Concert Details

Show Notes:

The “All Nighter Club” kicked in at The Flamingo Fridays and Saturdays at 12M with music until 6AM. The Bluesbreakers were regularly booked at these sessions.

The Flamingo Club was a jazz nightclub in Soho, London, that operated for 15 years from August 1952. It first opened in the basement of the Mapleton Restaurant at 39 Coventry Street, near Leicester Square, before relocating in April 1957 to 33–37 Wardour Street, where it became an important venue in the development of British rhythm and blues and modern jazz.

The club was especially known for its weekend “all-nighters,” which ran from Friday and Saturday nights until 6 a.m.—a practice that had begun on an occasional basis as early as 1953. By the early 1960s, the Flamingo had also become a focal point for the mod subculture, where jazz and R&B fans, musicians, and style leaders regularly mingled. It closed at its Wardour Street location in 1967.

Over the years, the Flamingo hosted a wide range of emerging British acts who would go on to major success, alongside visiting American artists such as Stevie Wonder, Bill Haley, Patti LaBelle, John Lee Hooker, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Regular British acts moving through the club during this period included The Rolling Stones, The Who, Manfred Mann, The Spencer Davis Group, The Animals, and The Small Faces. Eric first performed at the Flamingo with The Yardbirds, and appeared there frequently with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, as well as later with Cream.

Between 1962 and 1965, the resident band was Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, who recorded the live album Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo in 1963.

The Flamingo Club is widely regarded as one of the key incubators of the British rhythm and blues movement, helping to shape the sound, style, and networks that defined the UK blues boom of the 1960s.

History note: In October 1962, the club was the scene of a fight between jazz fans Aloysius “Lucky” Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe, both associates of Christine Keeler, a frequent after-hours visitor. The incident ultimately contributed to the public revelations of the Profumo affair.