The Sand Dollar Blues Room, a blues and gambling nightclub, on Spring Mountain Road has been featured in movies, television shows and documentaries. The Nightclub and Lounge is the oldest live music venue in the city outside any hotel or casino and offers live blues music nightly, along with gambling and house drink specialties.
The venue has been described as "genuine and authentic in a world of neon and plastic" and is a popular site for both locals and tourists that has hosted blues legends such as BB King, George Thorogood, and Jeff Healey. Celebrities often stop in to hear the live blues jams. Rock legend Ted Nugent recently performed an impromptu guitar duet with blues great Joe Bonamassa in front of a VH1 film crew. Billionaire founder of Electronic Arts Trip Hawkins hosted a bachelor party there. Pop star Taylor Dayne is among its recent guests, where she asked to perform a song for the crowd.
The club originally opened in 1976 as an ocean-themed restaurant in a small office complex about a mile from the Strip. The venue evolved into a popular blues scene receiving numerous awards, including a "Five Star" rating from Las Vegas Today magazine, the Review Journals' "Best of Las Vegas", and two years in a row, 2006 and 2007, AOL Cityguide' "Best Live Music", beating out the Hard Rock's Joint and the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
The club has been the subject of articles in Playboy magazine and featured in shows on the Discovery Channel, The Travel Channel and VH1. America Online chose the Sand Dollar as one of the 10 Best Bars in the country. It also has been listed in the AOL city guide's best of.
The Sand Dollar has been under new ownership since Jan 1, 2010.
Famous quotes containing the words sand, dollar, blues and/or room:
“No more sand art, no sand book, no masters.”
—Paul Celan [Paul Antschel] (1920–1970)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.”
—James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)
“It so happened that, a few weeks later, “Old Ernie” [Ernest Hemingway] himself was using my room in New York as a hide-out from literary columnists and reporters during one of his rare stopover visits between Africa and Key West. On such all-too-rare occasions he lends an air of virility to my dainty apartment which I miss sorely after he has gone and all the furniture has been repaired.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)