Colored Musicians' Club

Hosts big-band concerts on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights, as well as Sunday afternoons followed by a legendary open jam session in the evening.

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Address: 145 Broadway
Getting there: Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square
Website: coloredmusiciansclub.org (opens in a new tab)

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Listing from Wikivoyage: Buffalo, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Updated 28 Sept 2026. Something wrong? Tell us.

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Colored Musicians' Club
Located on Broadway just outside downtown, this former home of American Federation of Musicians Local 533 (and, before that, the Charlie Zifle Shoe Store) has done double-duty as a renowned jazz club since not much later than the union chapter's foundation in 1918, made necessary when Local 43 voted to bar local African-American musicians from membership. With jazz music all the rage among the black community at the time, the union's second-floor performance space became the place to see informal jam sessions by members of local ragtime and jazz bands after their workday was finished, or on Sundays, to see them rehearse in the practice space the union provided free to its members. Soon enough, it was a venue in its own right, playing host to world-famous luminaries like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton, and more. The tradition continues: the Colored Musicians' Club hosts big-band concerts on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, as well as Sunday afternoons followed by a legendary open jam session in the evening. And if you're interested in the club's storied history, there's also an attached museum where you can learn all you've ever wanted to know about Buffalo's jazz scene of yesterday and today.
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Colored Musicians' Club Museum
Easily the most storied jazz club in the city, founded in 1918. The club continues to function as a venue for live jazz, but it also contains a museum with a range of artifacts and exhibits that detail the history of the club and of jazz music in Buffalo.
Wed-Sat 11AM-4PM or by appointment$10; discounted tickets for children, senior citizens, teachers, and active military
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WUFO 1080 AM/96.5 FM
Yet another component of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor, Western New York's only black-owned radio station has a history that dates back to 1948 and has served over the years as a launch pad for some of America's foremost African-American radio personalities — Frankie Crocker, Gary Byrd, and Jerry Bledsoe are only a few — not to mention the locally legendary George "Hound Dog" Lorenz, who was the first to play what was then known as "race music" on the Buffalo airwaves. Free studio tours, available by appointment, regale visitors with more of this history as well as taking them behind the scenes to see how a radio station operates.
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Michigan Street Baptist Church
Though it no longer plays host to regularly scheduled services, the importance of the Michigan Street Baptist Church to the history of Buffalo's African-American community cannot be overstated: it's the oldest continuously black-owned property in Buffalo, in the years immediately prior to the Civil War it was notorious as a "station" on the Underground Railroad by which escaped black slaves from the South were spirited away to freedom in Canada, and it retains its prominence as the centerpiece of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor. Historical tours are offered by appointment.
$5