Barney Josephson was born in 1902 Trenton and died in 1988 New York City. His parents were immigrants who landed here in 1900 from Latvia. When he was 36 years old, in 1938, he opened a basement nightclub in Manhattan that launched boogie-woogie and stride piano-playing nationally. Café Society, as it was known, also became the room where Billie Holiday, in 1939, introduced “Strange Fruit” to the world.