Draft:Leo's Casino

Leo's Casino was a bar and a jazz room in Cleveland, Ohio founded by partners Leo Frank and Jules Berger. The club could host 700 people and regularly booked the top jazz and R&B acts of its era.

History

In 1963 Leo Frank and Jules Berger opened Leo’s Casino in the lounge of the Old Quad Hall located at 7500 Euclid Avenue.. Frank was already used to this business as he was responsible for a theater in the Navy that featured artists like Bob Hope, Harry James, and others. Leo’s first club burned down in 1962 causing him to open the casino where admission was $2. At first, the club was jazz but R&B acts took over which included artists like Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Ray Charles. Artists such as Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin were also able to get their careers where they performed at Leo’s. The club also featured comedians such as Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson, and Redd Foxx. Leo’s Casino would become one of Clevelands’ most racially integrated night spots in Cleveland. To the point where Dick Gregory called it, “the most fully integrated nightclub in America.” But Leo’s intentions were never for social justice but simply to make money. Bigger Venus would start to offer more money to performers causing the decline of the club among other factors leading them to close the doors in 1972 and be torn down..The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dedicated it as a historical landmark on June 24, 1999, and now a plague stands there..Two weeks later Leo died of respiratory failure and pneumonia.