Columnist Jerry Fink: Jazz lounge caters to late-night Cellar-dwellers

Friday, May 4, 2001 | 9:02 a.m.

Jerry Fink's lounge column appears on Fridays. Reach him at 259-4058 or at jerry@lasvegassun.com.

At two in the morning the streets of Las Vegas are about as quiet as they ever get.

Most locals are asleep, their minds tuned out to the part of the city that continues to hum regardless of the hour.

But graveyard shift workers are awake, doing whatever they do. And those who have just gotten off swing are winding down -- some have gone home, others have gone shopping and a few have gone to the Cellar.

The Cellar Lounge is a small after-hours club almost lost between large stores in a retail center on West Sahara Avenue, east of Valley View Boulevard. As the name implies, it is below ground level -- partially.

Patrons take a couple of steps down and enter a world where, at just about midnight, the atmosphere turns hip, laid-back, cool and friendly.

Before the transitional hour, the Cellar is a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood, a place sought out by locals because of its "Cheers" quality and by people who have just gotten married, because the club has a back room that is rented out for wedding parties and rehearsals.

After that, midnight blues and jazz fans move into the Cellar, where four nights week they can sit till the sun rises while listening to musicians often heard at venues on the Strip two miles away.

On Thursday and Sunday nights Billy Ray Charles (considered by blues aficionados to be one of the top blues guitarists in the country) and bassist Tommy To (as in "tow") are drawing increasingly large numbers of blues patrons, many of them Strip musicians who drop by after their gigs are done and jam.

"I used to come here before it became a gig," To, a fixture on the Vegas music scene for nine years, said. "It's a real comfortable place."

To and Charles also play at the New York City Bar and Grill on Spring Mountain Road on Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays.

Charles, who has performed with groups such as the Temptations, has a blues album out, "I Can Dish It Out But I Can't Take It."

The blues combo trades off nights in the Cellar with guitarist Rico Portillo and his six-piece band, Newsic, a lively jazz group with a Latin flavor that plays Friday and Saturday.

"We do jazz, blues, samba, rock," Portillo said.

I caught the group one recent Friday night/Saturday morning when a fan (a stage hand who works on the Strip) grabbed a tambourine and joined in the gaiety.

Portillo, who plays at the Tres Jazz at the Paris Las Vegas on Thursday nights, likes the jams.

"Probably the best musicians I know come in here," he said. "It's the only after-hours jazz in town."

Portillo isn't a bad musician himself. He has been playing venues on the Strip for more than 14 years, opening for such notable entertainers as Ray Charles and James Brown.

The native of Mexico City adds to the international flavor of the Cellar. He is the son of an Italian father and Spanish mother.

Andre Kosma, the late-night bartender, was born in Hungary. Oscar Nunez, the evening bartender, is from Argentina.

"I came here in 1976 for a three-month show and stayed," Nunez said. "I was a gaucho dancer."

Gaucho dancing, the folk dance of Argentina, is a form of the tango. Nunez tangoed on the Strip for 13 years.

"There were four in the group," he said. "We were a speciality act."

His group, Las Pampas, danced at several venues, among them the Stardust, Riviera, Imperial Palace and the Flamingo.

When Nunez gave up dancing he became a card dealer and then a pit boss.

"I got out of that and drove a cab. Now I'm bartending," he said.

Nunez has tended bar in the Cellar for about a year and a half, since before it changed hands in November.

Russ Davies and Dave Smith are the new owners. Both own other bars, but neither with live music.

"This one's a little different kind of club for us, with the music," Davies said.

After-hours clubs have become scarce in a place billed as the city that never sleeps, a city where it used to be said that the late show began at 9 a.m.

Davies said he and his partner want to fill a void in the local entertainment scene with their live, after-hours jazz and blues, which is geared to a little older crowd that is more interested in good music than a rowdy atmosphere.

"It's something we need in Las Vegas."