Talk:Café Society

Typographical Error
The article currently reads:

which had not been trademarked by the gossip columnist for the New York Journal American M

Is the "M" at the end of this passage an error, or is it the pseudonym of the gossip columnist?

Skb8721 (talk) 05:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Stub tag?
Why is this article tagged with an "African-American-related" stub? Cafe Society was interracial and run by a Jew and half of its patrons were white, therefore this classification seems sort of erroneous and perhaps we could be more specific. I would rather see a "Jazz" stub on this article, as jazz itself helped bring about the civil rights movement and more closely relates to the content of this article. I will wait to change the tag until there is feedback. 161.253.98.97 (talk) 17:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Because of this: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/30/obituaries/barney-josephson-owner-of-cafe-society-jazz-club-is-dead-at-86.html

"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."

I added a few appropriate "African-American-related" categories, for very good reasons.Roger491127 (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Look, Donna Brooks had a gig there in 1956. How could it have been closed in 1948?