It started with handwritten original big band music and a love of jazz.
Sara Vaas went home to Ohio in 2021 and came back with a handful of compositions by her grandfather, a jazz musician who played saxophone, clarinet and flute and was a band director. He toured from 1949 to 1951 and even played at The Broadmoor.
Vaas, who was booking bands to play concerts that summer at Bancroft Park in Old Colorado City, reached out to the Springs Contemporary Jazz Big Band and asked it to perform her grandfather’s music. As she watched the band dance through his old tunes that summer day, she was inspired to channel her passions for jazz and building community into something bigger — Dizzy Charlie’s jazz pop-ups.
“My grandpa died when I was in fifth grade. My grandma is 94,” Vaas said. “One song was their song, and I recorded that and sent it to her. All my friends were there. It was beautiful. It was community.”
After her defining moment in Bancroft Park, she did six months of business classes to figure out how to start a jazz club. But her background in nonprofits pushed her in a different direction. She launched Dizzy Charlie’s, a business booking and promoting jazz in different venues, about 18 months ago. Her first show happened at Summa, a restaurant and bar on the west side.
Named after her grandfather, David Charles, the weekly and mostly free jazz concerts pop up at about five to 10 venues throughout town, including The Mining Exchange Hotel, Manhattan Room Tapas Kitchen and Blackhat Distillery. She booked more than 300 shows this year with 75 bands, mostly from Colorado Springs, along with a few from Boulder, Fort Collins and Denver.
Though Vaas isn’t a musician, she’s well-versed in the music world, thanks to her grandfather and also her jazz musician parents — her dad plays trombone and her mom plays piano. She grew up loving jazz and wants to make it more approachable and comfortable.
Dizzy Charlie’s slogan, “Everybody is welcome,” is a nod to the history-making Fannie Mae Duncan, a Black entrepreneur who started The Cotton Club, a jazz joint in the Springs in the 1950s, and used the slogan as a way to welcome all patrons, regardless of their skin color.
“We don’t have a jazz club anymore,” Vaas said. “Jazz has been harder to find. I’m trying to bring it out to make it cool again. A lot of people have an idea of what they think jazz is. Maybe the perception is it’s quiet background elevator music for older people and it’s fancy. I’m trying to show it’s for everybody. I call it dirty jazz. You don’t have to dress up for it.”
