Isaac Tigrett

Who is Isaac Tigrett?

Isaac Burton Tigrett of Jackson, Tennessee is a businessman best known as the co-founder of Hard Rock Café and House of Blues.

Tigrett belonged to a well-to-do business family. He was raised in Tennessee until the age of fifteen. He is an alumnus of Centre College, which later gave him an honorary degree for promoting African American culture and racial harmony.

On June 14, 1971 he and Peter Morton started the first Hard Rock Café restaurant in London's fashionable Mayfair district. The restaurant combined rock music, memorabilia related to rock 'n' roll and American cuisine. The cafe-music-museum concept became very popular and soon the restaurant opened units in different parts of the globe. HRC was the first theme restaurant chain in the world. Tigrett bought Morton out, and took on the original Cafe in London along with rights to the name in most of the world including the U.S. states East of the Mississippi; Morton had rights to the name in states West of the Mississippi and in Israel, Colombia and Australia.

Eventually both sold their interests in HRC to the Rank Organisation.

In 1992, Tigrett started the House of Blues with partner Dan Aykroyd and designer James Cafarelli. Harvard University was an initial investor in the business and a prototype was opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon after Disney and Andrew Filipowski invested in the venture. Differences of opinion between Tigrett and the other HOB board members over operations resulted in Tigrett leaving the venture in 1998.