ABSTRACT
Clubs that offer vernacular music have changed since the time of Prohibition. The clubs have always been sought out by young, middle-class listeners looking for ever more intimate, bohemian hangouts. The few years in the sixties when young people were deserting the bars for coffeehouses with entertainment was a particularly dramatic moment in that search, which has not been abandoned even though the entertainment has largely left the coffeehouses. For the most part, people no longer dance to live music in the clubs, which have also come to be less subject to the control of underworld characters and their allies, perhaps because the clubs are less profitable. For the last forty years, music clubs have had some characteristics in common. They tend to be small, and consequently economically marginal and risky, squeezed by their expenses, particularly by rents. Often, perhaps usually, they grow up out of neighborhood hangouts that begin to offer music to attract a more diverse crowd; they remain stable if their rents permit them to continue.
