Alphabetically printed index tabs at foredge of pages with mss. alphabetised entries with names and addresses of members.Loosely inserted is 6pp. with most of the names and addresses in pencil crossed out. The name os the treasurer at an address at Sandycove Point, Dublin is in his own hand on front flyleaf. The No. 1. Rhythm Club, Dublin was formed in 1944. The concept of rhythm clubs, which started in Britain, denoted gatherings of jazz enthusiasts who would meet to listen to and discuss jazz recordings. Their popularity grew rapidly from 1933 onwards, with ninety-eight clubs formed in the London area by the end of 1935. The first meeting of the No. 1 Rhythm Club occurred on 10 February 1944 when nearly a hundred jazz enthusiasts met at The Broadway Café, Lower O?Connell Street, Dublin. Its meetings were held fortnightly and featured both performances by local musicians and ?record recitals?, but the club closed ?after some years? due to financial difficulties. The Honorary Secretary, James C. Butler, well-known in Dublin as a teacher of ballroom dancing, expressed his delight at the formation of the club. In addition to Butler, Andy Flynn and six others, Ismay Browne was also on the committee. Ismay Browne was one of three Browne siblings who were involved in the formative Irish jazz scene: Ivor, Val and Ismay played trumpet, clarinet and banjo respectively and held jam sessions at their Sandycove home in south Dublin at the time when the ?jazz revival proper hit Dublin in the forties. The narrative of jazz as a serious art form appears already established at this stage with The Bray Tribune & The People?s Weekly stating: ?all were supporters of good Jazz and the exclusion of those interested in jitterbugging was explicitly laid down?. In the same month, The Irish Times also mentioned the No. 1 Irish Rhythm Club, reporting on more than seventy young people, mostly under the age of twenty, sitting in orderly rows around an electric gramophone while three young men ?presented a series of about ten records each, choosing different themes to illustrate their point?. In Ireland of that time there was considerable wariness and concern in bodies such as Conradh na Gaelilge, the Catholic Church based on a perception that Jazz was somehow immoral. This index book contains over 100 entries with names and addresses of Dublin Jazz afficionados from the 1940’s. It is unique. N° de ref. del artículo 020779

The concept of rhythm clubs, which started in Britain, denoted gatherings of jazz
enthusiasts who would meet to listen to and discuss jazz recordings. Their popularity
grew rapidly from 1933 onwards, with ninety-eight clubs having been formed in the
London area by the end of 1935.74 Stuart Nicholson reports on the concept spreading
quickly throughout Europe: Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany,
and notably the Hot Club of France, formed in 1932. He notes how the mediation of jazz
through the experience of the listening clubs produced a ‘unique socially and culturally
constructed circumstance’ of an audience, ‘completely dislocated from the inductive
effect of the cultural and social ritual associated with the creation of jazz in American

69 Hodnett, 8.
70 As note 69.
71 ‘Dublin Jazz Story’, Jazz News, 12 September 1962, 2.
72 Andrew Flynn, ‘This Thing Called “Swing”’, The Bray Tribune & the People’s Weekly, January 1944, 8.
73 Andrew Flynn, ‘Rhythm Club for Dublin?’, The Bray Tribune & the People’s Weekly, January 1944, 4.
74 Francis Newton, The Jazz Scene (London: Penguin Books, 1961), 238.
Damian Evans
JSMI, 14 (2018–19), p. 18
clubs, bars and dance halls’.75 However disconnected from American cultural life the
early rhythm clubs may have been, it appears from the archival sources discussed here
that at least some of the Irish jazz societies’ activities included live performances.
The first meeting of the No. 1 Rhythm Club occurred on 10 February 1944 when
nearly a hundred jazz enthusiasts met at The Broadway Café, Lower O’Connell Street,
Dublin. Its meetings were held fortnightly and featured both performances by local
musicians and ‘record recitals’, but the club closed ‘after some years’ due to financial
difficulties.76 It was noted that ‘the Honorary Secretary, James C. Butler, well-known in
Dublin as a teacher of ballroom dancing, expressed his delight at the formation of the
club’.77 In addition to Butler, Flynn and six others, Ismay Browne was also on the
committee.78 Ismay Browne was one of three Browne siblings who were involved in the
formative Irish jazz scene: Ivor, Val and Ismay played trumpet, clarinet and banjo
respectively and held jam sessions at their Sandycove home in south Dublin at the time
when the ‘jazz revival proper hit Dublin in the forties’.
79 The narrative of jazz as a serious
art form appears already established at this stage with The Bray Tribune & The People’s
Weekly stating: ‘all were supporters of good Jazz and the exclusion of those interested in
jitterbugging was explicitly laid down’.80 In the same month, The Irish Times also
mentioned the No. 1 Irish Rhythm Club, reporting on more than seventy young people,
mostly under the age of twenty, sitting in orderly rows around an electric gramophone
while three young men ‘presented a series of about ten records each, choosing different
themes to illustrate their point’.81