As jazz legends go, Art D'Lugoff is up there. He's among the
last of a breed who in the 1950s owned and operated a prominent New York jazz club. Art opened The Village Gate in 1958 on Bleecker and Thompson streets in Greenwich Village. The club initially hosted jazz and folk but soon expanded to include comedy, Latin, blues and pop. The club closed in 1994, but during its 36-year run, the Village Gate featured John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Nina Simone, Herbie Mann and many others.
Tonight, Art, 84, is producing the first of three Salsa Meets Jazz performances in Greenwich Village, reviving the famed Latin-jazz series he started at the Gate 
in the early 1970s. The concert will be held at Le Poisson Rouge, a restaurant-club located in the exact same building as the former Village Gate. The concert will feature the big band of Bobby Sanabria [pictured], with guests Jon Faddis on trumpet and Candido on congas. (Show times tonight: 7 and 9:30 pm; information: 212-505-3474). Two more Salsa Meets Jazz concerts are planned for December 1 and 29.
In Part 1 of my two-part interview with the legendary jazz club owner, Art talks about Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Odetta, Stan Getz and the greatest night of his career at the club:
JazzWax: Before you opened the Village Gate, you were a jazz concert producer, yes?
Art D’Lugoff: That’s right. One of those was a Billie Holiday concert in June 1957. I co-produced it with the 
Village Voice newspaper. Dave Brubeck and other musicians were on the same bill. The concert was held at the Loew's Sheridan [pictured] on 7th Ave. and 12th St., a theater that held about 2,500 people and has since been torn down. It was Billie’s first performance in New York since the 1940s because of her cabaret card problems.
JW: She was in Philadelphia that night, wasn't she?
AD’L: Yes. The plan was that when she finished her 
club date down there at 11 pm, Jerry Tallmer from the Village Voice was going to speed her up to New York by 1 am. She had to arrive before 2 am to perform, since there was a 3 am entertainment ban in New York at the time. The time of night sounds crazy by today's standards, but things were different then. People were much more passionate about music and art and ideas.
JW: Did she make it in time?
AD’L: On the way up, Billie insisted that Jerry keep stopping at restaurant areas on the New Jersey Turnpike for drinks. We expected her a little after Brubeck
got off at around midnight. But she wasn’t there. The audience didn’t move and waited. We knew she'd get there eventually. Jerry called us along the way. Finally, she showed up close to 3 am. I think someone paid off the police to let the show go on that late. As I remember the event, Billie gave a fine performance but not a great one.
JW: You opened the Village Gate in 1958. How did the club get its unusual name?
AD’L: The club was on the corner of Bleecker and 
Thompson streets in Greenwich Village. The club’s entrance was on Thompson St. and it had a gate. I also may have been thinking about the Gate of Horn, a famous folk club at the Rice Hotel in Chicago. Either way, the building had a gate, so it seemed like an appropriate name.
JW: There were two clubs there, yes?
AD’L: Yes. I had the Village Gate and later the Top of the 
Gate, a smaller space I started as a place for pianists. When Bill Evans would play there, pianist Peter Nero [pictured] used to come in and crib from him. Bill was sort of introverted, and we didn’t talk much. I've heard that tapes of Bill playing the Top of the Gate were recorded surreptitiously and that producer Orrin Keepnews may have them.
JW: Who was the first artist to play the Gate?
AD'L: Earl "Fatha" Hines. He was fantastic. He could make any piano sound great.
JW: You were known for putting two radically different 
types of artists on the same bill. Why did you do that?
AD’L: It was always a risk but I liked to mix it up. I wanted to see if audiences for one artist would go for a completely different type of artist. To me, great music was great music, no matter what. Sometimes the combination worked, sometimes it didn’t.
JW: Which pairing specifically didn’t work out?
AD’L: There were a few. One was John Coltrane and folk guitarist and singer Odetta. Putting them on the same bill was a big mistake.
JW: What exactly do you mean by “the same bill?”
AD’L: One went on after the other performed, with the audience 
remaining largely the same. You’d see both for the same cover charge. Each artist, obviously had a different fan base. This was in the mid-1960s, and Coltrane’s fans enjoyed his far-out approach. So they didn’t warm to Odetta’s softer, more introspective folk music. 
Meanwhile, Odetta’s fans didn’t get Coltrane for much the same reason. The two types of music weren’t in sync.
JW: Did fans walk out?
AD’L: No, no. [laughing] I had heard from several people that the pairing wasn’t happening and that the audience wasn’t happy. It just wasn’t an exciting 
match for the person who came to hear one or the other. I sensed right away it was wrong. Coltrane and Odetta got along personally. But the audience was clearly uncomfortable. [Pictured: Coltrane at the Village Gate in 1961; photo by Herb Snitzer]
JW: What was Coltrane like during this period of his career?
AD’L: He was taciturn and didn’t talk much. He wasn’t an extrovert. He was someone who didn’t mingle or 
socialize. I would say he was an unusual artist with unusual style of music and influence. Hearing Coltrane live was like listening to sheets of sound. They’d come thundering at you. At first it would be difficult to absorb but you’d get used to it. At different times I also had Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy at the Gate. They were unusual and terrific. [Pictured: Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane at the Village Gate, 1961; photo by Herb Snitzer]
JW: Were such pairings bad for business?
AD’L: Not at all. I liked to try different things. When I 
discovered Tom Lehrer in nearby Washington Square Park, I booked the singer-satirist with Odetta, whose message was much more serious. Putting them on the same bill didn’t click with the audience. But I didn’t lose money.
JW: Did such pairings ever go really bad?
AD’L: The worst combination was pianist Erroll Garner and Leon 
Bibb, the folk singer. Leon opened the show, and when he finished, Martha Glaser, Erroll’s manager, came up to me and said, “Get that guy out of here.” Apparently Martha or Erroll had such a bad reaction to Leon that either Erroll or Leon had to go. Erroll was the bigger draw, so I had to make nice with Leon, who is a terrific artist. I gave him another booking. After that, Leon appeared at the Gate for a week.
JW: Horace Silver’s Doin’ the Thing was recorded at 
the Gate in May 1961.
AD’L: Horace [pictured] played the Gate many times. He was terrific. How can anyone forget Filthy McNasty off that album? Stan Getz discovered him. One night I remember Horace tried to pick up my wife. [laughs] Horace was a gentle guy.
JW: Did Stan Getz play the Gate?
AD’L: Oh sure. Stan was a mashugana. That's Yiddish 
for a crazy person. He would make bookings and then not show or up or he'd come late. He'd drive me nuts, but I let stuff like that slide because he was such a great musician. My most memorable night at the Gate involves Stan.
JW: What happened?
AD’L: Days after the album Jazz Samba and the single Desafinado
were released in 1962, I booked Stan and Charlie Byrd at the Gate. A friend of mine who worked at Colony Records, at the base of the Brill Building, tipped me off. He said the album was incredible and that it was going to be huge. This was the first bossa nova album. So booking them meant I was going to be first one to get them live. I wanted to record the group that weekend, so we negotiated. Charlie Byrd wanted to do it and tried everything to get 
the deal done. But Stan was a hard ass and just wouldn’t do it. Then I added Bola Sete [pictured], the terrific Brazilian guitarist. So I had Stan, Charlie and Bola playing all the stuff from the Jazz Samba album. The tragedy is that the performances that weekend were never recorded. What a shame.
JW: Did it ever cross your mind to tape them yourself?
AD’L: I never did that. Some club owners did without consulting the artists or getting their permission. I never played that game. I had too much respect for them.
JW: Was the Getz-Byrd-Sete performance great?
AD’L: Unbelievable. That was one of the best 
bookings of my life. I still hear the music in my head. Stan wanted more money to record, and I just didn’t have it. Stan was the deal breaker. But we always got along. A few days before Stan died in 1991, he called me just to ask how I was doing. Out of the blue. I think in retrospect, he always wished we had recorded that night.
Tomorrow, in Part 2, Art talks about Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, McCoy Tyner, Gerry Mulligan and Bob Dylan.
JazzWax tracks: Upward of 20 jazz albums were recorded at the Village Gate. Among the best-known are:
Horace Silver: Doin' the Thing at the Village Gate (1961)
Herbie Mann: At the Gate (1961)
Herbie Mann: Returns to the Village Gate (1961)
Herbie Mann: Monday Night at the Village Gate (1965)
Nina Simone: At the Village Gate (1961)
Coleman Hawkins: Alive! at the Village Gate (1962)
Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan: Havin' a Ball at the Village Gate (1963)
Mongo Santamaria: At the Village Gate (1963)
Thelonious Monk: Live at the Village Gate (1963)
Tito Puente: Live at the Village Gate (1992)
Milt Jackson: Live at the Village Gate (1963)
Chris Connor: At the Village Gate (1963)
Jimmy Smith: At the Village Gate (1963)
the storied jazz club closed. During the Gate's 36-year run, Art booked a wide range of jazz talent along with folk, comedy, blues, Latin and pop acts. His accomplishments in this role include combining jazz and folk acts on the same bill, combining jazz artists and comedians like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, and moving Latin-jazz and Salsa beyond their initial dance-hall popularity in the 1960s and 1970s.
Art is from a different era. Back in the late 1950s and 1960s, making a killing as a club owner mattered less than managing space where gifted artists could express themselves. Today, sadly, the financial stakes are different, and return on equity almost always trumps art. Fifty years ago, Art's generation of club owners focused on showcasing poetic artists, brilliant music and creative risk-taking. If they broke even or lost a little each year, so be it.character. He thought he was a pop star in the late 1960s but he wasn't. I loved him dearly but he wasn't doing the kind of business that pop acts were doing. At one point Miles felt that Blood, Sweat & Tears should open for him. This was at the time when the group had huge hits.
Blood, Sweat & Tears got $25,000 for a week while Miles got $5,000. That was based on box office. Look, we were the first club to have Dizzy Gillespie and his group and Miles Davis and his group on the same bill. Unfortunately they didn't draw more than 500 to 600 people in the 1960s.
beautiful person and always dressed impeccably. His music was relatively new to me back in the late 1950s. I had seen him at the Cafe Bohemia and was very taken with what I heard, but I had listened primarily to Dixieland and swing then. At the Gate, Miles always wanted to open a show to get home early. He didn't have that thing many stars had about insisting on closing a show. It didn't matter to him. Upstairs I had a restaurant. Miles liked the spinach salad I prepared for him every night when he played the club. It had spinach, chickpeas and Baco-Bits tossed with a creamy vinaigrette. He watched what he ate.
was electrifying. Every show was an improvisation. As much as you may like Ella or Sarah, Nina was one of a kind. She played at the Gate for many, many years. [Pictured left and below: Posters for Nina Simone concerts produced by Art D'Lugoff; click to enlarge.]
Times jazz critic John Wilson was in the audience. So was author James Baldwin. I sent both of them into Nina's dressing room to get her to go on. Finally she did. It was a bit excruciating and nerve wracking. I think we all drank our share of vodka that night.
Each one did her own thing, and the same audience loved them both. Langston Hughes told me afterward that gypsy music and jazz shared many similarities.
politically. I also introduced Nina to Langston Hughes. You have to understand, back then I was friends with a large eclectic group of artists who were passionate about music, art, literature and civil rights. It was a different time. Nina had enormous courage and she knew she was free to do as she pleased creatively at the Gate.
early 1960s, everyone was very aware of what was happening down South to African-Americans. In March 1965, Nina was booked into the Gate but she wanted to go down to Selma, Alabama, and join the protest march to Montgomery. So I called Langston Hughes and some other friends. I closed the Gate, and we all flew down to Selma to march to Montgomery with Nina.
of music, including jazz. Her form of protest music was so open and honest, and I think it inspired many musicians coming through the Gate to try a similar, expressive approach. Her song, Mississippi Goddam, is a great example. She first performed that song at the Gate in 1964.
Charlie wasn't a racist against whites or anyone else. He was a fascinating guy and a terrific musician and composer. I remember one night I was catching a nap on the couch in my office. At around 2 am Charlie came in and woke me up. He wanted to apologize.
flinging them at people who were too noisy. He was as polite as can be when he was telling me this. I said, "Charles, don't worry about it. I can understand your feelings." He said, "Thanks so much, Art" and quietly left. I always loved booking him.
month. I made a price and we agreed to it. Then he wanted to bring all sorts of musicians in, like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with his incredible musicianship and instruments. He said the musicians would be paid out of his share. I went around to various record companies to tell them who was going to be there. Not one would come in to record the group live. Can you imagine that? What a shame.
performance at the Gate. The Baroness [Pannonica "Nica" Koenigswarter, Monk's benefactor], told me that. His piano playing was amazing, not to mention all those different hats he wore. Why he did that was very secretive. I'm not sure what the significance of that was.
playing schedule took away his sexual prowess. What could I say? He was a wonderful guy and very pleasant to be with. Earlier, when Gerry played the Gate, Judy Holliday pursued him aggressively, coming in every night. Of course, they wound up together. [Photo: Gerry Mulligan and Judy Holliday in 1961]
playing at Gerdes Folk City on West 4th St. with Joan Baez. He caught me on Bleecker St. one day and asked if he could audition to play at the club. I said, "Now?" He said, "Yes." So I said we should go to the Caricature Cafe
on McDougal St. I knew it would be empty in the early afternoon and it was easier going there than turning on all the lights at the Gate. When we got there, Bob took out his guitar and played for me. It was all Woody Guthrie. I said to myself, "I already have Ramblin' Jack Elliott playing the club, who already was doing Guthrie's stuff. What am I going to do with this kid?" Besides, Guthrie was still alive, and Bob was so clearly doing him.
imitation of Guthrie was going to get him anywhere. A couple of years later he played Town Hall and the event lost money. His big break came in 1961 when Robert Shelton, the New York Times' folk critic, gave him a big write-up. No one was reviewing folk music for newspapers other than copyboys at the time. Even when Bobby made it, I didn't care much for him. It had nothing to do with the music. I just never liked his voice. But the youngsters cottoned up to him. He was very clever to go electric at [the] Newport [Folk Festival] in 1965.
eccentric because they were enormously gifted. They didn't live by everyone else's rules. If they did, they wouldn't have become jazz musicians. They would have been something else. They lived and performed by their own rules, which takes courage. It's hard to understand that culture today, where everything has to fit. These musicians were driven by emotion and sensitivity. They didn't always think everything through, which is what made their art exciting. This way of life doesn't really exist anymore.
