Milwaukee’s best bars of yesteryear
Two disclaimers:
This list features bars that are long gone, and the emphasis isn’t on beer. But OnMilwaukee.com remembers the days when “Old-school Milwaukeeans drank Schlitz or Pabst (and we weren’t doing it because it was retro). And we went out to bars that are now long-gone.”
Makes you wish you could have been there. An example:
The Jazz Gallery
932 E. Center St.
Jazz fans and punks will recall Riverwest’s Jazz Gallery as the scene of many early Violent Femmes gigs (they did a residency there). It was also the club that saw Bill Cosby — who was in town performing at State Fair in the mid-’70s — sit in on drums with organist Jimmy Smith. Avant jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson recorded his “The Milwaukee Tapes” disc in 1980 there. Other greats like Sam Rivers played in the small corner bar.
