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Listen Now to WYEP’s Pittsburgh Performance Project audio profile of The Hurricane


The Hurricane


Hurricane Female Vocalist
Female vocalist on stage at the Hurricane.
Photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris.
Photo courtesy of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Reprinted with permission.

"All the organ players at the time came through there -- Jimmy Smith, Johnny Hammond Smith, Wild Bill Davis, Timmy McGriff. People would be crowded in this little club and it was a swinging little club. And everybody just had a ball there." – Pittsburgh jazz musician Kenny Fisher

The Hurricane opened its doors in 1954 on Centre Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District. Intimate and charming, The Hurricane was often packed with upscale patrons enjoying the venue’s elevated stage and tropical decor.

Hurricane Club Map

Under the ownership of the beautiful and tough Birdie Dunlap and her husband Shine, The Hurricane quickly became regarded as one of the country’s best jazz clubs, bringing in some of the era's greatest jazz organists such as Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond Smith. Ramsey Lewis and Sarah Vaughn were among other notable performers.

Born during the height of the Hill District, The Hurricane also saw the neighborhood’s gradual decline. The federal government approved a Lower Hill Redevelopment plan in 1955 that displaced over 8,000 residents, mostly African American, for the construction of Civic Arena. Neighborhood discontent deepened and boiled over on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated, when The Hill erupted in riots that destroyed much of the neighborhood. Battered and divided, the area never regained its former glory, and a number of businesses, including The Hurricane in 1970, closed for good.