Back in the heyday of disco, singer-songwriter-actor Paul Anka, a regular Las Vegas headliner, opened a nightclub called Jubilation on Harmon Avenue, between Koval Lane and the Strip.
One of Las Vegas' first real dance clubs, along with The Brewery on Paradise (back in the day when day when Anthony Curtis was new to town and working as a bouncer), Jubilation was named ironically for Anka's earlier hit of the same name and quickly became one of the places to hang out when it debuted in 1978, filling the void left by the torching of Le Cafe, a gay club that was popular with celebrities but apparently deliberately torched earlier that year, according to an article we came across in a vintage edition of Billboard magazine from the time that was examining the shift in the Vegas nightlife scene. At 10,000 square feet, the restaurant and club cost $3 million to build and claimed at the time to be the largest disco in the world. Frommer's described it as "Las Vegas’s answer to Studio 54." According to the Billboard piece, it was managed by Anka's father and business partner Andy (see p. 46).
Jubilation was also said to be the first club to use metal detectors to search for weapons on patrons as they entered and was the scene of an infamous showdown between notorious mobster Tony "the Ant" Spilotro and Jimmy Chagra, the marijuana importer from El Paso who was among the highest of high rollers (doubtless in more ways than one) of his day, and socialized with the likes of Liza Minelli and "Broadway Joe" Namath. Apparently, Spiltro objected when he found Chagra and his entourage occupying his booth, and some choice words were exchanged, before the out-gunned Spilotro stormed out. Neither man apparently knew who the other was until Chagra was summoned to the office of then defense attorney Oscar Goodman, who explained that he represented them both and suggested that it would be in their better interests to get along rather than declare war on one another, since neither needed the additional heat.
Sometime down the line, according to former Las Vegas Sun columnist Jack Sheehan, the pair would meet again, in the same booth at the same club, when Spilotro wanted to muscle in on Chagra's business. To the latter's good fortune, the notorious Chicago enforcer famously met his end in that Indiana cornfield before Chagra had to deal with the fact that he didn't want or need a partner, especially not one of the sociopathic variety that Spilotro was notorious for being. Chagra was finally indicted by the Feds and spent more than two decades in various penitentiaries, but unlike his former nemesis, lived to look back and reflect on those Wild West days: "Las Vegas was crazy back then. But man, was it fun," he was quoted as saying in the 2008 article by Sheehan that relates his encounter with Spilotro. "When you had a trunk full of cash, there was no better place on earth to be. They treated us like gods."
As the disco era transitioned into the rock scene of the '80s, the old clubs had to reinvent themselves and in 1987 Jubilation reopened as The Shark Club, a venue named for UNLV's Running Rebels basketball coach Jerry "Tark the Shark" Tarkanian that played host to the likes of No Doubt and The Gin Blossoms. It closed a decade later, a victim of the next musical transition as the rave scene took over. We've been unable to locate the precise street address for the club, but we think the site today is either occupied by MGM Grand's Signature, or else it's an apartment complex (if it was further east than that from the Strip.)
