You knew it by the creaky floor before you knew it by the sign
If you ever stood in a 1914 house on Charlottetowne Avenue with a cheap beer in your hand and a blues band close enough to touch, you already know the Double Door Inn. It was small, it was loud in the right way, and the floorboards had soaked up so much spilled beer they practically had their own key. This was Charlotte's Home of the Blues, and for 43 years it was the room where the music actually happened.
Two brothers and an old house
Nick and Matt Karres opened the Double Door in 1973 in a house that had been standing since 1914. It was not built to be a legendary venue. It started as a neighborhood bar with a working fireplace and a lived-in feel, and that turned out to be the entire secret. In 1984 Matt sold his half to Nick, who then ran the place himself for the rest of its life. That one fact made the Double Door the oldest blues club in the country still operated by the person who opened it.
Small room, big names
The Double Door booked blues, country, jazz, rock, and zydeco with the same loyalty, and it never got too proud to stay intimate. The walls disappeared under posters. The chairs vanished under band stickers. Stevie Ray Vaughan played there four times between 1979 and 1982, back when you could still get close. Buddy Guy came through. So did Willie Dixon, J.J. Cale, Junior Walker, Levon Helm, and Steve Earle. The Avett Brothers played the room regularly in their early years, long before the arenas. The staff, people named Todd and Robin and Mike and Reed, ran it like family, and the crowd actually shut up and listened.
The night Clapton walked in
Here is the story every regular tells. On June 24, 1982, Eric Clapton walked into the Double Door with no announcement and sat in with the Legendary Blues Band. No press, no marquee, no warning. He just showed up in a little house on Charlottetowne and played, and the people lucky enough to be there that night got to keep it forever. That is what the Double Door was. A place where the impossible occasionally showed up at the door and ordered a drink.
Gone in the name of progress
The city grew, the land got expensive, and the parking dried up. Nick Karres sold to next-door Central Piedmont Community College in 2016. He was 67 and ready to spend time with his granddaughter, and he put it plainly: "If they want you, they're gonna get you." The last show was January 2, 2017. Then the 1914 house came down and the college's expansion swallowed the spot. Forty-three years of music, and what stands there now is campus concrete. A group of filmmakers scrambled to save the story, and fans petitioned for a marker, because a stretch of pavement is a lousy grave for a room like that.
Where were you when it closed?
Some places you miss because of the building. This one you miss because of the nights. The Double Door Inn is gone, but the floor still creaks somewhere in the memory of everybody who stood on it. Charlotte lost the room. We kept the shirt.