Jazz clubs in the ‘70s, when the...

Jazz clubs in the ‘70s, when the Jazz Forum started, charged next to nothing for admission and met in service clubs. So people hooted when the Forum’s founders picked up their horns and aimed for the stars. Organizers of the new club were particularly jazzed about two revolutionary ideas: to charge enough to cover paying a professional group a decent sum for the gig, and to meet in hotel ballrooms.

Chuck Conklin, the club’s founder, chuckled as he recalled the scoffers’ sour prophecies: “They said, ‘We’ll give you three months, you’ll be out of business.’ ”

Jazz Forum’s first concert was June 16, 1977. Its 14th anniversary is today, when it meets at the Hacienda Hotel in El Segundo, at 525 N. Sepulveda Blvd.

About 25 or 30 musicians are expected for a two-hour jam session that starts at 1 p.m.

Things get more formal at 3 p.m., when the John Henderson Orchestra, with vocalist Leigh Downs, will play its first set. From 300 to 500 jazz fans, dancers and what Conklin calls “foot-stompers” usually attend the sessions, he said, which take place the third Sunday of each month. There is plenty of room for dancing, tables for nonsmokers and singles, and a no-host bar.

Yearly membership in the nonprofit Jazz Forum is $15. At each session, members pay $5, non-members $7; the afternoon is free for performing musicians.

Conklin explained how the jam sessions work. There is a sign-up register, and from this list, groups of six or eight players are formed. A lot of them are regulars, he said.

What if some kid with a tin ear shows up with his guitar?

“We give everybody a chance. If they don’t work out, we tell ‘em in a nice way they need a little more wood-shedding at home.”

A talented performer who wanders into a jam session at the Jazz Forum may walk out with a grant eventually. The club, which is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of jazz, gives a yearly scholarship.

Conklin is 59, lives in Encino, and is a sound technician (for the last several years he has recorded the dialogue for NBC-TV’s “Cheers”). He was the Jazz Forum’s first president and is its president again this year. He plays the trumpet, cornet and fluegelhorn, which he described as “something between a trumpet and a trombone.”

The instruments might have been hard to guess. But the moment he started talking about a 14-year-old with a clarinet who walked into a Jazz Forum jam session one Sunday and “broke the place up,” you knew that Conklin’s a musician himself: His voice had gotten a bit more mellow, a little higher, a little sweeter.