Todd Barkan took over Keystone Korner in 1972 — the club had opened in 1970 under Freddie Herrera as a rock venue — and transformed it into a jazz room with a commitment to presenting the best jazz available, regardless of commercial viability. The club became known for booking artists at the peak of their creative powers but whose music did not fit the pop mainstream. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers recorded there repeatedly. McCoy Tyner's performances became benchmark recordings of post-Coltrane piano jazz. The room's acoustics and intimate size created a connection between performers and audience that translated onto tape with remarkable fidelity.

Many live recordings made at Keystone Korner have become essential documents of jazz in the 1970s and early 1980s. The club's contribution to recorded jazz is comparable to that of the Village Vanguard in New York -- a venue whose name on an album cover guaranteed a certain quality of performance and sound. The informality of a live club performance -- the spontaneous interactions, the extended improvisations, the energy between stage and room -- gave these recordings a vitality that studio sessions could not replicate.

Keystone Korner closed in 1983, a victim of the economics that have always made jazz clubs precarious businesses. The rent was high, the audiences were devoted but finite, and the music Barkan booked was art, not commerce. The club's closure left a hole in San Francisco's jazz landscape that has never been fully filled. But the recordings remain -- and in jazz, recordings are the primary way that performances survive their moment. Every time someone plays a Keystone Korner live album, the club comes back to life for the duration of the set.