I don’t know why but when I think of Greenwich Village, the first impression that comes to my mind is darkened damp and chilly streets with strange signs - probably because my first real experiences there occurred at night.  In the autumn of 1954, I was a first-year student at Columbia and word was that the little ‘off-off Broadway Theaters’ as they were called, hosted folk music concerts at mid-night  after the theater crowds left, the sets struck, the floors swept.
     

     During the day, the streets of the village were filled with regular New York small neighborhood stuff – fruit stands, shops, a few coffee houses where guys who looked like they were smarter, dirtier, and tougher than anyone who didn’t agree with them ruled. I had no idea where such disagreement might lie, but I was smart enough I thought, not to engage them in any open ended contact. Besides, I hadn’t become indoctrinated into the murky world of the beat generation and make no mistake, that was who they looked like. I was positive that if I went in and expressed myself too loudly, Kerouac or Ginsberg would be listening from the next table, find me out for the unsophisticated kid I was.
 

     Sometimes being a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn has its drawbacks. I was a little shy around strangers to boot.  But after dark on a Friday or Saturday night, Greenwich Village was where I’d go with Herb Freed, my roommate up on 110th and Broadway.  We’d take the subway down to Jane Street, and head for one of the clubs where we’d order a couple of martinis – two drink minimum for the tourists and that included everyone.  We’d watch whatever show was featured and I can’t remember one except I think half clad dancers were the reason for the cover charge and the two drink minimum.
 

     We’d be seeing double by the time we stumbled out to the street close to midnight to buy our tickets for the midnight concert down the street. I specifically remember Circle-In-The-Square, a small theater somewhere near Bleecker Street that hosted Kurt Weil’s Three Penny Opera during normal show hours, but cleared out for the mid-night crowd of students, aging refugees from the last generation’s social rebellion, and a smattering of curiosity seekers.  Most of the performances took place on the sets abandoned for the night – sets that only an hour before had resonated with the words of Tenessee Williams and Eugene O’Neil.
 

     The after midnight stars were the folk ‘adventurers’ of the time. But all part of a revival of American Folk Music that was to take shape in the coming decades as the defining era for American music. Who were these folks? Oscar Brand, Ed McCurdy, Will Holt who impressed me with his handling of a classical guitar – back then it was simply a nylon string guitar – and his smooth droning semi-stage voice. Songs like Lemon Tree, which he wrote, Bilbao Song from Threepenny O., and early semi-jazz favorites like ‘When The World Was Young’.  It was in these theaters that I first got to see and experience Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Pete Seeger, Josh White – even the great Will Geer made an appearance now and then.

 

     The shows started promptly at mid-night, and when they let out, none but the loyal hung around. That included me… we’d wander and find each other on street corners and coffee shops and talk for hours. When the first streaks of daylight lit the sky, we found our way one at a time to Washington Square, where we’d count the heads of last night’s survivors and make plans for the next time while the Village returned to normal routine. Or better yet, to meet right there in the Square on Sunday afternoon, where the great rising nation of folk music devotees held its weekly gathering and compared experiences, shared music, enthusiasm, information and spirit and became the beginnings of a legacy.