289 Hudson Street, 1974. The Half Note Club was one of the premier places to hear jazz in the 1960s, and at least a half-dozen records were “live from the Half Note.” John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, Billie Holiday, and Judy Garland all performed here before it became a topless bar in 1974. It’s now a deli.

With the Grammy Awards back in New York, we began thinking about all the places here that are important to the history of music. From the days when jazz musicians dubbed New York “the Big Apple,” the City has been the place to make it big. A lot of the most famous music venues have been lost over the years to development and changing tastes, but many more always pop up, seemingly weekly in Brooklyn and Queens.