The Night Of Gloria’s Night-With One Huddie Leadbetter In Mind

By Lester Lannon

“You know Washington is kind of behind the times, kind of behind Boston, New York, and San Francisco on this folk revival that has been sweeping up college students around the country,” Selena Ryan told her friend, and the woman who was putting her up for the weekend, Gloria Davis as they walked up Wisconsin and 32^nd Street in Georgetown heading to the Pig& Calf Coffeehouse where they were to hear Billy Bottoms doing his covers of the great Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie songs. Truth to tell Gloria did not know who Billy Bottoms was, nor who Lead Belly or Woody Guthrie were either and while she did not consider herself a square when it came to such cultural affairs she was as likely to follow the trends of her college generation (she Georgetown, Class of 1964, and Selena Boston University, same year). The problem was, as Selena had put the matter in a nutshell, that in all of Northeast Washington, meaning college Washington, meaning either Georgetown or George Washington University both located only a stone’s throw from the Pig &Calf  that establishment was the only known coffeehouse which catered to the folk revival in the whole city. And so Gloria’s not knowing the previously mentioned names was not an oddity in itself but reflected the back-water nature of D.C. in this folk revival thing.     

The Pig & Calf moreover had only been established about six month before when Selena’s friend, Michael Greenleaf, who owned Mike’s across the street from the Village Vanguard in New York City decided that D.C. was becoming a center of attraction for college students and that setting up a coffeehouse with all the cheap date perks that had become associated with such establishments had become a financial possibility. Those students were coming into town to support the civil right workers working down further south and increasingly coming down on the Boston-Washington corridor to protest nuclear proliferation and other social issues at the Washington Monument and the White House. Hence Selena’s presence here this night the first chance she had gotten to check the place out since it opened. Bringing Gloria, her best friend from high school and something of a social butterfly at social butterfly Georgetown (except the School of Diplomacy), was meant to get the word out that while rock and roll was still cool a new form of music was coming down the lane. Or really as the playlist that Billy had sent Selena a few days before suggested an old form of music for new listeners was coming down the pike and combined with the political activism might have a long-term effect on the world.    

Selena had been shocked when Gloria didn’t know who Billy was, got a further shock when she didn’t know what a coffeehouse was, at least the latest incarnation of the institution that really went back to seventeenth century England as place for the advanced element to hang out and communicate with each other. Selena had spent about an hour earlier that afternoon explaining the evolving etiquette of the folk scene. Number one was to sip the damn coffee slowly to insure that you could keep your place at the table in places like the Pig& Calf where there was no cover charge. And hence the charm of such places in college towns when guys who didn’t have much money could take a date, a cheap date out and spent a couple of hours or more (depending on how fast that coffee was sipped) for no more that the price of a couple of exotic expressos (which allowed one to sip very slowly since they provided such a rush) and maybe a shared brownie or other pastry. Throw a couple of bucks in the “basket” (which could be a hat or tin cup) for the performer since this was their “pay” and done. Gloria, used to the more cosmopolitan dining out at decent restaurants with dates who had dough enough to spring for such fare had to laugh as Selena in all seriousness described the “etiquette.” But she was determined to be good-natured about the upcoming event and so let Selena rattle on.

As they approached the Pig& Calf Selena could see that Mike was at the door controlling the flow into the coffeehouse although unlike a Saturday night in Boston or New York there was no line going half-way up the street. (That had been how Mike had originally gotten his start across from the Village Vanguard as the folk revival picked up steam and lines formed in that establishment to get in and the overflow would head to Mike’s which was nice and with no cover. In fact in the Village directions to Mike’s place were identified as “Mike’s across the street from the Village Vanguard.”) Mike seated them up close to the small stage in front of the house at a table for two and Selena ordered two expressos for them (an item Gloria had never had before. They decided to hold off on the brownie until they were hungry later.).

A few moments later Billy Bottom came out with guitar in hand and sat down on a stool with a mic set-up in front and began to tune up his guitar to start his first set. Selena had failed to tell Gloria that despite his being a folk-singer and hence wearing the traditional flannel shirt, blue jeans, sandals, and longish hair that he had the sexiest bedroom blue eyes she had seen lately and a nice built too unlike the idea she had formed from what Selena had told her about male folk performers. She was fixated on what he was doing as he started strumming his first song- Woody’s Pretty Boy Floyd and she noticed that he was giving her a couple of peeks too and a wicked smile. That went on through the first set, mainly an alternating mix between Woody and Lead Belly ending with Huddy’s Good Night, Irene.     

After the completion of the first set (the first of three-traditional in one performer coffeehouses as Gloria found out that night) Selena, who had known Billy since her weekend trips to the Village when he played at Mike’s and had had a very brief affair with him before she latched on to Sam Levine, a local Boston poet, introduced them. After that Selena might have well have been on another planet for all the conversation that got directed her way.       

Nothing happened between Gloria and Billy that night but he was invited over to her apartment the next afternoon before Selena headed back to Boston. Ever ready with a song he played Lead Belly’s Bourgeois Blues about how in the old days blacks coming up from down south had found Washington an inhospitable town which made Gloria laugh. Well what else can one say except that Billy and Gloria eventually hit the sheets. Oh yeah, and Gloria took Selena’s place in conducting “classes” in coffeehouse etiquette for her gang of friends at Georgetown. And also while they were waiting in the line that went half-way up the street on Friday and Saturday nights to get into the Pig &Calf.