Jerry Krantz, the longtime owner of landmark Denver jazz club El Chapultepec, died Tuesday morning. He was 77.

In its heyday, El Chapultepec welcomed music legends such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as visiting rock stars like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. Krantz’s insistence on free, live, straight-ahead jazz every night of the week helped the ‘Pec — as insiders affectionately call it — stand out on the corner of 20th and Market Streets.

Even President Bill Clinton played his tenor sax on stage there.

“I’ve had everyone in here but Jesus,” Krantz was once quoted as saying.

The club opened in 1933, the day after Prohibition was repealed and decades before Coors Field and historic preservation turned Lower Downtown into a haven for sports bars and trendy restaurants. Krantz began bartending at El Chapultepec in 1958 and inherited it a decade later from his father-in-law Tony Romano.

“He was there just about every night,” said musician Freddy Rodriguez, who met Krantz in 1979 and has been playing at El Chapultepec ever since. “He’d sit in the back all night every night. He never came and sat down front where the music was happening, but he knew what he wanted and he just loved the jazz community.”

Krantz’s love of jazz and hard-nosed approach to running the bar earned both a loyal audience and the respect of countless musicians — as well a national reputation rich in dive-bar lore. One story says Krantz won the bar in a poker game. Another tells of him knocking an unruly patron’s teeth out with a pool cue.

In piece for Esquire magazine, long-time Denver-based writer J.R. Moehringer called Krantz cranky and charismatic, a “full-blooded Russian” who didn’t take any guff from customers and handled his business brusquely and efficiently.

El Chapultepec “smells like New York, feels like New Orleans, and sounds like southside Chicago,” Moehringer wrote for the magazine.

“His big thing is that he always wanted it to be for everybody,” said Krantz’s daughter Anna Diaz. “At the time when he started it you’d get dressed up to go to the symphony, and there were people who had never even seen live music. So there was no cover charge, no dress code. The bums on the street were just as welcome to come and listen as the millionaires.”

“Jerry created something that ended up becoming this great institution,” said Andrew Hudson, a Denver PR veteran who played bass for years at El Chapultepec. “You walk in there and lined up against the walls are pictures of some of the country’s greatest jazz musicians. The history of jazz is spelled out on that wall.”

Krantz had suffered from diabetes, heart disease and a series of strokes in recent years. He is survived by his wife Alice; daughters Anna and Angela; and his son Ray. Plans for a public memorial service will be finalized this week.

John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com