The Caucus Club
150 W. Congress Street
Detroit, MI
March 2—April 2, 1961
April 6—15, 1961
July 17—August 12, 1961
The Caucus Club, located on the ground floor of the Penobscot Building in Detroit, had dark paneling and brass sconces.
Les Gruber, a restaurateur in Detroit, recalled, “Back in early 1961, Irwin Arthur, a New York agent called me. He said, ‘I’ve just heard a girl at an amateur show at Bon Soir and I think she'd be good for you.’ I have a lot of faith in Arthur’s taste. He knew what we were looking for in youngsters to work the Caucus Club. Everyone he sent me was what he said.”
Ross Chapman, publicist for The Caucus Club, remembered the near fiasco of hiring Streisand: “We told her she had four spots to do at the Caucus and she'd need at least 11 numbers. I asked how she was going to learn seven or eight numbers by nine that night—her first show. She looked me right in the eye and said, ‘‘I’m a fast learner.’ Matt [Michaels, pianist] rehearsed her until eight, when he had to go to work. He got her up to 10 songs. By the time she left Detroit, she knew 80 songs.”
Barbra added “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” from the Broadway musical The Fantasticks to her repertoire. She was accompanied at The Caucus Club by pianist Matt Michaels.
Barbra got her first taste of life on the road outside the comfort zone of New York.
During her Caucus Club gig, Barbra flew to New York to appear on The Jack Paar Show (hosted by Orson Bean). On air, she thanked her Detroit friends Bernie and Dick for clothing her.
It was while Streisand was working at The Caucus Club in Detroit that Marty Erlichman began acting as her agent. He told Vanity Fair in 1991:
She was playing some club in Detroit and was only making $150 a week. She wanted $200 a week plus dinners. Her agent wasn’t helping her out, so she remembered I wanted to represent her. She called and told me her problem. ‘But I can’t pay you any commission,’ she warned me. I got on the first plane to Detroit and worked out a deal. The owners— a pair of brothers—only offered her $175 and no dinners. I told them behind her back I’d pay them the twenty-five-dollar difference if they’d throw in the dinners, which is what happened. The brothers said to me, ‘Let us get this straight. You flew here at your own expense so you could pay us twenty-five dollars and you’re not even her manager? You must really believe this girl is going to be a star.’ I sure as hell did.
It's interesting to look at the contract between Streisand and the restaurateur Lester Gruber for her gigs at the Caucus Club. It's on an AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists) Standard Form of Artists Engagement Contract form.
On one of the contracts, dated March 1, 1961, Streisand's manager at the time (Ted Rozar) signed it with a salary for Barbra of $150 a week.
[Note: Whoever typed up this contract ... oy! Barbra Streisand's name is spelled “Barbara Streichsand”!]
Later, when Streisand appeared at the club in July 1961, her salary was upped to $250 a week.
End.
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