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It takes a Village (Gate): Remembering jazz impresario Art D'Lugoff
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In his 30 years at New York's Village Gate, Art D'Lugoff showcased dozens of jazz's brightest stars.
If you judge Art D’Lugoff’s life by the company he kept, the New York nightclub impresario made a significant contribution to 20th century American culture.
D’Lugoff, who died Wednesday at age 85, ran the Village Gate, one of Manhattan’s leading nightspots, for 30 years before it closed in 1994. Here’s what this morning’s New York Times obit said of that establishment:
The Gate may have lacked the cachet of the Village Vanguard, a more intimate West Village club, but it was a bright star in the city’s cultural firmament for decades. A young Woody Allen did stand-up comedy there. The playwright-to-be Sam Shepard bused tables there. A waiter named Dustin Hoffman was fired there for being so engrossed in the performances that he neglected his customers, though service was by all accounts never the club’s strength.
More to the point, The Gate was among the city’s top music venues.
Though most often thought of as a jazz space — among the eminences heard there over the years were John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk — the Gate offered nearly every type of performance imaginable. There were blues artists like B. B. King; soul singers like Aretha Franklin; rockers like Jimi Hendrix.
The Gate’s legacy lives on via the many albums recorded there. Among the jazz CDs out there bearing the legend “Live at the Village Gate” are discs from Charlie Byrd, Herbie Mann, Larry Coryell, Thelonious Monk, Tito Puente, Clark Terry, Chuck Mangione, Coleman Hawkins, Horace Silver and Betty Carter, to name a few. Check out the slide show to see some of the results.
To be sure, D’Lugoff ran in some impressive company.
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