Richard Barone

VILLAGE PRESERVATION PRESENTS RICHARD BARONE’S ‘VILLAGE NIGHTS’ AT THE BITTER END, NYC Village Preservation is pleased to bring musician and author Richard Barone’s revitalized new series, VILLAGE NIGHTS, to the Bitter End nightclub with four unique events in 2026. Each event will focus on a specific decade of the Village’s musical history, featuring legendary musical guests and panel discussions with noted journalists, authors, and historians. These events promise to be as educational and informative as they will be entertaining. The Bitter End is located at 147 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012. Even by 1939, when Billie Holiday debuted the sociopolitical jazz classic “Strange Fruit” at Café Society on Sheridan Square, Greenwich Village had already long been viewed as the bohemian epicenter of revolutionary movements in music, art, and culture. With the advent of the first folk music revival of the 1940s and 50s — especially the commercial breakthrough of Pete Seeger and the Weavers, and the success of venues such as the Village Vanguard — the Village came under the bright glare of media attention as a center for popular music. With each subsequent decade, especially between the 1950s and 1980s, the musical output of Greenwich Village evolved and changed with the times, strikingly inventing and reinventing genres and styles that had national and international impact. The popularity of jug band music and calypso, the jazz poets, the singer-songwriter, the avant-garde art rocker, the punk rocker, the Fast Folk movement, and more — all shared the birthplace of Greenwich Village.