Becoming Barbra: Where Streisand’s star was born

BY MO ROCCA

NOVEMBER 5, 2023 / 9:52 AM EST / CBS NEWS

Everybody’s gotta start somewhere. For nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand, that somewhere was New York’s Bon Soir nightclub. In her memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” Streisand writes: “The Bon Soir was a typical Greenwich Village nightclub … small, dark, and you had to walk down a flight of stairs to get in. In fact, it was so dark that the waiters carried little flashlights.”

It was, said James Gavin, who wrote the book about New York’s cabaret scene in the 1960s, “this exclusive setting that you had to kind of be in the know in order to find your way to. Everybody there was joining in a shared experience of discovery – that was part of the thrill of seeing the likes of Barbra Streisand in one of these clubs, because you knew that you were in on something fabulous that was unfolding before your eyes.”

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Barbra Streisand performing at the Bon Soir nightclub in New York City.
COLUMBIA RECORDS
The clubs were like little laboratories where some of the most influential figures in American popular culture first found their voices. These places, said Gavin, were havens for misfits. “People who did not fit in anywhere else: Eartha Kitt, Phyllis Diller, Johnny Mathis, Woody Allen. Carol Burnett is another example of somebody who found an adoring audience, and then very quickly went on to huge things. But the ultimate example of that kind of performer is Barbra Streisand.”

Here was a volcano of talent: beguiling … off-beat … and explosive.

To listen to the album “Barbra Streisand: Live at the Bon Soir” click on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full): READ MORE