The Village Gate was a nightclub at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Street

Bleecker Street

Bleecker Street is a street in New York City's Manhattan borough. It is perhaps most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street is a spine that connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was once a major center for American bohemia.Bleecker...

 in Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

, New York.
Art D'Lugoff

Art D'Lugoff

Art D'Lugoff was an American jazz impresario. He opened The Village Gate, a jazz club in New York City's Greenwich Village, in 1958...

 opened the club in 1958, on the ground floor and basement of 158 Bleecker Street. The large 1896 Chicago School

Chicago school (architecture)

Chicago's architecture is famous throughout the world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. The style is also known as Commercial style. In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century...

 structure by architect Ernest Flagg

Ernest Flagg

Ernest Flagg was a noted American architect in the Beaux-Arts style. He was also an advocate for urban reform and architecture's social responsibility.-Biography:...

 was known at the time as Mills House

Mills House

Mills House No. 1 at 160 Bleecker Street in New York City was designed by architect Ernest Flagg in the 1890s as a men's hotel.Built as a hostel for poor gentlemen, this block-wide building was constructed on the site previously occupied by Depau Row...

 No. 1 and served as a flophouse

Flophouse

A flophouse , doss-house or dosshouse is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.-Characteristics:...

 for transient

Transient laborer

Transient laborers are people who offer their services for outdoor, usually home improvement work, for a fee. The term is chiefly American.Jobs include painting, driveway paving, snow removal, and other outdoor tasks. They may travel door-to-door to find work, usually in warm weather, and have a...

 men.

Throughout its 38 years the Village Gate featured such musicians as John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

, Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...

, Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

, Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Bill Evans

Bill Evans

William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

, Vasant Rai

Vasant Rai

Vasant Rai was one of world's most acclaimed performers of Indian music and virtuoso of the Indo/Persian/Afghan instrument Sarod.-Personal life and education:Rai was born in Unjha, Kutch, Gujarat and studied music in India...

, Nina Simone

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

, Herbie Mann

Herbie Mann

Herbert Jay Solomon , better known as Herbie Mann, was a Jewish American jazz flutist and important early practitioner of world music...

 and Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...

, who made her first New York appearance there. The show Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is an American musical revue of the songs of Jacques Brel.-Original Off-Broadway Production:...

, debuted at the Village Gate in 1968.

History

In the 1960s, radio DJ and Latin music advocate Symphony Sid

Symphony Sid

Sid Torin was a long-time jazz disk jockey in the United States. Many critics have credited him with introducing jazz to the mass audience.-Early life:...

 hosted a regular Monday night concert at the Village Gate "Monday Nights at the Gate" featuring the best of New York's thriving Latin music scene. As salsa music

Salsa music

Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...

 began to grow in popularity, the Alegre record label

Alegre Records

Alegre Records was a New York record label that was founded in 1956 by Al Santiago who owned a 1950s record store in The Bronx named Casalegre and co-founded by clothing businessman Ben Perlman...

 began to host quite a few events at the Village Gate - many of which resulted in live recordings. Some of the live recordings from the Village Gate that made a huge impression were the Alegre All-Star (and later Tico All-Star) Descarga sessions. The "Salsa Meets Jazz" series at the Village Gate was a seminal part of the history of New York Latin music. In 1977, WRVR Jazz and Latin music DJ and Jazz musician/conga drummer Roger Dawson

Roger Dawson

Roger Dawson is a jazz percussionist, conga drummer, bandleader and jazz composer. He was a leading jazz and salsa disc jockey in the USA and acknowledged as at the forefront of New York's Salsa music explosion of the seventies and early eighties...

 created and hosted a weekly event that brought top Latin bands together with a guest jazz soloist. Mr. Dawson named the event "Salsa Meets Jazz". Sonny Stitt

Sonny Stitt

Edward "Sonny" Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime...

 with Eddie Palmieri

Eddie Palmieri

Eddie Palmieri , is a Grammy Award winning Puerto Rican pianist, bandleader and musician, best known for combining jazz piano and instrumental solos with Latin rhythms.-Early years:...

, Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...

 with Machito

Machito

Machito , born as Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo, was an influential Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

 with Tito Puente

Tito Puente

Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...

, James Moody

James Moody (saxophonist)

James Moody was an American jazz saxophone and flute player. He was best known for his hit "Moody's Mood for Love," an improvisation based on "I'm in the Mood for Love"; in performance, he often improvised vocals for the tune.-Biography:James Moody was born in Savannah, Georgia...

, Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...

, Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson is a jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodicism, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern...

, David "Fathead" Newman, Slide Hampton

Slide Hampton

Locksley Wellington "Slide" Hampton is an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger.He was a 1998 Grammy Award winner for "Best Jazz Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist", as arranger for "Cotton Tail" performed by Dee Dee Bridgewater...

, Pharaoh Sanders to name a few, all jumped in to "jam" with the best Salsa bands of the time with no rehearsals and the musical results are legendary.

The club hosted a benefit for Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary

Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...

 in May 1970 that featured performances from such counterculture luminaries as Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

, and Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

. In 1971 Madame made her debut on the arms of Wayland Flowers

Wayland Flowers

Wayland P. Flowers, Jr. was an American puppeteer. He was born and raised in Dawson, Georgia. Flowers was best known for the puppet act he created with his puppet Madame...

, performing in the high camp Kumquats, The World's First Erotic Puppet Show.

From 1971 to 1973, a musical comedy revue

Revue

A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...

 called National Lampoon's Lemmings

National Lampoon's Lemmings

National Lampoon's Lemmings, a spinoff of the humor magazine National Lampoon, was a 1973 stage show which helped launch the performing careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase. The show was co-written and co-directed by a number of people including Sean Kelly...

had a successful run at the Gate. It starred future comic notables John Belushi

John Belushi

John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...

, Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon...

 Garry Goodrow and Christopher Guest

Christopher Guest

Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , better known as Christopher Guest, is an American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in several improvisational "mockumentary" films that...

, and lampooned the 1969 Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...

, which had taken place upstate two years earlier, calling it "Woodchuck" and equating the entire hippie

Hippie

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

 generation with lemmings bent on self-destruction.

From 1988 to 1991, the improvisational comedy troupe Noo Yawk Tawk

Noo Yawk Tawk

' was an off-Broadway show conceived and directed by Richmond Shepard which played at The Village Gate Theater from 1988 to 1991. It features members of an improvisational comedy troupe founded by Mr. Shepard. All performances were entirely improvised. Characters may have been repeated but never...

 performed at the upstairs theater. The group was conceived and directed by Richmond Shepard, a world renowned mime, actor, comedian and teacher. All of the performances for Noo Yawk Tawk were entirely improvised. Characters may have been repeated but never the sketches or the dialogue. The audience always set the scene and conditions for each improvisation so every performance was different. The cast included Stan Taffel

Stan Taffel

Stan Taffel is an American stage and television actor, and host.-Early career:Taffel appeared in a series of televised PBS specials, titled The News In Revue that premiered as an off-Broadway stage show in the theater district. Taffel co-directed the show with creator Nancy Holson...

, Marc Kudisch

Marc Kudisch

Marc Kudisch is an American stage actor, who is best known for his musical theatre roles on Broadway.-Early life and education:...

, Debra Wilson

Debra Wilson

Debra Wilson Skelton , professionally known as Debra Wilson or Debra Wilzon, is an American comedienne and actress. Wilson is likely most famous for being the second longest-serving original cast member on the sketch comedy series MADtv, having appeared for the show's first eight seasons...

, Eric Douglas

Eric Douglas

Eric Anthony Douglas was an American actor who appeared in several movies and television shows and was also a stand-up comedian.-Early life and career:...

, Garry Goodrow, Miguel Sierra, Ken Dashow, Nola Roeper, Bonnie Comley

Bonnie Comley

Bonnie Comley, Vice President of Stellar Productions International, Inc. is a producer, writer and performer.Comley has created scholarships funds at Columbia University Business Graduate School and at the Boston University College of Fine Arts Undergraduate School, where a theater is named in her...

 & Richmond Shepard. Taffel would go on to win three Emmy Awards for his performances in The News In Revue on PBS. Kudisch earned a Tony nomination in 2002.

The Village Gate name was again used in 1996 at 240 West 52d Street. Art D'Lugoff, Co-Producer of the show A Brief History of White Music was looking to rent the space in a site formerly occupied by the Lone Star Road House. That incarnation and the show lasted until 1997. In 1998 the 52nd Street location was taken by a brief reincarnation of Max's Kansas City

Max's Kansas City

Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South, in New York City, which was a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s.-Origin of name:...

.

The Village Gate closed its Greenwich Village location in 1993. The ground floor is currently occupied by CVS/Pharmacy. The off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 capacity Village Theater, which hosted performances of the musically-themed Love, Janis, Dream a Little Dream, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and Escape From Bellevue, occupied the sub-level performance space until Fall 2007. In Spring 2008 the space was re-opened as a multi-use performance venue and gallery bar called (Le) Poisson Rouge

(Le) Poisson Rouge

Poisson Rouge is a music venue and multimedia art cabaret in New York City founded in 2008 by Justin Kantor and David Handler on the former site of The Village Gate. The performance space was designed and engineered by John Storyk/WSDG...

.

Notable productions

The Top Of The Gate a.k.a. Village Gate (Upstairs):

• Love Lemmings (1991)
• Yesterdays: An Evening with Billie Holliday (1990)
• Noo Yawk Tawk
  Noo Yawk Tawk
  ' was an off-Broadway show conceived and directed by Richmond Shepard which played at The Village Gate Theater from 1988 to 1991. It features members of an improvisational comedy troupe founded by Mr. Shepard. All performances were entirely improvised. Characters may have been repeated but never...
  
   (1998)
• Beehive (1986)
• A... My Name Is Alice
  A... My Name Is Alice
  A… My Name Is Alice, is a musical revue conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd, first produced in 1983. It won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revue...
  
   (1983)
• Rap Master Ronnie (1983)
• Lovesong (1976)
• Tommy Tune
  Tommy Tune
  Thomas James "Tommy" Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won nine Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts.-Early years:...
  
   Atop The Gate (1975)
• The Charles Pierce Show (1974)

The Village Gate Theater a.k.a Village Gate (Downstairs):

• Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (1992)
• The Real Live Brady Bunch and the Real Live Game Show (1991)
• Further Mo' (1990)
• Sid Caesar
  Sid Caesar
  Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
  
   & Company: The Legendary Genius of Comedy (1989)
• Sing Hallelujah! (1987)
• National Lampoon's Class of '86 (1986)
• El Grande de Coca-Cola (1986)
• Lies & Legends: The Musical Stories of Harry Chapin
  Harry Chapin
  Harry Forster Chapin was an American singer-songwriter best known in particular for his folk rock songs including "Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and the number-one hit "Cat's in the Cradle". Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger; he was a key player in the creation of the...
  
   (1985)
• Shades of Harlem
  Harlem
  Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
  
   (1984)
• Orwell That Ends Well (1984)
• One Mo' Time (1979)
• Sterling Silver (1979)
• Nightsong (1977)
• 2 by 5 (1976)
• Let My People Come
  Let My People Come
  Let My People Come is the title of a pornographic musical which ran from January 8, 1974 to July 5, 1976 in New York City, at The Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Its run was continued in Los Angeles, in Philadelphia, at the Grendel's Lair Cabaret Theatre, and, in the 1980s, at the Basin Street...
  
   (1974)
• National Lampoon's Lemmings
  National Lampoon's Lemmings
  National Lampoon's Lemmings, a spinoff of the humor magazine National Lampoon, was a 1973 stage show which helped launch the performing careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase. The show was co-written and co-directed by a number of people including Sean Kelly...
  
   (1973)
• A Quarter for the Ladies' Room (1972)
• Salvation
  Salvation
  Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
  
   (1969)
• Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
  Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
  Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is an American musical revue of the songs of Jacques Brel.-Original Off-Broadway Production:...
  
   (1968)
• MacBird (1967)

The Village Gate 52nd Street

• A Brief History of White Music (1996)

Recordings

Notable albums recorded live at The Village Gate:

• Albert Ayler
  Albert Ayler
  Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...
  
   "Live In Greenwich Village" (1965)
• Shlomo Carlebach
  Shlomo Carlebach
  Shlomo Carlebach , known as Reb Shlomo to his followers, was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as "The Singing Rabbi" during his lifetime...
  
   "At The Village Gate" (1963)
• Alice Coltrane
  Alice Coltrane
  Alice Coltrane, née McLeod was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, and composer.-Biography:...
  
   "Journey In Satchidananda" (1970)
• Chris Connor
  Chris Connor
  Chris Connor was an American jazz singer.-Biography:She was born as Mary Loutsenhizer in Kansas City, Missouri to Clyde and Mabel Loutsenhizer. She studied and became proficient on the clarinet, having studied for 8 years throughout junior high and high school...
  
   "At The Village Gate"
• Larry Coryell
  Larry Coryell
  Larry Coryell is an American jazz fusion guitarist.-Biography:Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas. He graduated from Richland High School, in Richland, Washington, where he played in local bands The Jailers, The Rumblers, The Royals, and The Flames. He also played with The Checkers from nearby...
  
   "At The Village Gate" (1971)
• Tico All-Stars "Decargas: Live At The Village Gate (1966) feat. Tito Puente
  Tito Puente
  Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...
  
  , Victor Paz, Charlie Palmieri
  Charlie Palmieri
  Charlie Palmieri was a renowned Bandleader and musical director of salsa music. He was known as "The Giant of the Keyboards".-Early years:...
  
  , Johnny Pacheco
  Johnny Pacheco
  Johnny Pacheco is a Dominican producer, musician, bandleader, and one of the most influential figures in American salsa music.-Early life:...
  
  , Ray Barretto
  Ray Barretto
  Ray Barretto was a Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican jazz musician.-Early years:Barretto was born in New York City of Puerto Rican descent...
  
  , Jimmy Sabater, and Joe Cuba
  Joe Cuba
  Joe "Sonny" Cuba was a Puerto Rican musician who was considered to be the "Father of Latin Boogaloo".-Early years:...
  
  
• Dick Gregory
  Dick Gregory
  Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur....
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1970)
• Coleman Hawkins
  Coleman Hawkins
  Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
  
   "Alive! At the Village Gate" (1962)
• Milt Jackson
  Milt Jackson
  Milton "Bags" Jackson was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms...
  
   Quintet "Live At The Village Gate" (1963)
• Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan "Havin' A Ball At The Village Gate" (1963)
• Chuck Mangione
  Chuck Mangione
  Charles Frank "Chuck" Mangione is an American flugelhorn player and composer who achieved international success in 1977 with his jazz-pop single, "Feels So Good." Mangione has released more than thirty albums since 1960.-Early life and career:...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1989)
• Herbie Mann
  Herbie Mann
  Herbert Jay Solomon , better known as Herbie Mann, was a Jewish American jazz flutist and important early practitioner of world music...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1961)
• Thelonious Monk
  Thelonious Monk
  Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1963)
• Tito Puente
  Tito Puente
  Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1992)
• Sonny Rollins
  Sonny Rollins
  Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...
  
   Our Man in Jazz
  Our Man in Jazz
  Our Man in Jazz is an album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded for the RCA Victor label, featuring July 1962 performances by Rollins with Don Cherry, Bob Cranshaw, and Billy Higgins...
  
  (1962)
• Mongo Santamaría
  Mongo Santamaría
  Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez was an Afro-Cuban Latin jazz percussionist. He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All...
  
   "At The Village Gate" (1963)
• Horace Silver
  Horace Silver
  Horace Silver , born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva in Norwalk, Connecticut, is an American jazz pianist and composer....
  
   Quintet Doin' the Thing
  Doin' the Thing
  Doin' the Thing is a live album by jazz pianist Horace Silver released on the Blue Note label in 1961 featuring performances by Silver with Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, Gene Taylor, and Roy Brooks recorded at the Village Gate in New York City....
  
  (1961)
• Nina Simone
  Nina Simone
  Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...
  
   "At The Village Gate" (1962)
• Swingle Singers "Live In New York '82" (1982)
• Clark Terry
  Clark Terry
  Clark Terry is an American swing and bop trumpeter, a pioneer of the fluegelhorn in jazz, educator, NEA Jazz Masters inductee, and recipient of the 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1990)
• Toshiko at Top of the Gate
  Toshiko at Top of the Gate
  Toshiko at Top of the Gate is a live jazz album by pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi. It was recorded at the Top of the Gate club in New York City in July 1968 and was released by Nippon Columbia and Denon Records.- Track listing :...
  
  (1968)
• Flip Wilson
  Flip Wilson
  Clerow Wilson, Jr. , known professionally as Flip Wilson, was an American comedian and actor. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, The Flip Wilson Show...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1964)
• Sivuca
  Sivuca
  Severino Dias de Oliveirawas a Brazilian accordionist and guitarist.In addition to in his home state of Paraíba, in Recife, and in Rio de Janeiro,...
  
   "Live At The Village Gate" (1973)

The Village Gate was a stop on the Greenwich Village Walking Tour, in part because Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 wrote A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is a song written by Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962. It was first recorded in Columbia Records' Studio A on 6 December 1962 for his second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The lyric structure is based on the question and answer form of the traditional ballad "Lord...

 in September 1962 in a basement apartment

Basement apartment

A basement apartment is an apartment located below street level, underneath another structure—usually an apartment building, but possibly a house or a business. Rent in basement apartments is usually much lower than it is in above-ground units, due to a number of deficiencies common to basement...

 occupied by Chip Monck

Chip Monck

Chip Monck is a Tony Award winning lighting designer, most famously serving as the Master of Ceremonies at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.-Personal History:...

, the Village Gate lighting engineer and future compere and lighting designer of the Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...

.

External links

• NYC Architecture article
• Village Gate to Swing Again
• Biography for Art D'Lugoff
• Ivan Black papers, 1887-1979 Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Off-Broadway Theater IOBDB.com