Caffè Lena : inside America's legendary folk music coffeehouse

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Summary

In 1960, burgeoning actress and defiant dreamer Lena Spencer opened a small, grassroots coffeehouse in the quaint upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs. Within her then-husband's plan to start ...

In 1960, burgeoning actress and defiant dreamer Lena Spencer opened a small, grassroots coffeehouse in the quaint upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs. Within her then-husband's plan to start the Caffe as a means for the couple to artistically flourish while "making enough money to retire in Europe" lay the seed of a more impactful cultural contribution that would change music history forever. It was a time in America when a coffeehouse could be something more--a focal point for a different sort of people, radical new ideas, and notably, emerging artists. Caffe Lena's humble stage regularly welcomed musicians such as a young Bob Dylan in 1961, the singer/activist Bernice Johnson Reagon in 1962, and a pre-"American Pie" Don McLean in 1965. Quickly, Caffe Lena took its place among the nation's foremost incubators of an American folk movement that inspired a generation of musicians, artists, and thinkers and a country in need of a new vision of equality, freedom, and understanding. Fortunately for posterity, camera shutters were often snapping in time to the music, and so an intimate visual record of Caffe Lena's early years exists.

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