The room is dimly candlelit and 20-something couples sit with their heads together beside 50-somethings sipping cold beer from tall, frosty glasses as they listen to the sultry jazz music in this place that's no bigger than someone's living room.
Onstage, Bob Parham, dressed in all white with his gray hair pulled back into an elegant ponytail, sits at the keyboard. His friend of 30 years, Paul LeCompt, is playing bass, and Ted Godfrey, a beatific smile on his face, is on drums.
Walter Jaka, widely revered here because he's 90 and has a heck of a set of lungs, casually pulls up a chair in the back and chimes in, his pink cheeks puffed out as he blows his golden trumpet. Bill Ross, who learned to play the sax while in China during his Navy days, listens closely and leans in to pick up the melody.
It's not New York. Or Chicago. Or New Orleans.
It's the jazz scene in South Jersey. And Parham's club, Serengeti, at 4901 Chapel Ave. in Pennsauken, is its nucleus.
Parham, a software designer by day, started the club in 1992, and it's become home to people in South Jersey who love to listen or who love to come out on a summer night like this one, instruments in tow, to trade musical riffs with Parham.
``It was kind of a dream,'' Parham said. ``I always wanted my own jazz club.''
Parham, 70, of Willingboro, who used to help planes land as an air-traffic controller with the Federal Aviation Administration, didn't start playing the piano seriously until he was about 40 years old. He picked it up from his father, who used to play at saloons.
In the '50s and '60s, Parham followed the Philadelphia jazz scene. ``Coltrane was there, Miles, Bird . . . '' he said. ``I grew up listening. I listened to Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, and Duke Ellington and Count Basie.''
His place, in a 130-year-old building, is at the crossroads of Pennsauken, Merchantville and Cherry Hill. It used to be a stagecoach stop, but the horse trough outside has since been replaced with tables bearing white tablecloths and stained-glass windows designed by his daughter Mary. She's also responsible for the food the kitchen turns out, like the wings - your choice of spicy hot, golden fried or garlic.
Last weekend, Parham was sitting at Serengeti Cafe & Jazz Club and talking about jazz greats in the area.
``South Jersey has some great musicians. Camden has turned out five or six nationally known jazz musicians - Buster Williams, Richard Holmes and Bobby Durham from Palmyra,'' he ticked off.
