The Cabale and Cabale Creamery, 2504 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA

(see also Questing Beast, Tito's and Longbranch)

None of this would be possible without the input from Sandy Rothman, Jesse Cahn, Evelyn Kerr and Sherwood Donahue

Evelyn Kerr's TimeMazine article on Chan Loughlin

Read Part 1 Here	Read Part 2 Here	Read Part 3 Here

TimeMazine Details

This is an excerpt from Sandy Rothman’s brief memoir of the Cabale, written as part of a project on the great Clarence White, which is well worth reviewing.

The Cabale Creamery

Sandy Rothman

It was on San Pablo Avenue, a main north-south thoroughfare parallel to Telegraph on the opposite (west) side of town, at the southwest corner of Dwight Way and San Pablo. I don't recall how "Creamery" got attached to it -- maybe from the steamed milk that was in the cappuccinos and lattes? The name "Cabale" was taken from "Cabala," a medieval system of Jewish mysticism. (Other dictionary definitions are: "a traditional, esoteric, occult, or secret matter" and "an esoteric doctrine or mysterious art." Do any of those terms resonate with bluegrass, nearly a cult in itself?! Hahaha.)

In the early 1960s, there was a ‘folk circuit’ that emphasized serious folk music like Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt (as opposed to the more popular Kingston Trio-style of folk music).  The Cabale was one of the anchors of the circuit, along with Club 47 in Cambridge, many clubs in Greenwich Village (such as the Gaslight and Folk City), the Ark in Ann Arbor and the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.  The story of this circuit is well told in Jim Rooney and Eric Von Schmidt’s book Baby Let Me Follow You Down (U-Mass Press, 1979).

The Cabale, at 2504 San Pablo Avenue (at Dwight), was a folk club founded in late 1962 by Rolf Cahn and Debbie Green (two Cambridge, MA folkies) along with Howard Ziehm and Red Dog alum Chandler A. Laughlin III (later known as Travus T. Hipp).  It opened on January 4, 1963 and ran until mid-1965, when the folk action moved to the Jabberwock.  Somewhere along the way Carroll Peery, manager of the Chambers Brothers and Big Mama Thornton, happened to acquire a majority interest in the Cabale.  Jesse Cahn, son of Cabale founder Rolf and folksinger Barbara Dane, recalls "I was the one who cleaned the johns and swept up and practically lived there until 1965 ...".  Jesse went on to play with Tongue & Groove (with Lynne Hughes and Michael Ferguson) and the Chambers Brothers.  After some time on the East Coast he returned to manage the Jabberwock for Bill "Jolly Blue" Ehlert when he moved across to San Francisco to run the Matrix. The name of the venue was changed to the Cabale Creamery in August of 1964. As a side issue, the one time notoriety of the Cabale/Cabale Creamery coffee house led the local vice squad and FBI to ban the licensing of any business under the name "Cabale" in the future. However, Chan Laughlin (Travus T Hipp) still retains Cabale News Service as his business cover. His broadcasts can be found on kpig.com.

One of the Cabale's founders was Rolf Cahn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who had served in the US Army during the war and also played and taught classical, flamenco, and folk guitar. Bluegrass was scheduled only occasionally at the Cabale, but on the other hand, it was the only club in Berkeley where it was presented at all during that period (1963-4). The usual entertainment at the Cabale included local musicians and quite a few travelling "folk individuals" from the more developed Cambridge folk scene. (The similarity between the Cabale's monthly calendar and that of Cambridge's Club 47 may have been an inspiration for Rick Shubb's placement of Berkeley and Cambridge as next-door neighbours in his legendary "Humbead's Revised Map of the World" poster which may be viewed in the book "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" by Von Schmidt & Rooney). Physically, the Cabale was a fairly small, long and narrow, dark room with the ambience of a '50s Beat coffeehouse. Coffee drinks were made at the far end of the room. When the Colonels played there the stage was against the long wall on the north side of the room (the right side as you walked in); later, it was on the short wall just inside and to the right of the entrance.

The name was amended from simply "the Cabale" to the Cabale Creamery in August 1964.  The site of the Cabale Creamery became, briefly The Good Buddy (a poster from May 1965 survives), Caverns West and then, in the Fall of 1965, it became a club called The Questing Beast. Much of the performance history of the Questing Beach (November 1965 to May 1966) has been demystified (see here) due to the availability of posters, handbills and advertisements in the Berkeley Barb. Subsequently it became Tito’s, The Babylon and then in the early 1970s The Longbranch.

A List of Cabale Shows