Café Society: The Wrong Place For The Right People (review)

In the postlude of Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People, Art D'Lugoff, owner of the Village Gate, offers a tribute to Barney Josephson at his 1988 memorial service: I think Barney and his story should be made into a movie … I think Café Society should be the story that is told about our century" (338). Josephson's career as a nightclub impresario—which is the subject of this book—spanned from 1938-1984 and indeed featured the kind of dramatic contours that make great movies.

Josephson opened his first nightclub, Café Society, in Greenwich Village in 1938 and the swankier Uptown branch shortly thereafter. It was the first club in which complete integration—both onstage and off—was official policy. Black and white cultural figures, politicians, celebrities, jazz fans and the simply curious flocked to both locations to see a legendary roster of artists. Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Frankie Newton were among the numerous, great jazz, blues, and gospel musicians who performed there along with equally talented comics and dancers. Because of this talent and Josephson's forward-looking policies, the club went down in jazz history and in the history of American race relations.

When his communist brother Leon found himself on the House Committee on Un-American Activities blacklist, Barney and those associated with his clubs were fingered as well. Josephson was forced out of the business by McCarthy but returned in the 1950s with his Cookery restaurants. The location in the Village spearheaded a jazz and blues renaissance by providing a venue for classic performers like Mary Lou Williams, Alberta Hunter, Ruth Brown, and Marion McPartland.

Josephson was indeed an innovative and savvy businessman. He ran celebrated, successful clubs though the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and McCarthyism while contributing to the careers of countless artists. Café Society, part posthumous personal memoir and part cultural history, will be of value to students and scholars of U.S. jazz, and of American cultural and political history. Josephson's widow, Terry Trilling-Josephson captures his story by piecing together passages from his notes and tapes along with well-researched primary and secondary sources (press clippings, oral histories, letters, photographs, etc). The personal narrative she creates is richly augmented and highly entertaining if at times off-balance. Josephson too often comes off as larger than life—he "discovers" the talent, he teaches the talent how to dress, how to walk, how to sing and perform, his politics and morals are beyond reproach. This unidimensional treatment of Josephson's professional approach insults the agency and talent of featured artists. The narrative can miss the point about what made Café Society and even the Cookery so historically significant and special: the art and the artists—especially the music and the musicians—with their overlapping but varied political and aesthetic motivations not only reflected the cultural currents of their time but shaped them as well. The Café Society "movie" would not be a biopic, but would instead be driven by a talented and outspoken ensemble cast.