Greenwich Village loses a little bit of soul

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 22

Greenwich Village loses a little bit of soul

Arthur Spiegelman

of Reuters (through NZPA) New York Greenwich Village has gained yet another eating spot, but lost a bit of its soul — the smoky nightspot where jazz legends performed for 15 years. “The Cookery,” where old Joe Turner shouted he needed someone to love and where an even older Alberta Hunter sang of wanting “a two-fisted, double-jointed man,” has given way to a chicken-and-ribs joint called B-B-Q. Barney Josephson, aged 82, The Cookery’s owner who merits several pages in the history of jazz although he can’t play a note, decided it was time to stop the music. “After 30 years here, I got a little tired,” he said as workmen hauled out the piano and moved in zebrastriped chairs and black Formica tables. “I thought I’d take it a little easier.” He called in a friend to manage the restaurant and ended — only temporarily, he says — an era that began for him in the 19305, when he created America’s first racially integrated nightclub, “Cafe Society.” Mr Josephson, the son of Latvian Jewish immigrants, decreed that blacks and whites could both play music and watch it together. If whites objected, he threw them out.

“I wanted a place where Sinclair Lewis could sit down with Richard Wright and I got it,” he says. “It was an immediate success.”

An integrated club in segregated America was something that not even Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club dared. There the players were black and the audience white.

“The only way they’d let Duke Ellington’s mother in was if she was playing in the band,” Josephson recalls.

At Cafe Society, Joseph-

son became a star-maker. Billie Holiday, Hazel Scott, Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan became household names there. Miss Horne credited Mr Josephson with being the first to encourage her professional self-respect. Miss Holiday owed to Mr Josephson the song that made her famous — the anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit.” “The songwriter showed me the song about strange fruit growing on southern trees. I liked it and asked Billie,” Mr Josephson explains. “Billie said, ‘Whats you want me to do with it?, I said, “Sing it,” and she said, ‘lf you wants me to sing it, I sing it.’ She really talked that way,” he said. A “Life” magazine photographer snapped Miss Holiday at the exact moment she sang “Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh — then the sudden smell of burning flesh.” “Her face became contorted at those lines, as if her flesh was burning,” Mr Josephson says. “That picture became famous, that song became famous, Billie Holiday became famous.” Cafe Society began in Bohemian Greenwich Village and later branched out to Park Avenue, where the rich lived. Things went well until 1950, when Mr Josephson fell victim to a blacklist.

His brother was a prominent Communist held in contempt of Congress and Mr Josephson himself supported Left-wing causes. During the anti-Commun-ist fever of the late 1940 s and early 19505, he was blacklisted. Newspapers refused to review acts at Cafe Society and Mr Josephson was forced to sell up.

It was then that he opened The Cookery as a restaurant without music. Music arrived at The Cookery in 1969, when the pianist, Mary Lou Williams,

dropped by and asked Mr Josephson to let her play. “She needed the work then,” he says. “In the 19605, jazz was on the skids and so many greats had simply been forgotten.” Miss Williams was a huge success, and Mr Josephson — who had given up listening to jazz in the years he was blacklisted — combed his memory to seek out other acts.

“I called up Helen Humes in Louisville, Kentucky, and she gave up her job in a munitions factory to make a come-back.” The most famous of the many careers revived at The Cookery was that of the blues singer, Alberta Hunter. She was 82 years old when she made her comeback after not singing for decades. “I found out she was still alive, called her up and told her she started in 10 days,” he says. “She was an instant hit.”

Miss Hunter dominated The Cookery for six years until ill-health this year forced her to curtail her performances. Now Mr Josephson says

he plans to take his first holiday in six years. But he wants to start up a new club — a sort of new Cafe Society — away from Greenwich Village when he returns. “But I want a club I can afford and these days the rents are horrendous.”