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Fifty years ago, Lena Spencer opened a beatnik coffeehouse on Phila Street. Today, it’s one of the finest—and most famous—small music venues in America.

Good evening, and welcome to Caffè Lena.” For fifty years, on each weekend

evening, those words have been spoken into a microphone on the small stage of an intimate performance space on the second floor of 47 Phila Street in Saratoga Springs. For nearly thirty years, that voice belonged to a remarkable personality, Lena Spencer, who created the coffeehouse with her husband, Bill, as

Story by

FieLd Horne

one point, left for New York to follow her dreams, but was tracked down by an uncle and sent home. At age 35, while working in Boston, Lena met and married an art student named Bill Spencer. In 1959, they decided to tap into the trendy coffeehouse business. They thought they could earn enough in two years to go to Europe for five.2 Casting around for a location, Lena and Bill discovered Saratoga Springs.

In those days, Skidmore College was housed in dozens of old buildings along Circular Street and Union Avenue, and the Spencers suspected its students would be a ready-made audience. But the city was down at the heels. The gambling crackdown a decade earlier had eliminated a critical income source. The Northway was planned but not built, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center wasn’t yet a dream, and the city’s hotels were ancient. Aside from the four-week racing season, Saratoga was dead. The Spencers rented a former millwork loft and began fixing it up on weekends, driving from Boston in what Lena recalled as “the recalcitrant Morris Minor.”3 They opened their little caffè on May 20, 1960, with a performance by Jackie Washington (now known as Jack Landron) and Maxine Abel.4 Lena announced it would be open from 8:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on show nights, and Sundays would be set aside for hootenannies. The novel venue quickly developed a following, mostly of people in their twenties or younger. The Spencers traveled to New York and Boston to look for performers, booking them for three-night weekends in Saratoga Springs. A year later, she hosted a young unknown named Bob Dylan, and, characteristically, she recognized his talent and “asked him to

part of a far-fetched plan to earn enough money to live in Europe for a few years. As it turned out, it became Lena’s life, and she became one of the great impresarios of her era. She was born Pasqualina Rosa Nargi in 1923, the daughter of Italian immigrants in Milford, Massachusetts.1 In their patriarchal family, Lena was a maverick, wanting to strike out on her own. She became passionate about theater and, at

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The Gibson Brothers and friends rock the coffeehouse crowd with some upstate new York bluegrass.

Foundedon a

DreamLena Spencer in her

caffè in the late 1980s.joe duell

come back despite much heckling from the audience.”5 He played Caffè Lena three times. In that first heady decade, Lena introduced Saratoga audiences to

Arlo Guthrie, Don McLean, Tom Paley, Loudon Wainwright III, Emmylou Harris, David Bromberg, Pete Seeger, Tom Chapin, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Tom Paxton, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk, and literally hundreds more.6 Hattie Moseley Austin, the beloved

proprietor of Hattie’s Chicken Shack, now Hattie’s Restaurant, once recalled how Lena helped launch a great talent: “One time I had a girl from Georgia working in here. She was a black girl named Bernice Johnson. She sang one night in this old chicken shack. A man came in and heard her and took her to Lena. She started singing at Lena’s. After that she sang at Carnegie Hall.”7 She is now nationally known as Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Theater was never far from Lena’s heart. In 1961, the Spencers launched the Gallery Theater, combining Bill’s visual arts with Lena’s performing arts. But, the following year, Bill left for Boston with a Skidmore woman, and the theater languished. Three years later, it was revived in a big way in collaboration with a flamboyant Welshman named John Wynne Evans; the sophisticated fare included Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Emlen Williams, George Bernard Shaw and Brendan Behan.8 The coffeehouse business was strong

through the Sixties and the early Seventies, as the Baby Boom generation claimed acoustic music as its own. Shows, which then started at nine, often ran late into the night. Performers and fans kept the party going at the Executive, a bar just west of Caffè Lena, or at other places in

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The Wholesale Klezmer Band performs traditional Yiddish tunes at a pre-Hanukkah concert. the city, wandering home at three

or four in the morning. Much of the success was due to Lena’s vision. “I like to think that my audience and my performers are friends, that’s the kind of atmosphere I like to create,” she said.9 But the caffè wasn’t profitable because Lena refused to seek a liquor license, and she wouldn’t tolerate loud conversations—indeed, any conversation—during the shows. A reporter in 1983 captured her stubbornness: ‘“Compromise,’ utters Lena, tossing aside the word like something offensive. ‘That I could never do.’”10 Lena and her caffè attracted people who were outside the mainstream. At first it was perceived as a beatnik hangout, but by 1967 the hippie movement was in full flower and Caffè Lena was viewed by some Saratogians as unsavory. A sympathetic observer, Rodney Scoville, noted in a letter to The Saratogian that a news story had unfairly dismissed the place as being “patronized largely by long-haired ‘Greenwich Village’ type of people…”11 Since much of the opposition was based on suspected drug use, it’s ironic that Lena was firmly opposed to drugs.

On January 26, 1968, the Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety closed Caffè Lena for a laundry list of code violations. Of course, much of Saratoga was then in violation of fire codes; Lena’s, as one example, was heated by a wood-burning stove surrounded by bricks, something that would be unimaginable today. Many suspected that the caffè had been targeted by the city because of its audience. As they always did, Lena’s friends came to the rescue. The capital district’s folk music club immediately scheduled a benefit concert. By late March, repairs were complete, and Caffè Lena reopened.12 But it was only the first of many crises. Lena was never a businesswoman. She took very little money out, but she also had no budgeting skills, and bills piled up quickly. Audiences began to decline around 1973, especially on evenings when the performer was not well known, and her pleas for help became more frequent. Benefit concerts included Guthrie at Albany’s Palace in 1973, McLean (“American Pie”) in 1974, the twentieth anniversary at Proctor’s in 1980, and another by

Guthrie at the caffè in 1984, the same year that an informal Friends of Caffè Lena organization began to provide structured help, including mailing list management and the development of an “open mic” night to broaden the audience. Lena ran the caffè with the help of many volunteers and minimally paid workers. As one reporter noted, “People who climbed the narrow stairs to look in on her during the day found themselves commandeered to stuff press releases into envelopes or help with the baking.”13 Indeed, one of the great tales told about Lena involves a young Albany woman who, guitar in hand, climbed the stairs to request an audition. Lena was short-handed that day and somewhat frazzled, so the performer was greeted with Lena’s characteristic “Yes?” Tongue-tied, she stammered, “I— I— I—,” but Lena finished her sentence: “… want to become a waitress. Oh, good!” And she worked for months before Lena gave her a chance to sing.14 Lena could be intimidating. Even if no one had made reservations and the room was empty, she asked drop-ins rather sternly, “Do you have a reservation?” She did not like her audience members

leaving early, and countered with the protest, “You’re not leaving!” For years she observed everything from a seat at the rear where, on Sunday evenings, she played an aggressive game of Scrabble with her friend Dorothea Brownell, often breaking her own rule of silence during performances. But as much as she fretted over small audiences, she was ill at ease with a full house. The caffè was not infrequently packed beyond its 85 fire-code limit, once reaching 115 for a show by three women performers with a strong feminist following. While large shows promised greater financial returns, they ran counter to the intimate experience she sought to create. She was happiest with a middle-sized audience filled with her friends, such as the Christmas shows when she read Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, or New Year’s Eve, when there was often a buffet and she closed the evening by serving her homemade clam chowder.15 Theater always remained her passion. When, in early 1980, friends assisted with a major renovation of the caffè, the small “black box” theater adjacent to it was given a makeover and began to see more activity, soon becoming the incubator for

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Jackie Washington performing on opening night, May 20, 1960.

in the coffeehouse entrance, posters from the 1970s and 1980s form a collage that reminds patrons of long-ago shows.

the city’s Home Made Theater.16 Lena continued to relish occasional roles and, in 1987, landed a minor part in the film Ironweed, playing a slatternly woman in a scene with Meryl Streep. Her single line, “Nmmmmh!,” in response to Streep’s offer of some delicious toast, earned her residuals checks and the sense that she had achieved professional status. By that time Lena was in her sixties. No longer stout (in her forties she had somewhat resembled Mama Cass), she had become a Saratoga fixture. Folk musicians everywhere knew and respected her, but significantly, the city was just coming to recognize her cultural importance and that of Caffè Lena. In the last five years of her life she received heartwarming recognition. In 1984, Lena Spencer Day was declared by Mayor Ellsworth Jones; in 1987, retiring Skidmore College president Joseph Palamountain awarded her the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, and Hamilton Alley, alongside the building, was renamed Lena Lane. Early in 1989, the Saratoga County Arts Council presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award.17 But her life grew no easier. She had arrived in Saratoga in 1959 to find

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SOURCES

1 the first years of spencer’s life are documented in a typewritten autobiographical essay begun january 8, 1989; unfortunately she did not complete it. (Caffè lena Collection, historical society of saratoga springs)2 debbi snook, “Caffe lena: Good Folk for twenty Years,” Times Union, 11 May 1980, e-1.3 Caffe Lena: Good Folk Since 1960, n.d. [1985], unpaged.4 “Coffeehouse opening attracts Good turnout,” Saratogian, 21 May 1960, 3.5 Clinton heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades (New York: summit, 1989), 55.6 the master list, 1960-85, is contained in Caffe Lena: Good Folk Since 1960. see, for example, the news story about emmylou harris’ first appearance, “New singer at Caffe,” Saratogian, 7 june 1968, 14. 7 Mae C. Banner, “she had a Place that Will live Forever,” Saratogian, 24 october 1989, 1a.8 The Gallery Theatre Ensemble, Inc. Presents Theatre ’65-’66, booklet, ssPl.9 Valerie Graber, “Caffe lena approaches 16th Year,” Kite, 14 May 1975, 1.10 terrence Petty, “hard times Continue to Plague Caffe lena,” Saratogian, 27 May 1983, 4C.11 “readers’ Forum: Caffe lena is Needed by City,” Saratogian, 29 jan. 1968, 4.12 “dPs Closes up Caffe lena,” Saratogian, 26 january 1968, 3; “Wheels Begin turning to reopen Caffe lena,” Saratogian, 29 jan. 1968, 3; “Benefit set to aid Caffe lena,” Saratogian, 27 jan. 1968, 3; “Caffe lena schedules March 22 opening date,” Saratogian, 12 Mar. 1968, 3.13 Banner, loc.cit.14 story told to Field horne by an unknown informant, 1989.15 see jim reilly, “Christmas traditions at Caffe lena,” Saratogian, 13 dec. 1985, 1C.16 “lena opens renovated theater, Caffe,” Saratogian, 3 Mar. 1980, 4B; Michael Mooney, “lena’s New look,” Spa City Spectator, 5-18 Mar. 1980, 6.17 “lena spencer day,” Saratogian, 26 september 1984, 1C; ron emery, “It’s Graduation day for lena spencer,” Schenectady Gazette, 8 May 1987, 15; jill Murnan, “Name dropping in saratoga springs: Council renames street after Caffe lena owner,” Times Union, 8 oct. 1987, B-2; Mary Caroline Powers, “lena spencer symbolizes a true dedication to arts,” Saratogian, 19 Mar. 1989, 1F.18 Graber, op.cit.19 “Grand lady of the Folk Circuit, lena spencer, 66, dies after Fall,” Schenectady Gazette, 24 oct. 1989, 21; Brin Quell, “a People’s song Quietly ends,” Times Union, 24 oct. 1989, B-1. 20 “Caffe lena to stay open,” Saratogian, 12 sept. 1989, 1a; donald McKay, “Caffe lena May Go Non-Profit to survive,” Saratogian, 15 jan. 1990, 3a. 21 abigail Klingbeil, “Caffe lena to Buy Its Building,” Saratogian, 27 Feb. 1998, 3a; rik stevens, “Friends of Caffe lena Close on Coffeehouse,” Daily Gazette, 19 dec. 1998, B-5.

Bob dylan, Suze ritolo and Lena Spencer with cat Pasha in the caffé, 1961. dylan was heckled by the audience but Lena asked him to return.

housing very affordable. It no longer was. In 1979, she was forced out of a vast 23-room duplex in the Collamer Building for which she had paid forty dollars a month, and she was pushed out of two smaller flats in the decade that followed, the result of Saratoga’s gentrification. In the last year or two of her life, she was reduced to sleeping in a chair in the caffè’s back room. And her health was failing, though she didn’t admit it. Caffè Lena kept her going, and she kept it going. “It has become a way of life. I don’t know what I’d do without it,” she said.18 Early in her career, she had encouraged a young talent, the monologist Spalding Gray. Now famous, he was scheduled to perform on September 9, 1989 at The Egg in Albany. Lena looked forward to the show, and was leaving with her niece when she fell down the building’s staircase, striking her head. Doctors later thought she had suffered a heart attack. Rushed to Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, she slipped into a coma from which she never emerged. On October 23, Lena passed away, leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of friends to mourn her.19 Of course, Lena had never been big on planning, and the caffè was at risk of going into limbo. A group of her friends

met within days of her fall and kept it operating. At her death, the problem of Caffè Lena’s future came to the fore. Her only heirs were two older brothers in Massachusetts; then, again, she left no property, except the “name and goodwill” of the business. Jimmy and Eddie Nargi graciously consented to sell the business to a new nonprofit corporation, Caffè Lena Inc., following its organizing meeting in January 1990.20 The new operation steered a careful course between tradition and innovation. Under paid managers, booking continued substantially the same, with many of the old performers mixing with new faces. Changes were made to improve the audience’s experience, including installation of central air conditioning. While Lena had been operating “for profit” but never made one, the new organization was intended to be nonprofit. By 1994, however, it had accumulated a discouraging debt of $14,000. The board responded decisively, and by combining austerity, successful shows, and contributions, retired the debt in five months. Soon after, Sarah Craig arrived as its fifth manager and stayed. Under Craig’s competent administration, the institution began to thrive.

Ever since Bill and Lena arrived in the Morris Minor, the building at 45–47 Phila had been owned by the family of Carole Siegel and Sondra Silverhart, who had forsaken rent increases to help Lena. In 1989, the monthly rent was an absurd $350. By the turn of the millennium, the sisters decided to sell their holdings, and the rent, while no longer rock bottom, was still artificially low. The organization recognized it faced a likely tripling of its rent expense under any new owner, and in February 1998 took on the challenge of buying the building. Many hands helped to raise the $350,000 purchase price, spurred along by major gifts from the Adirondack Trust Company, Stewart’s Shops, the Saratoga Foundation, and an anonymous friend, along with a substantial state grant. On December 16, 1998, the organization closed on the purchase.21 The past decade has been a time of solid growth for Caffè Lena, which has continued making improvements (such as extensive rewiring and the replacement of the original bentwood chairs) and keeping up with new musical offerings. In late 2009, yet another challenge presented itself, when it was discovered the building’s first floor was failing,

and again the board addressed the issue quickly, making plans for reconstruction in the near future. Under Craig’s management, programming has flourished. Caffè Lena hosts over 400 events a year and is in operation five nights a week. Wednesday’s “Emerging Artists Breakout” draws teen-agers and encourages their artistic development. Thursdays are usually “open mic” nights for an older crowd; one Wednesday each month is a poetry open mic, and every two months on a Monday a storytellers’ open mic takes over. Occasional Sunday afternoon family concerts draw parents with small children. And every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, members of

Lena at the espresso machine, 1961.

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the audience drive from as far as Quebec, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to see a show. Its fame is so great that, in 2008, it was named “the best small venue in North America” by the International Folk Alliance. On May 20, 2010, the caffè will mark its fiftieth anniversary with a major concert. Few businesses endure for half a century, and fewer still do so when they are founded on a dream. Caffè Lena contributes something intangible but wonderful to the city of Saratoga Springs and its region. It is Lena Spencer’s legacy, the gift of a remarkable personality who chose Saratoga Springs as her home and gave to it more than she ever received. SL