HG recently did a post on the good and bad sides of Cedar Bar the legendary hangout of abstract expressionist artists and their hangers on. Its location was University Place in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. A meandering torrent of HG memories ensued. Let’s start with an omelette and burger joint, Cookery, on the corner of 8th and University Place. Food was adequate but secondary. Its renown was based on live jazz. Mary Lou Williams and Alberta Hunter were two of the club’s star performers. Opened in the 50’s and had an almost 30-year run. The owner was a Village legend, the elegant and courtly Barney Josephson. A remarkable guy, Barney was a race relations pioneer. In 1940, he opened a night club — Cafe Society Downtown — in a basement on Sheridan Square. First totally racially integrated — performers and audience — night club in New York and perhaps in the United States. Even the great Harlem clubs of the 20’s — the Cotton Club, etc. — were “whites only.” Yes, a few African-American were seated, but in obscure, hidden locations. Barney changed all that. With the legendary John Hammond acting as talent scout, Barney booked great jazz artists like Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughan and fledgling stars like Lena Horne. He is also credited for starting the vogue for folk music in Greenwich Village by presenting Josh White. It wasn’t all music. There were laughs. Zero Mostel was the Master of Ceremonies and Imogene Coca and Carol Channing performed there. The club’s press agent, Ivan Black (more on him later), gave Mostel his odd first name: “Because he came from nothing.” A Bronx school teacher, Abel Meeropol (more on him later), approached Barney with a song he had written, Strange Fruit, a passionate, wrenching protest against the lynching of African-Americans. Billie Holliday sang the song and it was a smash. Barney had special rules for the song. It would end her set and there would be no encore. The club would go silent and there would be no service when it was sung. No lights but a baby spot on Holliday’s face. HG was too young for Cafe Society Downtown but heard Billie sing it at the Onyx Club on W. 52nd Street. Same presentation. Devastating. With the success of Cafe Society Downtown, Barney opened Cafe Society Uptown on E. 58th. Both clubs flourished. Then, disaster. Barney’s brother, Leon, was the lawyer for both clubs. A radical leftist (Leon was briefly jailed in Denmark in 1935 for joining in an unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler), Leon was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the Red scare. Tough and defiant, Leon refused to testify and was cited for contempt. The Hearst newspapers and their columnists (Westbrook Pegler, Dorothy Kilgallen and Walter Winchell), declared war on
Josephson and the two clubs. Performers were cowed by threats their careers would end if they performed at “commie” clubs. People who patronized the clubs feared reprisals. By 1948 the clubs were gone. Barney was quiet for a while but soon got back in action by founding the Cookery chain. At one point there were five but Barney closed the other four so he could concentrate on the University Place location. The University Place Cookery closed in 1984 after reuniting Jospehson with many of the performers he had introduced at the original Cafe Society. In 1988 he died at 86.
