Cafe Wha? — Greenwich Village, New York

Cafe Wha? at 115 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village was where Bob Dylan performed his first New York shows in January 1961, having arrived from Minneapolis with little more than his guitar and an encyclopedic knowledge of folk and blues records. The basement club — run by Manny Roth, uncle of David Lee Roth — was a daytime folk and comedy venue that gave performers a platform in exchange for passing the hat. Jimi Hendrix also played here in 1966 when he arrived in New York from Nashville, where he had been working as a session musician, and it was at Cafe Wha? that Chas Chandler of the Animals discovered him and offered to take him to London.

MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village was the axis of the early 1960s folk revival — the Gaslight Cafe at 116 MacDougal, the Bitter End on Bleecker, the Folklore Center on MacDougal — and Cafe Wha? was its most accessible entry point. The club's policy of giving unknown performers stage time created the conditions for one of the most concentrated eruptions of musical talent in American history: Dylan, Hendrix, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and many others used the Wha? as a starting point.

Cafe Wha? still operates at the same MacDougal Street address and presents live music nightly. It has been trading on its history for decades, but the building and the street retain their Village character. The neighbourhood around MacDougal and Bleecker Streets — Washington Square Park a block away — is one of the most historically significant music geographies in America.