Greenwich Villageclub owner Colbyhosted future stars

Published 12:00 am Sunday, February 23, 2014

Paul Colby, the owner since 1974 of the Bitter End, a celebrated coffeehouse-cum-nightclub that helped make Greenwich Village in New York City a legendary place by showcasing young performers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Billy Crystal and countless others, died Feb. 13 at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 96.

The Bitter End announced his death.

“On behalf of all of us in the business of moving the emotions with our imaginations, special thanks to Paul Colby for being one of us,” Kris Kristofferson wrote in his foreword to Colby’s 2002 memoir (written with Martin Fitzpatrick), “The Bitter End: Hanging Out at America’s Nightclub.”

Colby bought the club about a decade after he began managing it. It provided him with a lifetime of memories: watching Van Morrison kick over tables for dramatic effect; hearing Allen Ginsberg read poetry; seeing Woody Allen so nervous that he tried to crawl out a window just before he was due onstage to do his stand-up routine. James Taylor, in one of his early appearances, bombed. Crystal did six shows in 1976 for a total of $500.

Proving ground

Among the many other performers who played at the club — which seats only 150 people and holds 80 more — were Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne and Neil Diamond.

In 1992, folk singer Tom Paxton told The New York Times that the Bitter End was a “place to learn, to be bad, a place where you could clock your hours, learn what worked and didn’t.”

Kristofferson told The Times that it was the place where “people like me and Bob Dylan didn’t just perform, we came to hang out.”

Other Greenwich Village clubs, including the Village Gate, Cafe Wha? and the Village Vanguard, were integral parts of the same scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, that scene began well before then: In the late 1950s, a club called the Cock and Bull occupied the space that would later become the Bitter End and offered a similar format. But the Bitter End acquired cachet — not least because of its distinctive brick walls — and is still standing years after most other clubs from its heyday have closed.

In the beginning

The club was started in 1961 by Fred Weintraub, who named it for its nocturnal appearance. A graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he had abandoned marriage and children and a successful baby-carriage business in search of a “more authentic way of life,” he said in a biographical sketch on his website.

He played the piano in a bordello and operated a fishing boat in Cuba and roamed Europe before deciding the Greenwich Village music scene was where he wanted to be.

One of the first acts to perform at the Bitter End was a new group called Peter, Paul and Mary; they used the brick walls as the backdrop for the cover of their first album.

Weintraub hired Colby to manage the club and book acts in 1965. It did not have a license to serve alcohol at the time but did offer coffee-and-ice-cream drinks with names like Frosty Freud and Zen Sundae.

On his own, Colby soon bought the bar next door, the Now Bar, which was attracting patrons and performers from the Bitter End thirsty for liquor. When Weintraub, who was in California at the time, learned about Colby’s purchase, he became angry and told Colby that he should concentrate on managing the Bitter End.

Competition

As Colby recalled in his memoir, he replied, “Fred, if I open up a dry-cleaning store in the Bronx with my brother, do I have to ask your permission?”

Weintraub fired him. Colby changed the name of the bar to the Other End and made it a place where folk artists could perform — putting him in direct competition with the Bitter End. When he was offered a chance to buy the Bitter End in 1974, he snapped it up and operated it as the Other End. He was able to acquire rights to the Bitter End name from Weintraub in the mid-1980s.

Paul Colby was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 4, 1917. Five years later, his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where his father was a tailor. He slept in the same bed with his three brothers in an apartment that had little water or heat. He studied textile production in high school, served in the Army and worked as a shipping clerk.

He entered the music business when he was hired by a publisher to deliver sheet music, then worked his way up to music promoter. Frank Sinatra often had him run personal errands, like picking up Ava Gardner at the airport.

A return

After struggling in the music business in Chicago and California, Colby returned to New York and began a business making fine furniture, which he sold to stars like Diahann Carroll and Tony Bennett, whom he knew through his music connections.

After 10 years of making furniture, he decided he wanted to be part of the rising music scene in Greenwich Village. A friend suggested that he check out the Bitter End.

Colby is survived by his wife, Pamela Ann Wilson, and his brother, Morty.

In recent years Colby had two partners in the club, Paul Rizzo and Ken Gorka. In an interview Tuesday, Rizzo noted that although fewer stars appear in small clubs these days, the Bitter End still has its share of stars-to-be: Stefani Germanotta, for example, appeared there in 2006. She later took the name Lady Gaga.