Austin: Kenny Dorham’s Backyard

Kenny Dorham’s Backyard is an outdoor music venue on East 11th Street in Austin, named for the jazz trumpeter who grew up in this neighborhood and attended Anderson High School just blocks away. The lot sits next to the Victory Grill — the storied East Austin club where touring Black musicians played during the segregation era — and is operated by Harold McMillan’s DiverseArts Culture Works. It sits in the heart of the African American Cultural Heritage District, a designation that McMillan himself helped establish in 2007.

The programming honors the music tradition once anchored along East 11th Street: jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. Picnic tables fill a grassy lot, food trucks line the perimeter, and a stage in the far corner faces the street. Kids 12 and under get in free to all events.

Blue Monday and the Bebop Legacy

The venue’s signature event is the Blue Monday Blues Jam — a weekly gathering every Monday from 7 to 10 PM where musicians come to play informally, listen, and dance. It has run for over a decade. Larger festivals hosted here include the Austin Jazz and Arts Fest, the East End Summer Music Series, SoulFest, and the Backyard Blues Series.

Kenny Dorham was born in Fairfield, Texas in 1924, grew up in East Austin, and went on to replace Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker Quintet, co-found the Jazz Messengers, and write “Blue Bossa” — one of the most recorded jazz standards of the twentieth century. He never returned to live in Austin, but his last Austin residence was just down the street from this lot. The backyard named for him keeps that legacy in the open air where it belongs. More on the East Austin tradition at the Texas Music Museum.