AprilCadence2013

Book Look
The Wrong place for the right people – that was how the jazz/cabaret nightclub
café society was billed. Yet the club, which operated in downtown new York
between 1938 and 1949, could equally well have been tagged The right place for
the left people – politically left, that is.
as could café society uptown, which was run on the same lofty principles,
encouraging black patrons to attend shows on an equal footing to whites. These
venerable institutions were founded by a socialist jew, Barney josephson, in
defiance of the racist line current in the united states before blacks won their
struggle for civil rights.
josephson died in 1988, so the publication of a new book, café society, that
recounts the fascinating story of his life and his clubs, an autobiography written in
collaboration with his wife Terry Trilling-josephson, is a welcome and long overdue
development. and an opportunity for me, citing also other sources, to pay him
tribute.
The original café society opened it doors in december 1938 in a basement at 2
sheridan square, Greenwich village in downtown manhattan. josephson “wanted a
club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together
out front. There wasn’t, so far as i know, a place like it in new York or in the whole
country”.
at the cotton club in harlem, for instance, famously associated with such black
american artists as duke ellington and cab calloway, racial mixing in the audience
was frowned upon. a black celebrity might be permitted to view a show from an
obscure table, but the club’s core patrons were whites on “slumming” excursions
uptown.
similarly, the midtown jazz clubs clustered in 52nd street regularly featured top
black musicians, but as dan morgenstern, director of the institute of jazz studies
at rutgers university, told me: “most of the clubs would not refuse black people
coming in, but they would certainly not be particularly excited about it or interested
in encouraging them. café society wanted black people to come and wanted
an integrated audience. everybody was welcome, they made sure that that was
understood. That was the difference.”
109 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013
Café Society: The Wrong
Place for the Right People, by
Barney Josephson with Terry
Trilling-Josephson