The jazz club.

Dark, smoky, bustling with life, it's one of the icons of 20th-century American culture, and Pittsburgh has had its share. Back in the day, fabled Hill District haunts the Crawford Grill and the Hurricane played host to local legends like Art Blakey, Billy Eckstine, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Stanley Turrentine, George Benson -- the list of both clubs and players goes on.

Jazz will never be what it was in its heyday, but the closings in recent years of James Street Tavern and Crawford Grill on the Square, and the distress call sent out by Dowe's on 9th, have musicians and fans wondering: Can't we support one dedicated jazz club in this historic jazz city?

"Everybody says they love jazz, but they don't support it," says Etta Cox, singer and part-owner of the 6-year-old Dowe's, which tonight will be the scene of a desperation fund-raiser for itself billed as "Save the Music!"

Granted, Pittsburgh is not the only town experiencing a decline in jazz.

"I talk to other musicians," says legendary Pittsburgh drummer Roger Humphries. "The scene is not as big as it used to be anywhere."

The jazz club business faces the same obstacles as other live entertainment, whether it be the rise of home theater systems, the stricter drunk-driving laws, the depressed economy or the increased competition from chain restaurants.

After 17 years at James Street on the North Side, owner Craig Poole shut down because he realized "as Robinson Township and Cranberry were expanding, I was losing market share to the suburbs. We had a good urban share, but you need more than that."

Mr. Poole noticed that people were happy to pay $10 for karaoke, but balked at paying it to see a jazz star like David "Fathead" Newman.

Unlike pop music -- and like classical -- jazz is an aging art form frequented by a limited and older demographic. Although WDUQ plays jazz up to 16 hours of the day, there hasn't been a full-time commercial jazz radio station in years and, as a result, most people would be hard-pressed to name a handful of contemporary jazz stars -- Michael Buble, Diana Krall and Chris Botti currently dominate the jazz charts.

Big names at the Guild

But it's hardly time to write the "jazz is dead" story. Just look at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. It has a thriving concert series full of big names, an active education program, and a Grammy-winning record label and studio on the North Side. It has MCG Jazz Executive Producer Marty Ashby only looking to expand.

"My contention is that the jazz audience is alive and well," Mr. Ashby says. "I was able to sell out a $100 Dave Brubeck show in basically three days recently at MCG. We're having a wonderful response from high school musicians coming to the concert hall. This summer, we have a series of 25 events where we're taking MCG jazz out to city parks, to the Children's Museum, the Warhol and a variety of other places."

Nonprofit venues like the MCG, which averages 90 percent capacity for its 40 shows per year, are becoming more of the norm nationally as an alternative to clubs, according to Lee Mergner, publisher of Jazz Times magazine.

"If you go back to Coltrane and Miles and Sonny Rollins, those artists didn't for the most part perform in Kennedy Centers and MCGs," he says.

Moving from clubs to theaters or auditoriums marks a significant shift in the culture of jazz. In the theater setting, you might get better sound and sight lines, but there is something about the jazz experience that is lost.

"I think there's always been an ambivalence on people's part, because they may complain about a club, and of course they'll think of it as a 'smoky' club," Mr. Mergner says. "The ironic thing is that most of us when we see jazz in a concert hall, it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't have the sticky floor and surly waitresses and ringing cash registers; it doesn't have that same feel that most of us associate with the music.

"Begrudgingly, though, I think people do prefer the concert hall or theater approach and I think musicians prefer it to, because it means nicer pianos and a nicer sound system."

Mr. Mergner believes that as jazz has moved more out of the clubs, it has changed the way jazz artists tour.

"I don't see as many jazz bands in vans, you know what I mean?" he says.

And yet, Mr. Ashby doesn't believe there is any lack of viable talent to book into a jazz club like Dowe's, which has struggled to draw people for national acts.

"I get no less than 10 e-mails a day from the John Scofields down to names you don't know of dying to play Pittsburgh," he says. "There should be a weekly national act of jazz in Pittsburgh: some weeks a Bob James, a James Moody, a Leni Stern. Pittsburgh can support that, yes."

Although the club scene is down, fans can always find jazz in Pittsburgh. Mellon Jazz still presents a summer series in the parks. Independent promoter Manny Theiner offers between 10 and 20 avant-garde jazz shows a year, featuring the likes of Ken Vandermark and Peter Brotzman, at the universities and gallery spaces in Friendship.

The Pittsburgh Jazz Society has the regular Sunday night concerts at the Rhythm House in Bridgeville. The CLO Cabaret in the Square has a steady Tuesday night jazz program, and Club Cafe and the Quiet Storm both put jazz into their mix.

Restaurants reserving nights for jazz include C.J.'s in the Strip, the Bridge on the South Side and, most recently, Gullifty's in Squirrel Hill.

Mr. Humphries, one of the city's premier players, says the musicians aren't picky.

"Any place we can play, that turns into a jazz house, yes, we'll play," he says. "We play in the smallest corner, the most smallest hole in the wall. We don't have that many options right now."

Although Mr. Humphries teaches at Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts and is excited by the "hungry" attitude of young students, he acknowledges that the shortage of clubs has taken a toll on the musicians trying to make a living.

It's much harder these days to be a professional gigger, going five nights a week from club to club. Musicians supplement their income with teaching, session work and private gigs. When you play an affair, though, he says, "you have to streamline your music. It's not like playing in a club and stretching out, because you're not the focus."

Mr. Poole and Mr. Ashby both agree that just because Pittsburgh jazz clubs have struggled doesn't mean it can't work. New York still has a lively jazz scene, of course, because it's New York, the population is huge and the musicians live there, so it's hard to compare with that. But there are success stories like Yoshi's in San Francisco and Blues Alley in Washington.

Food is a key

The Pittsburgh jazz clubs that had the longest runs, whether James Street in the '90s or the Shadyside Balcony in '80s, enjoyed an active restaurant business, like Yoshi's does, to help support the music. The Balcony had no cover charge, a top-notch kitchen and two owners running around with rags in their back pockets making sure the tables were cleared and cleaned.

Dowe's hasn't been able to pull off that trick of making food and music harmonize. A familiar knock on the venue is that the programming is repetitive and that the service has never been comparable to James Street or the Balcony. Dowe's is also faced with the cost of parking Downtown and a large capacity for jazz of 425, making it feel less intimate, and even more empty on a slow night.

Mr. Ashby says that the brave soul who would open a jazz club in Pittsburgh better realize that the saying "if you build it, they will come" does not apply in this case.

"The reason the Craftsmen's Guild is successful is the consumer experience," he says. "I know most if not all the subscribers on a first-name basis, as does my staff and [Chief Executive Officer] Bill Strickland. We create an environment that is unique and customized to the consumer.

"We started the first season with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Carmen McRae, and we haven't looked back. It's consistent quality, which worked well for the Balcony. They always had the top cats in town and periodically national acts. I'm convinced that the Pittsburgh market can take it if it's done at the level of quality you find at Blues Alley or Yoshi's."

Whether or not the musicians rallying to play at Dowe's tonight will help save the club, or whether exclusive jazz clubs can even fly in smaller markets like Pittsburgh, has more to do with the nature of the business than the music, according to Mr. Mergner.

"I don't think it reflects the end of jazz, that the jazz audience is withering and going away," he says.

Adds Mr. Ashby: "We know that the music resonates for people once they get in front of it."