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Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People. By Barney Josephson with Terry Trilling-Josephson. Music in American Life Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC. By Karen Chilton. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008.
Two recent books published by two academic presses, shed new light on the complex issues of racial, ethnic, and gender conflict in mid-century American jazz and entertainment industry history by focusing on some trailblazers, while providing new information on some key figures. Both books are labor-of-love social histories/memoirs of impresario-producers, entertainers and musicians, who contributed to American popular culture and commercial music, jazz, film, radio, television, and the recording industry. Both books incorporate and weave together material gleaned from press reviews, magazine articles, and other contemporary accounts, with personal recollections of people who were involved (either written or oral histories). Most fascinating are the personal recollections, distinct voices heretofore not heard, including businessman-impresario Barney Josephson and pianist-singer Hazel Scott.
Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People tells the personal story of Barney Josephson (1902-1988), founder and owner of the infamous interracial New York City nightclubs Café Society Downtown in Greenwich Village (opening in December 1938), Café Society Uptown (opening in October 1940), and later, The Cookery (which started presenting live entertainment in 1971). A remarkable and visionary man, Josephson was a true humanist who created a place where artists of all ethnic and racial backgrounds could perform for mixed audiences when segregation was the routine on the New York nightclub scene and most nightclubs were under mob jurisdiction. The décor of these nightclubs included satiric murals lampooning "high society." Josephson commissioned many artists to contribute to the unique décor of his establishments, including Syd Hoff, Abe Birnbaum, John Groth, Gregor Duncan, William Gropper. Anton Refregier, and Christina Malman. Josephson told them, "You're free to paint what you like, absolute freedom" (p.26).
Josephson presented the best of jazz, blues, spirituals, gospel, boogie-woogie piano, and the American songbook, performed by the best and the brightest entertainers, including Billie Holliday, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Paul Robeson, Mildred Bailey, Kay Starr, Sarah Vaughan, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Mary Lou Williams, Big...