NEW YORK - Art D’Lugoff, whose famed New York City nightclub, the Village Gate, featured performers from jazz great Duke Ellington to 1960s counterculture rocker Jimi Hendrix, has died at age 85, his brother Burt said.
Mr. D’Lugoff, who lived in the Bronx, died Wednesday at a Manhattan hospital.
Mr. D’Lugoff hired blacklisted singers Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger and fired Dustin Hoffman as a waiter.
Hoffman, then a struggling actor, later said he was so distracted by the performers that he neglected customers.
