Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is one of the hottest locations in London and has been for decades now. Although jazz isn't necessarily the most popular music, especially true in London where electronic clubs and the young crowd rule the roost, the 1950s nostalgia still draws in a healthy crowd, and anybody who's anybody in the world of jazz has played a spot at the now famous club. Opened in 1959, Ronnie Scott's is pushing past half a century and is still going strong.

When a young Ronnie was only 20, he took a trip to New York - the height of the world's jazz scene in the late 40s. Scott was a respected saxophonist in his own right, but he blended in with the crowd in New York's plethora of middling jazz musicians.

However, the trip was well worth it to Ronnie, who, because he lived in England, had virtually no chance of ever seeing any of the legends in person that he did while in New York. After Scott's two-week stay in the Big Apple, he headed back to London with aspirations of opening his own jazz club.

At 32 years of age, Scott hooked up with this friend Pete King, a fellow tenor saxophonist, and set up shop at 39 Gerrard Street in Soho. The idea wasn't necessarily to become England's most well-respected jazz club, but more of a place that jazz musicians could enter and play without hassle.

Since American musicians were banned from the country, and jazz was considered to be decidedly American, things were rough for the club at first - but business picked up after the ban was lifted. In 1961, Ronnie Scott's was the first club to give American jazz musicians a platform to play their music.

Soon Ronnie Scott's was pulling in the big-name musicians and the already-small venue seemed to be shrinking ever more. In 1965, Scott and Pete King relocated to 47 Frith Street. Even though a loan had to be taken in order to make some much-needed decorating improvements, the business had grown exponentially by 1968 and had to be enlarged by merging with the building next to it.

The new and improved Ronnie Scott's featured both an upstairs and downstairs, and also a larger stage and a larger seating area. The new club stayed open and thrived until years after the death of Ronnie Scott. In 2005, after stretching it out for nine years, King sold the club to Sally Greene, who then named him as lifetime honorary president.

After a long and pricy renovation, the club reopened in June of 2006. There was an immediate impact on business, with the biggest jazz musicians in the country lining up to be booked. Today, the club is more popular than ever, and you can always find the biggest names in jazz playing within the walls. Ronnie Scott's is London's first legitimate jazz bar, and after it's all said and done, it might very well be the last.