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The Aragon Ballroom.
The very name conjures up images of historic Chicago.
Set hard along North Sheridan on West Lawrence Avenue five miles north of the Miracle Mile in Uptown, the Aragon Ballroom was built in 1926.
Why, you may rightly ask, does this have anything to do with mixed martial arts fighting?
Let me “hep you” as the “cats” of the day would have put it:
The Aragon is hosting The Bellator Fighting Championships on May 15, and we’ll be sending our crack staff to cover the event.
Yes, free youarenotapoet.com items will be in evidence for those lucky enough to be on hand, and our Mr. Hudson will be providing on-the-spot reporting for this, our journal of fighting on the web.
Designed to resemble a Spanish village and named for a Spanish province, the Aragon was an Art Deco architectural masterwork in it’s day and was an immediate success.
The Aragon hosted nearly all of the top names from the big band era in the 1940′s. Lawrence Welk, Sinatra, Dorsey, Cugat, Miller, Harry James, Benny Goodman, and yes, the magnificent Cab Calloway. All these titans of jazz, the music of my misspent youth, played The Aragon.
Torched in 1958 when a bar next door caught fire, the Aragon closed for a short stretch but reopened to much smaller crowds.
During the 1970s, the Aragon made a comeback hosting arena rock shows by acts like B. B. King, Jethro Tull and AC/DC.
In 1973, Latin music promoters Willy Miranda and Jose Palomar took over and revitalized the venue. In the late 90′s, Luis Rossi went in with Ivan and Mercedes Fernandez and now The Aragon is headed back to it’s former glory.
