Paul Colby, Owner of Club That Helped the Rise of Greenwich Village

Paul Colby outside the Bitter End in 1992. The club is still standing years after most others from its heyday have closed. Keith Meyers/The New York Times

Paul Colby, the owner since 1974 of the Bitter End, a celebrated coffeehouse-cum-nightclub that helped make Greenwich Village a legendary place by showcasing young performers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Billy Crystal and countless others, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 96.

The Bitter End announced his death.

“On behalf of all of us in the business of moving the emotions with our imaginations, special thanks to Paul Colby for being one of us,” Kris Kristofferson wrote in his foreword to Mr. Colby’s 2002 memoir (written with Martin Fitzpatrick), “The Bitter End: Hanging Out at America’s Nightclub.”

Mr. Colby bought the club, at 147 Bleecker Street near La Guardia Place, about a decade after he began managing it. It provided him with a lifetime of memories: watching Van Morrison kick over tables for dramatic effect; hearing Allen Ginsberg read poetry; seeing Woody Allen so nervous that he tried to crawl out a window just before he was due onstage to do his stand-up routine. James Taylor, in one of his early appearances, bombed. Mr. Crystal did six shows in 1976 for a total of $500. 

Among the many other performers who played at the club — which seats only 150 people and holds 80 more — were Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne and Neil Diamond.

In 1992, the folk singer Tom Paxton told The New York Times that the Bitter End was a “place to learn, to be bad, a place where you could clock your hours, learn what worked and didn’t.” Mr. Kristofferson told The Times that it was the place where “people like me and Bob Dylan didn’t just perform, we came to hang out.”

Other Greenwich Village clubs, including the Village Gate, Cafe Wha? and the Village Vanguard, were integral parts of the same scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, that scene began well before then: In the late 1950s, a club called the Cock and Bull occupied the space that would become the Bitter End and offered a similar format. But the Bitter End acquired cachet — not least because of its distinctive brick walls — and is still standing years after most other clubs from its heyday have closed.

The club was started in 1961 by Fred Weintraub, who named it for its nocturnal appearance. A graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he had abandoned marriage and children and a successful baby-carriage business in search of a “more authentic way of life,” he said in a biographical sketch on his website. He played the piano in a bordello and operated a fishing boat in Cuba and roamed Europe before deciding the Greenwich Village music scene was where he wanted to be.

One of the first acts to perform at the Bitter End was a new group called Peter, Paul and Mary; they used the brick walls as the backdrop for the cover of their first album.

Mr. Weintraub hired Mr. Colby to manage the club and book acts in 1965. It did not have a license to serve alcohol at the time but did offer coffee-and-ice-cream drinks with names like Frosty Freud and Zen Sundae.

He entered the music business when he was hired by a publisher to deliver sheet music, then worked his way up to music promoter. Frank Sinatra often used him for personal errands, like picking up Ava Gardner at the airport.

In recent years Mr. Colby had two partners in the club, Paul Rizzo and Ken Gorka. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Rizzo noted that although fewer stars appear in small clubs these days, the Bitter End still has its share of stars-to-be: Stefani Germanotta, for example, appeared there in 2006. She later took the name Lady Gaga.