El Chapultepec and Jerry Krantz

Inducted: October 29, 2024

El Chapultepec and Jerry Krantz

If Denver’s jazz scene can be likened to a solar system, El Chapultepec (The Pec) was the sun around which everything else revolved.

The Pec, which closed in 2020 after more than 80 years of continuous operation, was hardly posh. Indeed, the late, great Denver saxophonist Freddy Rodriguez Sr., who led the nightclub’s house band for decades, lovingly dubbed it a dive – and its signature burritos definitely didn’t qualify as gourmet fare. But in its heyday, the nightspot nurtured the Mile High City’s finest jazz and blues players, including fellow Colorado Music Hall of Famers Greg Gisbert, Eric Gunnison, Ellyn Rucker and Ken Walker. Moreover, pretty much any nationally known performer passing through Denver made it a point to stop by to perform or pay homage to one of the state’s great cultural institutions.

The man most responsible for establishing and maintaining El Chapultepec’s place in the jazz firmament was its longtime owner, Jerry Krantz. And although Krantz died in 2012, his daughter Anna Diaz knows her dad would have been deeply gratified upon learning about the Colorado Music Hall of Fame induction of him and The Pec.

Krantz

“He never set out to do all the things he did for personal notoriety,” Diaz stresses. “But as things took off and El Chapultepec became iconic, he took that as a responsibility. So I think he would have been honored to know that he was successful at creating that fertile ground for these musicians to develop into Hall of Fame musicians alongside him.”

The El Chapultepec story began in 1933. That year, prohibition ended, and an entrepreneur named Charlie Romano took it upon himself to quench Denver’s pent-up thirst by opening a bar and restaurant that shared its name with one of Mexico’s largest parks.

Its Market Street address wasn’t in a high-rent district…

…Mattie’s House of Mirrors, a popular brothel, was two doors down, and several other unpretentious watering holes were a short stumble away on nearby Larimer Street. But customers needed to be careful, since freight-train tracks were only about twenty feet away from the front entrance. As late as the 1980s, The Pec had to close at midnight on Sundays to prevent its tipplers from being flattened by a regularly scheduled locomotive.

Nonetheless, El Chapultepec won the affection of a loyal clientele – mostly working-class folks attracted by reasonably priced booze, cheap eats and live mariachi bands. One such person was Jack Kerouac, an author who captured the zeitgeist with the 1957 publication of On the Road, based on his travels earlier that decade. Denver readers have long debated whether an unnamed drinking den Kerouac depicted in the book was El Chapultepec. While Diaz doesn’t cosign this claim, she confirmed that her dad said Kerouac would sometimes sleep in cars in a vacant lot adjacent to the club and often bellied up to the bar – but he tended not to stay long, since there was a drink minimum and he was usually broke.

The timing of Krantz’s initial connection to El Chapultepec roughly paralleled Kerouac’s. A Denver native from a large brood (six boys, six girls), he enlisted in the Marines after matriculating from Manual High School and served as an underwater-demolition frogman in the Korean War. After his discharge, he spent time in Chicago, where he became enamored with the Windy City’s jazz clubs, before returning to Denver and marrying Julia Romano, the daughter of Charlie Romano’s son Tony, who’d taken over management of The Pec and several other operations from his dad.

At first, Krantz helped out at El Chapultepec between other jobs – among them driving a cab and owning a dog-food company for racing greyhounds. When an illness struck Tony, Krantz took over The Pec and ran it as his father-in-law had for most of the next twenty years. But in the late 1970s, following Julia’s unfortunate death, he remembered those Chicago hotspots he’d so enjoyed and began booking Rodriguez and other jazz musicians – and inadvertently birthed a Denver classic.

From Behind the Bar

In short order, El Chapultepec’s new slogan…

…“Hot Burritos and Cool Jazz Nightly” – was attracting the hippest folks in Denver and national celebrities alike. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald were only two of the luminaries to light up The Pec, and the Marsalis brothers and many other notables dropped by to jam whenever they had the chance. Even Bill Clinton visited before his run for U.S. President and wanted to return after he was elected, only to have the Secret Service nix the notion.

Still, being famous didn’t mean special treatment, as two members of U2 discovered when they showed up at the club with a couple of females Krantz suspected of being underage. As Diaz tells it, Krantz had no idea who the rockers were and promptly gave them the heave-ho.

When Jerry passed away, Angela Guerrero, who, like Anna, is the product of Krantz’s second marriage, joined forces with the rest of their family to keep El Chapultepec going. But the COVID-19 pandemic forced the club’s closure, and after businesses were allowed to reopen, changes in the neighborhood and other factors convinced the Krantz clan that the venerable venue’s last call had arrived.

In other ways, though, The Pec survives. Dazzle Denver, a jazz club at 1080 14th Street, proudly boasts the El Chapultepec Piano Bar. And Jerry’s offspring are behind the El Chapultepec Legacy Project, an initiative for which Colorado Music Hall of Fame serves as the fiscal sponsor. The project is intended to preserve memories of the club’s accomplishments, provide access to live music, and expose all generations to The Pec’s signature sounds for as long as jazz stars shine.

By Michael Roberts

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