The history of the night club with an unbelievable story: The Bottom Line.
Allan Pepper's career as a music entrepreneur began in his early 20s when, in 1965, he and childhood friend Stanley Snadowsky founded a non-profit devoted to expanding awareness of jazz's contributions to American culture. Thus began a partnership that by 1974 found the two young promoters realizing a lifelong dream by opening their own nightclub, The Bottom Line. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, their 400 seat cabaret would forever change the face of live music in New York City. Over its thirty year existence, more than three million music fans witnessed often career-defining performances by an unparalleled roster of iconic and up-and-coming artists from all points of the musical compass. Along the way, Pepper and Snadowsky also produced such original shows as Leader of the Pack, which would go on to Broadway and help pioneer the "jukebox musical," as well as the nationally touring songwriter's series, In Their Own Words. While they took an amazing journey together, even more impressively the two remained best friends until Snadowsky's death in 2013. Allan Pepper lives in Englewood, New Jersey.
Billy Altman is a Grammy-nominated journalist, critic, and historian whose work covering the worlds of music, popular culture and sports has appeared over the years in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, GQ, People, Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice. A former senior editor of Creem magazine, he was a founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a consultant to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and most recently he served as chief scriptwriter for both the National Blues Museum in St. Louis and the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville. A recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, he is a longstanding faculty member of the Humanities Department at New York City's School of Visual Arts, where he teaches courses in rock, jazz and folk music as well as non-fiction writing. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley region of Westchester County, New York.
Peter Cunningham is a professional photographer who loves the work he is privileged to be doing. His teachers include Baptist fisherman Lester Tate, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Zen Master Bernie Glassman and singer-songwriter Janis Ian. Peter has exhibited his photographs and films in New York, Krakow, London, Paris, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Kigali, Nanjing, Beijing, Berlin and Grand Manan, Canada. His clients include singers, teachers, chefs, playwrights, athletes, accountants, actors, fishermen and clowns. He has taught "Photography as Zen Practice" in China, and is co-author with Peter Matthiessen of "Are We There Yet? A Zen Journey through Space and Time." Peter's first paid job was to make Bruce Springsteen's Columbia Records pictures in 1973, he joined the staff of The Bottom Line in 1974, and in 1982 made Madonna's first publicity pictures. He is currently working on books about sculpture, children, history, values, language, and juxtaposition.
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