El Mocambo
Toronto's El Mocambo Club at night
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| Location | 464 Spadina Avenue Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 2G8 |
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| Coordinates | 43°39′27″N 79°24′01″W / 43.657487°N 79.400177°WCoordinates: 43°39′27″N 79°24′01″W / 43.657487°N 79.400177°W |
| Owner | Michael Wekerle |
| Type | Nightclub |
| Capacity | 458 |
| Construction | |
| Built | 1910 |
| Opened | 1948 |
| Renovated | ca. 2001 |
| Website | |
| elmocambo.com | |
El Mocambo is a live music and entertainment venue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located on Spadina Avenue, just south of College Street, the bar has played an important role in the development of popular music in Toronto since the 1940s.
It is best known for the 1977 surprise show by The Rolling Stones, which became nationally notorious for the presence of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's wife, Margaret Trudeau (now Margaret Kemper), who was partying with the Stones.
Apocryphally, the original building at 462 Spadina had been a music venue since 1850 and was first used as a haven for escaped slaves. The current building was built in 1910 and housed a dry goods store, a barbershop, and restaurants in its first three decades. With the passage of the Liquor Licence Act of 1946, which allowed the sale of liquor in taverns and restaurants in the province for the first time since World War I, restaurateurs Joseph Brown and John Lang decided to apply for one of Toronto's first liquor licences and convert their property at 464 Spadina into one of the city's first cocktail bars. The establishment's name and iconic neon palm sign was inspired by a San Francisco nightclub. In the club's original incarnation, which officially opened in March 23, 1948, the main floor was converted into a dining hall with a dance floor on the second floor and featured Latin music. Live music was not permitted until July 1948 when the Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario reversed an earlier ban. In later configurations of the establishment musical acts appeared on separate stages located on the main and second floor of the building. By the 1960s, Adam Schuy owned the venue which, by then, featured music appealing to Toronto's Hungarian, Irish, and Portuguese communities. A German dance club, Deutsches Tanz Lokal, frequently rented the second floor during this period. By the time Schuy died in 1971, striptease was being featured on the main floor.
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