The Greenwich Village folk scene and Broadway pop coexisted five blocks apart

Evidence

21 Van Ronk, Chandler, and Romney were Gaslight regulars. Dylan was not. Indeed, the Gaslight’s stellar attraction in 1962 and 1963 was comedian Bill Cosby, who for a time crashed upstairs in Romney’s pad. Five blocks north of the Gaslight, in another universe, another twenty-year-old, self-invented musical genius and Columbia recording artist was enjoying her fourth engagement at the Bon Soir, a tiny cellar nightclub at 40 West Eighth Street. Barbra Streisand’s first LP, Live at the Bon Soir, was recorded November 5–7, 1962, and released sixty-one years later. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1887

Categorization

• SHARE: Bill Cosby as the Gaslight’s stellar attraction in 1962-63 and Streisand performing five blocks away — a nice micro-history of how adjacent but separate the folk and cabaret worlds were.