Paper: New York Times, The (NY)
Deceased: Barney Josephson, Owner of Cafe Society Jazz Club, Is Dead at 86
Date: September 30, 1988
Barney Josephson, who brought down racial barriers as the owner of the legendary Cafe Society and who brought recognition to Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Alberta Hunter and other jazz singers and musicians during nearly half a century of showmanship, died of gastrointestinal bleeding yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was 86 years old.
When Mr. Josephson opened Cafe Society in a basement room at 2 Sheridan Square in December 1938, he changed a longstanding custom in American nightclubs.
"I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front," he once said. "There wasn't, so far as I know, a place like it in New York or in the whole country."Incubators of Talent
Although from the earliest days of jazz, black musicians played for white audiences, few nightclubs permitted blacks and whites to mix in the audience. Even the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway made their names, was a segregated place, admitting only an occasional black celebrity to sit at an obscure table. In 1938, Mr. Josephson's Cafe Society was the first nightclub in a white neighborhood to welcome customers of all races.
For the next decade, Cafe Society and Cafe Society Uptown, which he opened two years later on East 58th Street, were consistent incubators of talent, producing a long list of singers, comedians, jazz musicians and dancers who came to prominence there.
They included Billie Holiday, who sang in Cafe Society's opening show in 1938 and remained there for nine months; Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Nellie Lutcher, Rose Murphy, the Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hazel Scott, Josh White and Susan Reed. The boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, along with Big Joe Turner, the blues singer, were in Cafe Society's first show and remained for four years, stimulating the boogie-woogie fad that swept the country.
Jack Gilford, who had been a stooge for Milton Berle, was the comedian and master of ceremonies in that opening show. He stayed for two years and was followed by Zero Mostel, making his professional debut; Imogene Coca; Jimmy Savo and Carol Channing, among other comedians.
Pearl Primus and the Krafft Sisters danced at the two cafes, and such jazz musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Red Allen, Joe Sullivan, Edmond Hall and Eddie Heywood played there.
Mr. Josephson was in his mid-30's and had had no experience in the nightclub or entertainment fields when he opened his Greenwich Village club. He had worked in shoe stores in Atlantic City and Trenton, where he was born in 1902, the youngest of six children, two years after his parents emigrated from Latvia. His father, a cobbler, died shortly after his birth. His mother, a seamstress, worked for a ladies' tailor. Two of his brothers, Leon and Louis, became lawyers.
When Mr. Josephson graduated from Trenton High School, his oldest brother, David, put him to work in his shoe store. After the store went bankrupt during the Depression, Mr. Josephson got a job in another shoe store in Atlantic City, earning $40 a week as a buyer, window trimmer and orthopedic fitter.
"I knew it all," he said years later. "I still think I know more about shoes than I do about the cafe business."
He soon tired of Atlantic City and the shoe business, however. In the mid-1930's, he moved to New York with $7.80 in his pocket and a vague notion about opening a nightclub.
During a vacation in Europe he had become fascinated by the political cabarets of Prague and Berlin. He had also become a jazz fan as a result of trips to Harlem to hear Duke Ellington's band at the Cotton Club when he visited New York as a shoe buyer.'It Infuriated Me'
"One thing that bugged me about the Cotton Club was that blacks were limited to the back one-third of the club, behind columns and partitions," he said. "It infuriated me that even in their own ghetto they had to take this. Of course, in any club below Harlem, which had black entertainment, such as the Kit Kat Club, a black couldn't even get in."
Mr. Josephson, a trim, soft-spoken man, was offended by "the mugs, the gangster-looking people with policies of clipping and padding checks," who, it appeared to him, ran most nightclubs. "Why can't the nightclub business be legitimate, like shoes?" he asked.
In the fall of 1938, after seeing a political cabaret put on by the Theater Arts Committee, he decided to try his hand at a "legitimate" nightclub. With $6,000, borrowed from two friends of his brother Leon, he rented the basement of 2 Sheridan Square for $200 a month and had the bare walls covered with murals by prominent Greenwich Village artists - Adolph Dehn, William Gropper, Sam Berman, Abe Birnbaum, Syd Hoff, John Groth, Ad Reinhardt and Anton Refregier.
"I told them I was going to open a political cabaret with jazz - a satire on the upper classes," Mr. Josephson later recalled. " 'You guys paint anything you want,' I said. I told them I'd pay them each $125 and a due bill for another $125 so they could come in and eat and drink any time."
His music adviser and talent scout was John Hammond, who discovered Billie Holiday, helped develop the Benny Goodman and Count Basie bands and who brought a great number of jazz musicians and singers to the attention of the American public.
Cafe Society ("The wrong place for the right people" was its slogan) seemed to be an immediate success. But although it was filled virtually every night, primarily with Villagers, Mr. Josephson lost money in his first year. He began to feel it had been a mistake to open in the Village.The Move Uptown
"I should have opened where the money was," he reflected. "So I decided to open a place uptown, get that going and then close the Village place."
But when he found the premises on East 58th Street for his uptown branch, his press agent - a former Trenton schoolmate, Ivan Black - sent out a press release saying, with traditional hyperbole, that Cafe Society had been such a success in Greenwich Village that it was opening an uptown branch.
This brought people from midtown and uptown flocking to the Village to find out what was going on. Suddenly, the Cafe Society in the Village was a success, and when Cafe Society Uptown opened in October 1940, it was making money within three months.
All through the war years, the two Cafe Societies were consistently successful. That the clubs were integrated, that Billie Holiday could sing an anti-lynching song like "Strange Fruit" there, was regarded as a basic element in their success.
But in 1947 Mr. Josephson's brother Leon, an avowed Communist, was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and found guilty of contempt when he refused to answer any questions. As Leon's brother, Barney Josephson was attacked by such columnists as Dorothy Kilgallen, Lee Mortimer, Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell.
Within three weeks of these attacks, business at the two clubs dropped 45 percent. Mr. Josephson hung on for a year until, after losing $90,000, he sold both clubs.
He soon opened a small restaurant, the Cookery, offering hamburgers and omelets. It blossomed into a chain of four. "Part of the reason I started the Cookeries," he said, "was that I could be unknown, anonymous."
By November 1969, he had trimmed his chain down to a single Cookery, at University Place and Eighth Street. After almost two decades away from the nightclub business, he found he was getting an urge to hear the sound of music in his restaurant again.
Mary Lou Williams, the jazz pianist who had played at Cafe Society, was looking then for a place to perform after a long period of inactivity. She asked Mr. Josephson if he would put a piano in the Cookery, and he agreed, starting an entertainment policy.
Many of those who once performed at Cafe Society appeared at the Cookery, including Nellie Lutcher, Eddie Heywood, Teddy Wilson, Sammy Price, Susan Reed, Ellis Larkins and Helen Humes. The performer who brought the greatest success to the Cookery was Alberta Hunter, the singer whom Mr. Josephson brought to his Eighth Street club at the age of 82 in 1977 and who was a regular almost until her death nearly seven years later.
The Cookery itself, plagued by high costs and changing musical styles, in 1984 halted its entertainment policy.
Mr. Josephson is survived by his fourth wife, Terry Trilling Josephson; two sons, Edward and Louis, and a stepdaughter, Kathe Trilling.
Deceased: Barney Josephson, Owner of Cafe Society Jazz Club, Is Dead at 86
Date: September 30, 1988
Barney Josephson, who brought down racial barriers as the owner of the legendary Cafe Society and who brought recognition to Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Alberta Hunter and other jazz singers and musicians during nearly half a century of showmanship, died of gastrointestinal bleeding yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was 86 years old.
When Mr. Josephson opened Cafe Society in a basement room at 2 Sheridan Square in December 1938, he changed a longstanding custom in American nightclubs.
"I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front," he once said. "There wasn't, so far as I know, a place like it in New York or in the whole country."Incubators of Talent
Although from the earliest days of jazz, black musicians played for white audiences, few nightclubs permitted blacks and whites to mix in the audience. Even the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway made their names, was a segregated place, admitting only an occasional black celebrity to sit at an obscure table. In 1938, Mr. Josephson's Cafe Society was the first nightclub in a white neighborhood to welcome customers of all races.
For the next decade, Cafe Society and Cafe Society Uptown, which he opened two years later on East 58th Street, were consistent incubators of talent, producing a long list of singers, comedians, jazz musicians and dancers who came to prominence there.
They included Billie Holiday, who sang in Cafe Society's opening show in 1938 and remained there for nine months; Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Nellie Lutcher, Rose Murphy, the Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hazel Scott, Josh White and Susan Reed. The boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, along with Big Joe Turner, the blues singer, were in Cafe Society's first show and remained for four years, stimulating the boogie-woogie fad that swept the country.
Jack Gilford, who had been a stooge for Milton Berle, was the comedian and master of ceremonies in that opening show. He stayed for two years and was followed by Zero Mostel, making his professional debut; Imogene Coca; Jimmy Savo and Carol Channing, among other comedians.
Pearl Primus and the Krafft Sisters danced at the two cafes, and such jazz musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Red Allen, Joe Sullivan, Edmond Hall and Eddie Heywood played there.
Mr. Josephson was in his mid-30's and had had no experience in the nightclub or entertainment fields when he opened his Greenwich Village club. He had worked in shoe stores in Atlantic City and Trenton, where he was born in 1902, the youngest of six children, two years after his parents emigrated from Latvia. His father, a cobbler, died shortly after his birth. His mother, a seamstress, worked for a ladies' tailor. Two of his brothers, Leon and Louis, became lawyers.
When Mr. Josephson graduated from Trenton High School, his oldest brother, David, put him to work in his shoe store. After the store went bankrupt during the Depression, Mr. Josephson got a job in another shoe store in Atlantic City, earning $40 a week as a buyer, window trimmer and orthopedic fitter.
"I knew it all," he said years later. "I still think I know more about shoes than I do about the cafe business."
He soon tired of Atlantic City and the shoe business, however. In the mid-1930's, he moved to New York with $7.80 in his pocket and a vague notion about opening a nightclub.
During a vacation in Europe he had become fascinated by the political cabarets of Prague and Berlin. He had also become a jazz fan as a result of trips to Harlem to hear Duke Ellington's band at the Cotton Club when he visited New York as a shoe buyer.'It Infuriated Me'
"One thing that bugged me about the Cotton Club was that blacks were limited to the back one-third of the club, behind columns and partitions," he said. "It infuriated me that even in their own ghetto they had to take this. Of course, in any club below Harlem, which had black entertainment, such as the Kit Kat Club, a black couldn't even get in."
Mr. Josephson, a trim, soft-spoken man, was offended by "the mugs, the gangster-looking people with policies of clipping and padding checks," who, it appeared to him, ran most nightclubs. "Why can't the nightclub business be legitimate, like shoes?" he asked.
In the fall of 1938, after seeing a political cabaret put on by the Theater Arts Committee, he decided to try his hand at a "legitimate" nightclub. With $6,000, borrowed from two friends of his brother Leon, he rented the basement of 2 Sheridan Square for $200 a month and had the bare walls covered with murals by prominent Greenwich Village artists - Adolph Dehn, William Gropper, Sam Berman, Abe Birnbaum, Syd Hoff, John Groth, Ad Reinhardt and Anton Refregier.
"I told them I was going to open a political cabaret with jazz - a satire on the upper classes," Mr. Josephson later recalled. " 'You guys paint anything you want,' I said. I told them I'd pay them each $125 and a due bill for another $125 so they could come in and eat and drink any time."
His music adviser and talent scout was John Hammond, who discovered Billie Holiday, helped develop the Benny Goodman and Count Basie bands and who brought a great number of jazz musicians and singers to the attention of the American public.
Cafe Society ("The wrong place for the right people" was its slogan) seemed to be an immediate success. But although it was filled virtually every night, primarily with Villagers, Mr. Josephson lost money in his first year. He began to feel it had been a mistake to open in the Village.The Move Uptown
"I should have opened where the money was," he reflected. "So I decided to open a place uptown, get that going and then close the Village place."
But when he found the premises on East 58th Street for his uptown branch, his press agent - a former Trenton schoolmate, Ivan Black - sent out a press release saying, with traditional hyperbole, that Cafe Society had been such a success in Greenwich Village that it was opening an uptown branch.
This brought people from midtown and uptown flocking to the Village to find out what was going on. Suddenly, the Cafe Society in the Village was a success, and when Cafe Society Uptown opened in October 1940, it was making money within three months.
All through the war years, the two Cafe Societies were consistently successful. That the clubs were integrated, that Billie Holiday could sing an anti-lynching song like "Strange Fruit" there, was regarded as a basic element in their success.
But in 1947 Mr. Josephson's brother Leon, an avowed Communist, was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and found guilty of contempt when he refused to answer any questions. As Leon's brother, Barney Josephson was attacked by such columnists as Dorothy Kilgallen, Lee Mortimer, Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell.
Within three weeks of these attacks, business at the two clubs dropped 45 percent. Mr. Josephson hung on for a year until, after losing $90,000, he sold both clubs.
He soon opened a small restaurant, the Cookery, offering hamburgers and omelets. It blossomed into a chain of four. "Part of the reason I started the Cookeries," he said, "was that I could be unknown, anonymous."
By November 1969, he had trimmed his chain down to a single Cookery, at University Place and Eighth Street. After almost two decades away from the nightclub business, he found he was getting an urge to hear the sound of music in his restaurant again.
Mary Lou Williams, the jazz pianist who had played at Cafe Society, was looking then for a place to perform after a long period of inactivity. She asked Mr. Josephson if he would put a piano in the Cookery, and he agreed, starting an entertainment policy.
Many of those who once performed at Cafe Society appeared at the Cookery, including Nellie Lutcher, Eddie Heywood, Teddy Wilson, Sammy Price, Susan Reed, Ellis Larkins and Helen Humes. The performer who brought the greatest success to the Cookery was Alberta Hunter, the singer whom Mr. Josephson brought to his Eighth Street club at the age of 82 in 1977 and who was a regular almost until her death nearly seven years later.
The Cookery itself, plagued by high costs and changing musical styles, in 1984 halted its entertainment policy.
Mr. Josephson is survived by his fourth wife, Terry Trilling Josephson; two sons, Edward and Louis, and a stepdaughter, Kathe Trilling.
Paper: New York Times, The (NY)
Deceased: Barney Josephson, Owner of Cafe Society Jazz Club, Is Dead at 86
Date: September 30, 1988
Barney Josephson, who brought down racial barriers as the owner of the legendary Cafe Society and who brought recognition to Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Alberta Hunter and other jazz singers and musicians during nearly half a century of showmanship, died of gastrointestinal bleeding yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was 86 years old.
When Mr. Josephson opened Cafe Society in a basement room at 2 Sheridan Square in December 1938, he changed a longstanding custom in American nightclubs.
"I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front," he once said. "There wasn't, so far as I know, a place like it in New York or in the whole country."Incubators of Talent
Although from the earliest days of jazz, black musicians played for white audiences, few nightclubs permitted blacks and whites to mix in the audience. Even the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway made their names, was a segregated place, admitting only an occasional black celebrity to sit at an obscure table. In 1938, Mr. Josephson's Cafe Society was the first nightclub in a white neighborhood to welcome customers of all races.
For the next decade, Cafe Society and Cafe Society Uptown, which he opened two years later on East 58th Street, were consistent incubators of talent, producing a long list of singers, comedians, jazz musicians and dancers who came to prominence there.
They included Billie Holiday, who sang in Cafe Society's opening show in 1938 and remained there for nine months; Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Nellie Lutcher, Rose Murphy, the Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hazel Scott, Josh White and Susan Reed. The boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, along with Big Joe Turner, the blues singer, were in Cafe Society's first show and remained for four years, stimulating the boogie-woogie fad that swept the country.
Jack Gilford, who had been a stooge for Milton Berle, was the comedian and master of ceremonies in that opening show. He stayed for two years and was followed by Zero Mostel, making his professional debut; Imogene Coca; Jimmy Savo and Carol Channing, among other comedians.
Pearl Primus and the Krafft Sisters danced at the two cafes, and such jazz musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Red Allen, Joe Sullivan, Edmond Hall and Eddie Heywood played there.
Mr. Josephson was in his mid-30's and had had no experience in the nightclub or entertainment fields when he opened his Greenwich Village club. He had worked in shoe stores in Atlantic City and Trenton, where he was born in 1902, the youngest of six children, two years after his parents emigrated from Latvia. His father, a cobbler, died shortly after his birth. His mother, a seamstress, worked for a ladies' tailor. Two of his brothers, Leon and Louis, became lawyers.
When Mr. Josephson graduated from Trenton High School, his oldest brother, David, put him to work in his shoe store. After the store went bankrupt during the Depression, Mr. Josephson got a job in another shoe store in Atlantic City, earning $40 a week as a buyer, window trimmer and orthopedic fitter.
"I knew it all," he said years later. "I still think I know more about shoes than I do about the cafe business."
He soon tired of Atlantic City and the shoe business, however. In the mid-1930's, he moved to New York with $7.80 in his pocket and a vague notion about opening a nightclub.
During a vacation in Europe he had become fascinated by the political cabarets of Prague and Berlin. He had also become a jazz fan as a result of trips to Harlem to hear Duke Ellington's band at the Cotton Club when he visited New York as a shoe buyer.'It Infuriated Me'
"One thing that bugged me about the Cotton Club was that blacks were limited to the back one-third of the club, behind columns and partitions," he said. "It infuriated me that even in their own ghetto they had to take this. Of course, in any club below Harlem, which had black entertainment, such as the Kit Kat Club, a black couldn't even get in."
Mr. Josephson, a trim, soft-spoken man, was offended by "the mugs, the gangster-looking people with policies of clipping and padding checks," who, it appeared to him, ran most nightclubs. "Why can't the nightclub business be legitimate, like shoes?" he asked.
In the fall of 1938, after seeing a political cabaret put on by the Theater Arts Committee, he decided to try his hand at a "legitimate" nightclub. With $6,000, borrowed from two friends of his brother Leon, he rented the basement of 2 Sheridan Square for $200 a month and had the bare walls covered with murals by prominent Greenwich Village artists - Adolph Dehn, William Gropper, Sam Berman, Abe Birnbaum, Syd Hoff, John Groth, Ad Reinhardt and Anton Refregier.
"I told them I was going to open a political cabaret with jazz - a satire on the upper classes," Mr. Josephson later recalled. " 'You guys paint anything you want,' I said. I told them I'd pay them each $125 and a due bill for another $125 so they could come in and eat and drink any time."
His music adviser and talent scout was John Hammond, who discovered Billie Holiday, helped develop the Benny Goodman and Count Basie bands and who brought a great number of jazz musicians and singers to the attention of the American public.
Cafe Society ("The wrong place for the right people" was its slogan) seemed to be an immediate success. But although it was filled virtually every night, primarily with Villagers, Mr. Josephson lost money in his first year. He began to feel it had been a mistake to open in the Village.The Move Uptown
"I should have opened where the money was," he reflected. "So I decided to open a place uptown, get that going and then close the Village place."
But when he found the premises on East 58th Street for his uptown branch, his press agent - a former Trenton schoolmate, Ivan Black - sent out a press release saying, with traditional hyperbole, that Cafe Society had been such a success in Greenwich Village that it was opening an uptown branch.
This brought people from midtown and uptown flocking to the Village to find out what was going on. Suddenly, the Cafe Society in the Village was a success, and when Cafe Society Uptown opened in October 1940, it was making money within three months.
All through the war years, the two Cafe Societies were consistently successful. That the clubs were integrated, that Billie Holiday could sing an anti-lynching song like "Strange Fruit" there, was regarded as a basic element in their success.
But in 1947 Mr. Josephson's brother Leon, an avowed Communist, was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and found guilty of contempt when he refused to answer any questions. As Leon's brother, Barney Josephson was attacked by such columnists as Dorothy Kilgallen, Lee Mortimer, Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell.
Within three weeks of these attacks, business at the two clubs dropped 45 percent. Mr. Josephson hung on for a year until, after losing $90,000, he sold both clubs.
He soon opened a small restaurant, the Cookery, offering hamburgers and omelets. It blossomed into a chain of four. "Part of the reason I started the Cookeries," he said, "was that I could be unknown, anonymous."
By November 1969, he had trimmed his chain down to a single Cookery, at University Place and Eighth Street. After almost two decades away from the nightclub business, he found he was getting an urge to hear the sound of music in his restaurant again.
Mary Lou Williams, the jazz pianist who had played at Cafe Society, was looking then for a place to perform after a long period of inactivity. She asked Mr. Josephson if he would put a piano in the Cookery, and he agreed, starting an entertainment policy.
Many of those who once performed at Cafe Society appeared at the Cookery, including Nellie Lutcher, Eddie Heywood, Teddy Wilson, Sammy Price, Susan Reed, Ellis Larkins and Helen Humes. The performer who brought the greatest success to the Cookery was Alberta Hunter, the singer whom Mr. Josephson brought to his Eighth Street club at the age of 82 in 1977 and who was a regular almost until her death nearly seven years later.
The Cookery itself, plagued by high costs and changing musical styles, in 1984 halted its entertainment policy.
Mr. Josephson is survived by his fourth wife, Terry Trilling Josephson; two sons, Edward and Louis, and a stepdaughter, Kathe Trilling.
Deceased: Barney Josephson, Owner of Cafe Society Jazz Club, Is Dead at 86
Date: September 30, 1988
Barney Josephson, who brought down racial barriers as the owner of the legendary Cafe Society and who brought recognition to Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Alberta Hunter and other jazz singers and musicians during nearly half a century of showmanship, died of gastrointestinal bleeding yesterday at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was 86 years old.
When Mr. Josephson opened Cafe Society in a basement room at 2 Sheridan Square in December 1938, he changed a longstanding custom in American nightclubs.
"I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front," he once said. "There wasn't, so far as I know, a place like it in New York or in the whole country."Incubators of Talent
Although from the earliest days of jazz, black musicians played for white audiences, few nightclubs permitted blacks and whites to mix in the audience. Even the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway made their names, was a segregated place, admitting only an occasional black celebrity to sit at an obscure table. In 1938, Mr. Josephson's Cafe Society was the first nightclub in a white neighborhood to welcome customers of all races.
For the next decade, Cafe Society and Cafe Society Uptown, which he opened two years later on East 58th Street, were consistent incubators of talent, producing a long list of singers, comedians, jazz musicians and dancers who came to prominence there.
They included Billie Holiday, who sang in Cafe Society's opening show in 1938 and remained there for nine months; Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Nellie Lutcher, Rose Murphy, the Golden Gate Quartet, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hazel Scott, Josh White and Susan Reed. The boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, along with Big Joe Turner, the blues singer, were in Cafe Society's first show and remained for four years, stimulating the boogie-woogie fad that swept the country.
Jack Gilford, who had been a stooge for Milton Berle, was the comedian and master of ceremonies in that opening show. He stayed for two years and was followed by Zero Mostel, making his professional debut; Imogene Coca; Jimmy Savo and Carol Channing, among other comedians.
Pearl Primus and the Krafft Sisters danced at the two cafes, and such jazz musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Red Allen, Joe Sullivan, Edmond Hall and Eddie Heywood played there.
Mr. Josephson was in his mid-30's and had had no experience in the nightclub or entertainment fields when he opened his Greenwich Village club. He had worked in shoe stores in Atlantic City and Trenton, where he was born in 1902, the youngest of six children, two years after his parents emigrated from Latvia. His father, a cobbler, died shortly after his birth. His mother, a seamstress, worked for a ladies' tailor. Two of his brothers, Leon and Louis, became lawyers.
When Mr. Josephson graduated from Trenton High School, his oldest brother, David, put him to work in his shoe store. After the store went bankrupt during the Depression, Mr. Josephson got a job in another shoe store in Atlantic City, earning $40 a week as a buyer, window trimmer and orthopedic fitter.
"I knew it all," he said years later. "I still think I know more about shoes than I do about the cafe business."
He soon tired of Atlantic City and the shoe business, however. In the mid-1930's, he moved to New York with $7.80 in his pocket and a vague notion about opening a nightclub.
During a vacation in Europe he had become fascinated by the political cabarets of Prague and Berlin. He had also become a jazz fan as a result of trips to Harlem to hear Duke Ellington's band at the Cotton Club when he visited New York as a shoe buyer.'It Infuriated Me'
"One thing that bugged me about the Cotton Club was that blacks were limited to the back one-third of the club, behind columns and partitions," he said. "It infuriated me that even in their own ghetto they had to take this. Of course, in any club below Harlem, which had black entertainment, such as the Kit Kat Club, a black couldn't even get in."
Mr. Josephson, a trim, soft-spoken man, was offended by "the mugs, the gangster-looking people with policies of clipping and padding checks," who, it appeared to him, ran most nightclubs. "Why can't the nightclub business be legitimate, like shoes?" he asked.
In the fall of 1938, after seeing a political cabaret put on by the Theater Arts Committee, he decided to try his hand at a "legitimate" nightclub. With $6,000, borrowed from two friends of his brother Leon, he rented the basement of 2 Sheridan Square for $200 a month and had the bare walls covered with murals by prominent Greenwich Village artists - Adolph Dehn, William Gropper, Sam Berman, Abe Birnbaum, Syd Hoff, John Groth, Ad Reinhardt and Anton Refregier.
"I told them I was going to open a political cabaret with jazz - a satire on the upper classes," Mr. Josephson later recalled. " 'You guys paint anything you want,' I said. I told them I'd pay them each $125 and a due bill for another $125 so they could come in and eat and drink any time."
His music adviser and talent scout was John Hammond, who discovered Billie Holiday, helped develop the Benny Goodman and Count Basie bands and who brought a great number of jazz musicians and singers to the attention of the American public.
Cafe Society ("The wrong place for the right people" was its slogan) seemed to be an immediate success. But although it was filled virtually every night, primarily with Villagers, Mr. Josephson lost money in his first year. He began to feel it had been a mistake to open in the Village.The Move Uptown
"I should have opened where the money was," he reflected. "So I decided to open a place uptown, get that going and then close the Village place."
But when he found the premises on East 58th Street for his uptown branch, his press agent - a former Trenton schoolmate, Ivan Black - sent out a press release saying, with traditional hyperbole, that Cafe Society had been such a success in Greenwich Village that it was opening an uptown branch.
This brought people from midtown and uptown flocking to the Village to find out what was going on. Suddenly, the Cafe Society in the Village was a success, and when Cafe Society Uptown opened in October 1940, it was making money within three months.
All through the war years, the two Cafe Societies were consistently successful. That the clubs were integrated, that Billie Holiday could sing an anti-lynching song like "Strange Fruit" there, was regarded as a basic element in their success.
But in 1947 Mr. Josephson's brother Leon, an avowed Communist, was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and found guilty of contempt when he refused to answer any questions. As Leon's brother, Barney Josephson was attacked by such columnists as Dorothy Kilgallen, Lee Mortimer, Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell.
Within three weeks of these attacks, business at the two clubs dropped 45 percent. Mr. Josephson hung on for a year until, after losing $90,000, he sold both clubs.
He soon opened a small restaurant, the Cookery, offering hamburgers and omelets. It blossomed into a chain of four. "Part of the reason I started the Cookeries," he said, "was that I could be unknown, anonymous."
By November 1969, he had trimmed his chain down to a single Cookery, at University Place and Eighth Street. After almost two decades away from the nightclub business, he found he was getting an urge to hear the sound of music in his restaurant again.
Mary Lou Williams, the jazz pianist who had played at Cafe Society, was looking then for a place to perform after a long period of inactivity. She asked Mr. Josephson if he would put a piano in the Cookery, and he agreed, starting an entertainment policy.
Many of those who once performed at Cafe Society appeared at the Cookery, including Nellie Lutcher, Eddie Heywood, Teddy Wilson, Sammy Price, Susan Reed, Ellis Larkins and Helen Humes. The performer who brought the greatest success to the Cookery was Alberta Hunter, the singer whom Mr. Josephson brought to his Eighth Street club at the age of 82 in 1977 and who was a regular almost until her death nearly seven years later.
The Cookery itself, plagued by high costs and changing musical styles, in 1984 halted its entertainment policy.
Mr. Josephson is survived by his fourth wife, Terry Trilling Josephson; two sons, Edward and Louis, and a stepdaughter, Kathe Trilling.
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