"...unless, of course, you play folk music, where everybody there is sipping on their coffees, and the performer is only there as a token accessory to the room!!!"

I don't know what the coffeehouses are like where you live, GfS, but it was and is far different here.

First of all, there is a big difference between a coffeehouse and a coffee shop. A coffee shop is usually a limited service restaurant or a cafeteria. Self-catered. You pick up your pie and coffee, pay for it at the cash register, and carry it to a table. Or someplace like Starbuck's or Tully's where you sit with your laptop at a table and drink an overpriced latté and use the shop's wireless router to surf the web. Or walk up to a counter, place your order, and walk out with a pint of dark-roasted coffee in a paper cup.

A coffeehouse is something quite different. They go back several centuries. In fact, the first coffeehouse in England was The Angel, which opened, not in London, but in Oxford (not surprising perhaps, because Oxford was a college town and had been since the 1200s). Since great men used to frequent them and engage in bull-sessions about lofty subjects, they were often referred to as "penny universities" because someone could buy a cup of coffee (price, 1¢), sit there and sip it while eavesdropping on discussions of great matters between great minds, and listen to artist and poets talk among themselves about their work. One could get a halfway decent education that way.

The coffeehouses crossed the Atlantic and opened up in places like Boston and Philadelphia, where there, too, they were frequented by artists and writers—and such questionable characters as Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin.

When, in the late 1940s, coffeehouses began opening in New York and (again) Boston and Philadelphia, the same sort of people frequented them as had centuries before. Along with myriads of chess players and—lo!—singers of folk songs! Then they vaulted across the continent and sprang up like mushrooms in places like Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Then, in the late 1950s, Seattle.

Each of Seattle's coffeehouses had its own character. The Café Encore was a hole in the wall, didn't have any regular singers, but counted on singers to drop in, and didn't pay. One sang for tips. It sort of limped along. And whether there was a singer there or not was very off and on. The owner was an antique dealer, and that was his real business.

The Place Next Door was a very nice establishment, was run by the owner of the movie theater next door (hence the name). The theater ran foreign and art films. The adjacent coffeehouse was large and had a stage from which singers performed. It didn't just have a folk singer as a "token accessory to the room."   The stage was small, but it was complete with spotlights and a PA system (not really necessary, because the room had good acoustics). Specialty coffees and teas, lavish pastries, exotic sandwiches, cheese boards, quite up-scale. It was like a non-alcoholic night club, and the singer sang in sets. Maybe seven or eight songs followed by at least a twenty minute, more likely a half-hour, intermission.

When the singer came on, the conversation stopped. If someone clueless person kept babbling, they would be shushed by the other patrons. The owner paid quite well. I sang there every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday through most of 1959 before I went to San Francisco for a few months, then returned to "The Place" where I continued to sing three nights a week, off and on, for several years.

Some of the after-show crowd used to drop in, not just from the theater next door, but after symphony concerts, ballets, or operas, and it was not uncommon to see a few people there in tuxes or formal gowns.

In addition to its being a very nice place to sing, I was frequently hired for other gigs by people who heard me there. Some of those other gigs included concerts at Seattle University, Grays Harbor College, the Port Angeles Centennial celebration, the Port Townsend Arts Festival. . . .

And other coffeehouses in the area tended to follow the pattern set by The Place Next Door. In fact, one coffeehouse (the Queequeg in the University District) had a full-blown stage with lights and PA system (again, not really necessary), and all the tables were oriented so that the patrons faced the stage. Eric Bjornstadt, the owner not only hired local singers on a regular basis, but he would bring singers in from out of town. Rolf Cahn not only sang there for two weeks, he gave workshops and lessons while he was here.

And there were other coffeehouses of this type in Seattle. The Pamir House, across the street and down the block from the Queequeg, that usually had two, three, or four singers going at any one time, swapping songs and doing impromptu duets, trios, etc.. It was more like an informal song fest and the audiences loved it! El Matador on Westlake Avenue, which also used a night club type format. I was singing there one night when Shel Silverstein who was in town that weekend dropped in and did a guest set (he's the cartoonist/songwriter who wrote "A Boy Named Sue").

No. The singer was not just a no-name, nondescript distraction noodling away in a corner. He or she was the reason the audience was there. If all you wanted was to sip on a cup of coffee, there were plenty of coffee shops around that would sell you a cup for (in 1950s-60s prices) 15¢. Why pay 75¢ for a cup of regular coffee? Or $1.85 for a cappuccino? Or maybe $2.25 for a café mocha? No. They didn't come to the coffeehouse just for the fancy libations. They came to hear the folk singer.

And you know what? It's still going on. And in addition to a regular singer or singers, some coffeehouses these days have full-blown concerts on certain evenings or afternoons. And they charge admission. And they're very well attended.

Don Firth