From Club 47 to Passim: Harvard Square’s Folk Room
Joan Baez started singing there as a BU student in 1958. Bob Dylan played between sets for free. The club is still going on Palmer Street.
In 1958 Joyce Kalina and Paula Kelley opened a small club in Cambridge and named it after its address: Club 47, at 47 Mount Auburn Street. That same year a Boston University student named Joan Baez started singing there, and she kept playing it regularly into the early 1960s.
In 1961 a young Bob Dylan reportedly played between sets for free. Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop came through too. The club moved around the corner to Palmer Street in 1963.
Club 47, Passim, Club Passim
In 1969 it was renamed Passim. In 1994 it became a nonprofit and took the name it has now, Club Passim, a combination of the two earlier names.
It’s still a small basement room in Harvard Square where you sit close to the stage, with dinner for ticket holders and a music school on the side. See what’s on at Club Passim this week.
Sources: Wikipedia: Club Passim.
