Get to know

Leo’s Music Theater


NEXT BIG SHOW

Cleveland, Ohio

06

OCTOBER 2024

4:00 PM

The band

OUR GOAL

To preserve and share the Leo’s Music Theater.

OUR VISION

To be a preeminent cultural icon that enriches lives.

The World Class Leo’s Music Theater is one of Cleveland’s premiere venues for live entertainment. Leo’s Music Theater, a 1,000-seat theater, hosts more than 100 performances a year, ranging from Broadway to rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, rock, comedy, and movies. In addition to our ​theater, our spectacular ballrooms have hosted everything from Sweet 16s to weddings and corporate events.

OUR MISSION

The band

Leo’s Music Theater

To honor the legacy of Leo’s Casino and its founders, Leo Frank and Jules Berger. Leo’s Casino was one of the greatest black-and-tan music venues in the 1960's. It was located at 7500 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, and saw the likes of Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Jackie Wilson, Dionne Warwick, and The Motown Revue all perform at Leo's Casino, as did comedians Richard Pryor and Flip Wilson. Otis Redding played his final concert there on December 9, 1967, before dying in a plane crash in Wisconsin the following afternoon.

Co-owner Leo Frank opened his first club, Leo's, in 1952 at East 49th Street and Central Avenue. Leo's attracted the nation's leading jazz and R&B acts but burned down in 1962, leading to the opening of Leo's Casino the following year. The new club, which quickly established itself as a key stop for touring Motown artists, was one of the most racially integrated nightlife spots in Cleveland. In July 1966, The Supremes played to a packed house of blacks and whites at Leo's, not long after the Hough Uprising broke out mere blocks away from the club. 

Eventually, bigger venues offering bigger paydays began to lure the most popular performers away from Leo's Casino. Continued population decline and disinvestment in Cleveland's east side after the Hough Uprising further hurt the club's fortunes. Leo's Casino closed in 1972 and was later torn down. In 1999, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it a historic landmark, placing a plaque on the site where Leo's Casino once stood.