

Jean and I were back in the projects when the phone rang.

Abye was all aflutter.

“Y’all got to come down here to the Primaline Ballroom and meet Johnny,” she said.

“Johnny who?” I wanted to know.

“Johnny Otis.”

Johnny Otis was an L.A. bandleader who put together jazz and R&B revues. He played vibes and piano and featured different singers. He was also a songwriter and promoter.

“I’ve been telling Johnny all about us,” Abye went on. “He wants to hear the Creolettes.”

I knew Abye went to the dance because she wanted to meet Johnny Otis and his sexy stacked drummer, Kansas City Bell. But I didn’t know she was going to promote us.

“They’ll never let us in there,” I said. “We’re underage.”

“I’ll tell Johnny. He’ll take care of it.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically as I hung up the phone and went to sleep.

An hour later the phone woke me up. Abye again.

“What now?” I wanted to know.

“I’m at the Manor Plaza Hotel. Johnny Otis wants you and Jean to come down here and sing for him,” Abye was insisting.

“If he wants us down at the hotel,” I said, “it sure as hell isn’t to hear us sing.” I figured Johnny and the boys in his band were thinking, “Yeah, let’s get a couple of young chicks.”

Next thing I knew Johnny Otis was on the line. Now no one talks like Johnny Otis. He’s got this deep molasses honey-dripping deejay voice. It’s a jivetime jazzman’s voice, but it’s also sincere and filled with wisdom.

“I understand you girls can sing,” he said. “I’d love to hear you.”

“Man, it’s two in the morning,” I shot back. “How we supposed to get down there? The buses aren’t even running.”

“Catch a cab,” suggested Johnny.

“We don’t have money for a cab.”

“I’ll meet you at the curb and pay for it myself.”

That’s what happened. I was leery, but I was also excited. When we arrived, Johnny Otis was right there, smiling.

Now Johnny Otis is a very tall handsome Greek man with black wavy hair, a big moustache and trimmed beard. He looked like a slick cat, but he also exhibited good manners from the get-go. From his phone voice, I had figured he was black. For years many people believed Johnny was black, not only because of his swarthy skin tone but because he talked, walked, acted, played and pushed black music so hard. Plus, he married a black woman, moved into the black community, and eventually became a gospel preacher of his own black church. When I first met Johnny, though, he was still into his sporting days.

In his hotel room, the vibe was still nervous. Abye was there with Kansas City Bell. Johnny had his manager with him, Bardu Ali, who looked to be 75. He made me feel a little bit better. One of the musicians, though, was running around in his boxer shorts. “Hey man,” Johnny told him, “go put some pants on.”

I don’t like singing on demand, and this was no exception. I clammed up. I felt self-conscious and stupid. And maybe a little scared. Anyway, I wouldn’t sing.

“Come on, Jamesetta,” said Abye. “You’re acting like a baby.”

“Well, I just don’t wanna sing,” I said.

After a lot more coaxing, I compromised. I said I’d sing, but only in the bathroom. I know that sounds stupid, but everyone sounds good singing in the bathroom. Tile makes for great acoustics. So I went in there and sat on the edge of the tub while Abye and Jean stayed in the bedroom, standing close to the bathroom door. We decided to do our jazz harmony numbers, the ones that really showed off our voices. We sang “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “Street of Dreams” and “For All We Know.” When we were through, total silence. Finally, Johnny Otis said, “Wow! Did you hear that little girl sing?”

I came out of the bathroom smiling.

“That’s terrific,” he said. “I want you to ride back to L.A. with us tomorrow. I want to put you on my show and make some records with you.”

Without a doubt, this was the most exciting thing anyone had ever said to me in my life. But Johnny’s next question nearly threw me.

“How old are you?”

I looked at the girls. Jean gave me the eye. “Eighteen,” I lied.

Johnny knew damn well I was lying. “Can you get your mother to give you permission to travel with us?” he asked.

The next morning, Jean, Abye and I arrived at 11 sharp. In my hand was a neatly written note from Dorothy giving me the okay. I had forged it. I was happy to quit school and say bye-bye to the ninth grade. Hell, school was about to quit me anyway. I was on my way back to L.A., heady with anticipation.

At 14, my childhood had ended.

Excerpted from Rage to Survive, © 1995 by Etta James and David Ritz.

Mike Pitrie made the Fillmore his home base.

JAZZ | Anthony Torres

Mike “Coffee Picasso” Pitre, a true original local jazz talent and music scene treasure, died of a heart attack on December 18, leaving friends and admirers stunned at the sudden departure of the Bohemian Knuckleboogie lead man. He was 44.

I can still vividly remember that first sighting of Coffee and Bohemian Knuckleboogie a couple of years ago at Sheba Piano Lounge on Fillmore — the sound offering a unique blend of New Orleans jazz, soul and blues. It was difficult not to notice Mike Pitre, a larger than life black man, blowing a tiny pocket trumpet with an electric guitar draped over his torso. He sang with a style and voice that was incredibly hip and uniquely his own.

After that, I saw the band on numerous occasions — both at Sheba and up the block at Rasselas — and am still reflecting on Pitre and grappling with the nuances and peculiarities of his interpretations of jazz and popular standards, which, while seeming simple, disguised an underlying complexity and sophistication.

Defining his sound, Pitre said: “It’s from the gulf. Its roots are from the fever swamps of Port Arthur in the Lone Star State where I started honking my horn as a kid, when I wasn’t thinking about pirates.”

A man of few words, he always maintained a kind of cool aloofness, an elusiveness that skirted definitive answers to questions he thought might constrict the full depth and range of free associative responses that the music might be capable of conjuring.

However, Pitre always cited as the source of his interest and relocation from the south to the Fillmore Jazz District “a traveling uncle who told me about the blues and jazz clubs of the Fillmore District in SF back in the day when cats from all over got down.” That interest, and the scene itself, is what led him to make the Fillmore the band’s home base.

Alternating between Sheba and Rasselas — along with other venues in the broader Bay Area jazz circuit — Pitre and Bohemian Knuckleboogie were mainstays that helped anchor the Fillmore’s jazz scene. Pitre spoke both to his commitment to carrying on the historical tradition of jazz in the Fillmore and to the viability and legitimacy of the jazz district as a living cultural phenomenon that nurtures a range of great musical spirits.

“The Sunday Mike passed was one of the most difficult I have experienced in years. He played here on Sundays. He never missed and was always on time,” says Netsanet Alemayehu, who owns the Sheba Piano Lounge. “One day he asked how I was doing and I said, ‘I am really tired.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, just listen to the music, it will make you feel better.’ ”

NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT Michael Tilson Thomas is one of the best things to happen to the San Francisco Symphony in its first 100 years. Join in this sing-along for the symphony’s centennial — today, December 8.

Photograph of Jason Olaine by Kathi O'Leary

JAZZ | Jason Olaine

It seems like only yesterday that I came back home to the Bay Area after 10 years in New York to become artistic director of Yoshi’s new jazz club on Fillmore. That was May 2009, and here it is soon to be 2012. Now I find myself about to leave Yoshi’s to return to New York to program Jazz at Lincoln Center.

During my few short years back in the Bay Area, I’m not sure that anything has drastically changed at Yoshi’s San Francisco. We’re still here and we’re still presenting quality music and serving up great food. Maybe there’s not quite as much jazz on the menu as I had originally hoped, but there’s still quite a bit, considering that both SF Jazz and Yoshi’s Oakland are also programming jazz year-round.

What did change was the quantity of productions and more varied programming. Most worked, some didn’t.

Maybe you saw some hip-hop on the calendar, or some Texas swing, or some singer-songwriters, or even a cover band now and then. Perhaps you caught the melodious strains of Canadian Brass (if not, you can catch them when they return in December). Or maybe you danced to a late-night DJ set by Grandmaster Flash, or witnessed the mesmerizing droning of Tinariwen from the Saharan Desert, or caught Branford Marsalis’s burning quartet exploring the bounds of modern jazz.

What became clear early on was that for Yoshi’s on Fillmore to survive and eventually thrive, we needed to be appealing to many different music audiences and use the restaurant space even after prime dining hours. So we tried a few different things: We partnered with KDFC for a long-running series of classical concerts. We presented DJs in the restaurant late at night while in the club we presented a totally different concert to a different audience.

Along with the demand to adapt came the need to deliver artists and bands that could fill up the club and the restaurant throughout the year. As a musical omnivore of sorts, I initially found it challenging and rewarding to bring old school hip hop like Public Enemy — with a live band — to the Yoshi’s stage. Or to present George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic for six shows, or De La Soul, the Pharcyde and Mos Def, and have sold out audiences enjoy these groups in such an intimate space.

Photograph of Jason Olaine at Yoshi's by Kathi O'Leary

But the downside for me was that I was moving further and further away from the music that I love the most, and that’s jazz.

I fondly remember my early days at Yoshi’s on Claremont Avenue in Oakland in the early ’90s, when we would have six-night runs with such artists as Betty Carter, Joe Williams, McCoy Tyner (for two weeks!), Abbey Lincoln, Ray Brown, Joe Pass, Tony Williams, Toots Thielemans, Milt Jackson, Cachao, Gene Harris, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Irakere, Anthony Braxton, Tito Puente, Cecil Taylor — the list goes on and on.

With the recent passing of jazz drumming greats Eddie Marshall and Paul Motian, I’m reminded how few jazz titans and living legends we have left — and how critical it is that we honor them and present them to our audiences. Of course, that also means the audience has to be there to support it.

That will be the challenge for Eric Hanson, who I have recruited to take over my position as artistic director. He’s as knowledgeable about jazz and cares as deeply for the music and the artists as anyone I know in the business. His marketing cohort at Yoshi’s SF is Evan Sokol, and these two have worked together in the past so I’m feeling very good about leaving Yoshi’s in great hands.

As for me, I’m looking forward to the challenge of programming Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 25th anniversary season and working alongside artistic director Wynton Marsalis. I will be overseeing the programming for their flagship venues in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle in Manhattan and at new international properties being created in partnership with St. Regis hotels. The first club in Doha, Qatar, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012, with additional clubs opening every other year in resort locations in America, China and Latin America. It’s an exciting opportunity for me to help spread the gospel of jazz around the world.

I’ve enjoyed my second tour of duty at Yoshi’s and the challenge of establishing the club in the Fillmore Jazz District. Owner Kaz Kajimura has assembled a top-notch team to carry the Yoshi’s vision into the future. While it’s sad to say goodbye to the Bay Area and my Yoshi’s family again, I’m looking forward to joining my New York family with Wynton as the patriarch. Wynton’s commitment to the art form and his personal and professional integrity are inspiring. I look forward to working solely in the service of jazz music once again.

One more thing: I’m not leaving the Fillmore behind entirely. Last year I began programming the Fillmore Jazz Festival, and I am looking forward to continuing that arrangement by programming the 2012 festival next Fourth of July weekend.

Thank you to the residents of this great and historic neighborhood — “the Harlem of the West” — for your support of the Fillmore Jazz District and of live music, wherever you may find it.

Read more: “Yoshi’s new guy focused on variety”

Photograph of Alden Gilchrist and the Calvary Chancel Choir by Alvin Johnson

LOCALS | Fran Moreland Johns

Alden Gilchrist has been making music at at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson for the past 60 years — and on October 28 he will be honored with a special concert as the longtime music director of Calvary Presbyterian Church.

In the early 1950s, Calvary was looking for someone to play the organ. Young Alden Gilchrist, fresh from the Army and a productive stay in France studying and composing music, was looking for a job.

“I had been assistant organist at First Presbyterian in Portland, so I wrote to all the Presbyterian churches in the Bay Area asking if they needed an organist,” Gilchrist remembers. “The best offer came from Menlo Park Presbyterian — at the salary of $35 a month. But Mr. Jacobson at Calvary came back from vacation, found the letter of application I’d sent them earlier, and called to ask if I wanted to audition.”

He went to the Menlo Park pastor and asked: “Would I be ruining my life after three weeks on this job if I auditioned at Calvary?” The pastor told Gilchrist: “The fact that you’re asking, and interested, means you’re not going to be happy here.” But he warned Gilchrist he had inside information that Calvary was failing and would be taken over by the Presbyterian hierarchy.

Still, the big money Calvary was offering — $55 a month — and the chance to skip the commute from San Francisco to Menlo Park were sufficiently attractive. And the rest is 60 years of musical history.

Gilchrist became the church organist on September 23, 1951, and was named director of music in 1965. In the decades since, he has been acclaimed for his commitment to enlightened and enduring music. He initiated a community concert series, which brings professional musicians to perform at the church and benefits local charities. He led the church choir on three European tours, including performances at Notre Dame in Paris and at the historic cathedral in Chartres. More recently he pioneered a popular Sunday evening jazz service at Calvary.

Members, friends and neighbors of the church are invited to join in a celebration of Gilchrist’s 60 years at Calvary, during which the church has grown and thrived, contrary to the preacher’s prediction. A program called “Jubilate! – Sixty Years of Music” will take place the final weekend of October, beginning with a concert on Friday, October 28, at 6 p.m. featuring Grammy winner Kent Nagano conducting the San Francisco Academy Orchestra in works by Gilchrist and his favorite composers. Nagano and the orchestra, choir and soloists will be joined by the Dave Scott Quartet — which plays at the church’s jazz services — and the Santa Rosa Children’s Chorus. On Sunday, October 30, Gilchrist will conduct an all-music worship service at 11 a.m.

Nagano, an internationally acclaimed conductor well known to Bay Area audiences as the former music director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, is currently music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The Calvary concert is his only West Coast appearance this season. He attended Calvary as a college student and sang in the choir one summer under Gilchrist’s direction.

“I had the chance to make music under a brilliant music director,” says Nagano, who calls Gilchrist “such an inspiration to so many of us musicians who came up in San Francisco.”

When Gilchrist was growing up in Riverside, California — where legendary conductor Robert Shaw was then student director of the Pomona College glee club and a student in his father’s biology class — he was recruited at age 10 to sing in the adult choir, appropriately enough, of Calvary Presbyterian Church of Riverside. “I was probably an alto,” he laughs. The family moved to Portland when his father was named head of the biology department at Lewis and Clark College. Gilchrist got his undergraduate degree in music there before heading to Berkeley for graduate school at the University of California.

When he’s not making music on Fillmore Street, Gilchrist is a gentleman farmer. Years ago he purchased 17 acres in Sonoma County; 15 acres are left to nature, but two acres are under cultivation. “Cabbage, lettuce, leeks, broccoli, chard — there are always vegetables,” he says. “Citrus is my best crop. Cherries and plums and peaches don’t get enough winter chill.” His approach to pesticide-free farming: “You just plant plenty of stuff. The bugs don’t eat that much.”

“I was brought up to worship nature,” Gilchrist says. “As a child, when all the other kids were out playing football, I would be in the fields identifying plants by their botanical names,” thanks to his father the biology professor. Appreciation of a scholarly parent was lost on a teenage son. “I hated it,” Gilchrist says. “But now I can ID wildflowers everywhere — so I guess I love it.”

It was not love alone that led him to the country life. In the late 1960s, Gilchrist was working on Sundays at Calvary and spending the other six days of the week teaching and often accompanying his students for recitals and performances. Then the flu slowed him down.

“The doctor asked about my schedule, and wondered if I knew that other people took a day off,” Gilchrist says. So he started spending time at a friend’s place on the Russian River, eventually building an adjacent cabin and learning he could enjoy swimming and taking life easier. When he decided to buy property, “I couldn’t afford the prices on the river, so I went a few miles inland,” he says.

He is still in San Francisco, at Calvary, on the weekends. His weekdays in the country have been cut short this month by preparations for the 60th anniversary celebration. But he says the performance of an aria from his 1950s opera, “Salaum ar Fol” — Celtic for “Solomon the Fool” — and many other favorite choral, jazz and orchestral works during the celebration will be well worth it. Most special of all, Gilchrist says: “Having Kent Nagano here to conduct.”

THEN THERE WAS HIS GRANDFATHER

Alden Gilchrist has been at Calvary Presbyterian Church for 60 years, but his roots in the neighborhood go back much further.

“Grandfather Hugh Gilchrist,” he says, “was pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church at the corner of Webster and Page.” His grandfather went on to become a professor of Greek at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and at some point Westminster Presbyterian disappeared — but not before future mayor Willie Brown got his first job there, as a janitor.

Grandson remembers grandfather as a force to reckon with. “Harry Bridges [the formidable union leader] was coerced into attending Westminster,” Gilchrist says.

The young woman who would become Gilchrist’s mother was a worker at the church. She met and married the preacher’s son in a ceremony with John McLaren, the creator of Golden Gate Park, supplying the greenery and serving as an usher.

“Grandfather founded a college on Bush near Fillmore with the purpose of converting the city,” Gilchrist says. “He needed to change the world. He died of a broken heart because he couldn’t change the world.”

He did, however, likely change many lives by founding Mt. Hermon, a spiritual retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains that still links urbanites of all ages to the peace and serenity of nature at conferences and retreats held year round. Hugh Gilchrist was on his way from San Anselmo to Santa Cruz to sign the deed for the retreat when he stopped at a downtown San Francisco hotel on the night of April 16, 1906. Awakened by the earthquake, he proceeded on his journey out of town.

During the time the Fillmore was known as the “Harlem of the West,” a number of Filipino American jazz artists performed regularly in the Fillmore, most notably Joseph “Flip” Nunez, who was one of the house pianists at the legendary Jimbo’s Bop City. A brick marker on Fillmore Street near Yoshi’s honors Nunez. Another brick marker honors Filipino jazz poet Al Robles, an activist who was part of a large Fillmore family. Sugar Pie DeSanto — the internationally known blues singer and songwriter — also grew up in the Fillmore on Buchanan Street in a large Afro-Filipino family.

Graham Leggat (1960-2011)

Graham Leggat — the irrepressible Scottish impresario who led the San Francisco Film Society on to greater glory during the past six years — died tonight at his home after an 18-month battle with cancer.

Under Leggat, the Film Society made its annual San Francisco International Film Festival — the nation’s oldest — more important than ever and established its headquarters at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown. The Film Society’s offices are nearby in the Presidio.

In 2010 Leggat rallied community support to transform the endangered Clay Theater on Fillmore Street into its year-round home. When that effort lagged, he struck a deal with the New People complex on Post Street to stage a year-round film festival in its state-of-the-art cinema. The Film Society’s programming at New People cinema begins September 1.

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By Jesse Hamlin

A sea of sun-drenched people flowed along Fillmore Street on Saturday, partaking of the musical and gustatory pleasures — not to mention the beer, wine and margaritas — served up by San Francisco’s biggest street bash. Blues and barbecued oysters. Fried catfish and Nigerian folk songs. Those were some of the sounds and scents that wafted through the air at the annual Fillmore Jazz Festival, a swinging two-day affair that stretches from Jackson Street in tony Pacific Heights down to Eddy Street in the gritty heart of the Fillmore District.

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For the 27th time, Fillmore Street will celebrate the Fourth of July by hosting the Fillmore Jazz Festival, this year on July 2 and 3. It’s by far the largest street party in the city, stretching from Jackson Street in Pacific Heights south through the Fillmore Jazz District to Eddy Street. Ruth Dewson, the long-reigning Mayor of Fillmore Street, remembers how the festival got its start.

The stylish cinema at New People in Japantown will be the home of the Film Society.

After more than a year of exploring the possibilities, the San Francisco Film Society is coming to the neighborhood — but to Japantown, not the Clay Theater.

The Film Society announced this morning that it will establish a year-round home and take over the programming of the stylish and high-tech Viz Cinema at the New People complex at 1746 Post Street in Japantown. The cinema opened in 2009 as part of a new J-Pop Center devoted to contemporary Japanese pop culture.

“It’s a 143-seat state-of-the-art single-screen that we gave a test drive to during the International,” said Graham Leggat, executive director of the Film Society, which sponsors the San Francisco International Film Festival nearby at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. “It was hugely popular.”

Last August the Film Society made an overture to take over the 100-year-old Clay Theater on Fillmore Street when its closure was threatened. Talks continued in fits and starts between the society and Clay Theater owner Balgobind Jaiswal, who also retained an architect to design townhouses to be built above the venerable art film house.

“The Clay just became too much of a can of worms,” Leggat said. Its future remains uncertain.

Jaiswal expressed regret but said his planning would move forward to retain the Clay as a movie theater.

“Unfortunately for us, the Film Society prefers the new, ready-for-occupancy, state-of-the-art facility of the New People’s building” and its location in Japantown, Jaiswal said. “Our long-term strategy … is to improve the [Clay] into a state-of-the art facility, but the process is slow.”

The Clay has been operated for many years by Landmark Theaters, which has expressed new interest in continuing to run the theater. Landmark has recently refurbished the Clay’s blazing neon marquee.

“We renewed our lease and are working diligently with our landlord on both of us continuing operating the Clay for a long time into the future,” said Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff.

“We are still actively pursuing Landmark as a long-term tenant,” said Jaiswal, the theater’s owner, “but the success of those negotiations depends on our ability to update the theater, and to fund the necessary improvements.”