Concord Hotel 1963 Lake Kiamesha

Streisand / LIVE 

Concord Hotel (1963)

Lake Kiamesha, New York
 
August 9, 1963
Ad for Streisand at the Concord Hotel
Barbra Archives Note: This show at the Concord is one of those discrepancies that come up now and again when doing research on the early club dates of Barbra Streisand. In historical newspaper ads, Streisand is listed as playing at the Concord first on August 31, and then on August 9. Well, according to other notes, Barbra played the Lido in Long Island on August 9. Singer Tony Martin is sometimes listed as playing Aug. 10, but there are also news blurbs out there in which he canceled shows around that time due to sickness; he also played a date close to the 10th in Monte Carlo. It's possible Streisand booked the Lido Club on the 9th, then took over Martin's Concord spot on the 10th.
The Concord Resort Hotel was a world-famous destination for visitors to the Borscht Belt part of the Catskills, known for its large resort industry in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.

Comedian Norm Crosby played The Concord and remembered it fondly: “The Concord was huge. The stage was enormous and the people that came up there were mostly New Yorkers that just came up for the weekend. They were a great audience once they got to know you. You'd walk out to an ovation. The same clientele summer after summer, year after year.”

In the book It Happened in the Catskills: An Oral History in the Words of Busboys, Bellhops, Guests, Proprietors, Comedians, Agents, and Other Who Lived It, Robert Towers wrote: “Streisand came up on a Friday night before she made Funny Girl. The William Morris Agency said, ‘Look, you're getting her for $500. Later on you won't be able to buy her for anything.’ She came up—a little girl in a gunnysack dress with a big voice. She tore the place apart.”

Comedienne Marilyn Michaels agreed “it was like you made it if you headlined The Concord. Big place. At the time they had these knockers to applaud with. They didn't use their hands, they used these wooden sticks with wooden balls at the end of them. If they really liked you then they used their hands.”

The Concord Hotel was demolished in 2008.


End / The Concord
Share by: