PRINTRichard King: The man behind the scenes
Owner, The Blue Note and Mojo's
John Schreiber
Richard King is the owner of The Blue Note and Mojo's.
November 12, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
55 | 37 years in Columbia
Richard King was in a hot air balloon when it started to lose altitude. King says he wasn’t scared. Being in a rapidly decreasing hot air balloon was nothing compared to dancing the rumba and salsa on stage at the Missouri Dancing with the Stars charity event. For a man who has been putting musical acts in front of multitudes of Columbians for 29 years, his scariest moment is not what you’d expect.
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In 1975, King left his hometown of Scranton, Penn. headed for California. He didn’t intend for his detour to visit a friend in Columbia to last 37 years. But during his stay, he found a group of people who shared his love of live music, and he decided to stick around. When King first moved to Columbia he worked as a manager at the Heidelberg for a couple of months before an opportunity presented itself. In the late ’70s, the owner of Brief Encounter, a nightclub located on Business Loop 70, wanted out of the entertainment business, and King and a friend wanted in.
With confidence and financial backing from family and friends, the duo bought Brief Encounter and reopened it as The Blue Note in 1980. There was no business plan to present to bankers, they just knew they wanted to own their own club. “We had nothing written down; it was all in our heads,” King says.
At the beginning of his music career, King was filled with confidence. “We thought we’d be millionaires,” King says. “We thought we were smarter than everyone else. We did what we wanted to do. We didn’t care what people thought.”
The early bookings at The Blue Note reflected the founders’ musical interests in The Beach Boys, Motown and The Beatles and showcased unknown and alternative acts. “It wasn’t about putting money in your pocket,” King says of booking unknown bands.
Once a Grateful Dead cover band begged King to give the band stage time. King hesitated and gave the band the worst night of the week during finals in December. The line for the show flooded out the door. That experience led to a revelation: “I should not be the arbiter of what people want to hear,” King says. He now thinks The Blue Note shouldn’t have unknowns or even one genre seven nights a week.
The once carefree King has now become more safety-conscious about the venue. King has grown from a self-focused start-up who booked only music he liked to a man aware of his community. “If I learned one thing, if you don’t have good local support from the fan base and the music base,” he says, “you’re apt to fall flat on your face.”
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Thanks for nearly three decades of great music!
Posted by D.S. Portell on Nov 13, 2009 at 4:11 p.m. (Report Comment)