Joan Baez & Bob Dylan
Monday was “Hootenanny” night in The Village. Since none of us were old enough to drink, there were ‘coffee houses’ lining the streets of Bleecker and MacDougal that catered to the ant stream of teenage troubadours carrying guitars from hole to hole. At each stop you would first put your name on a list to sing, and then come back later to see how long a wait there was before your turn on the ‘open mike.’ The best talent was cherry picked by the club owners to perform later in the week for real…no money…just real. One such hole in the ground was The Gaslight, a narrow brick-walled basement in the middle of MacDougal Street. The owner, Sam Hood, was notorious for having thrown Bob Dylan out because “he couldn’t sing for shit.” Sam eventually became a bit less judgmental, especially after Dylan sold a million records.