Several years ago — and when I say "several" I mean more like 55 — a group of us used to play lunchtime basketball at Lehigh. Among the noontime players was Dave Fry, a long-haired Lehigh student with whom I became friends.
Dave announced one day in the early '70s that he intended to open a coffee house. I found this absolutely extraordinary because, at the time, it required all of my post-work energy just to balance my checkbook, and not because there was a lot of money in the checkbook. Dave, who was not yet through with his Lehigh studies, was going to open an actual business that required adult things like plumbing and heating, and in his case, sound. And he was opening it on the South side of Bethlehem, a deliciously and ethnically rich part of town, but not exactly peopled by millionaires, unless you count some of the parents of Lehigh students. "Good luck, Dave," I thought.
But Dave was coming from a very specific place with a very specific vision. He was himself a performer, a guitar, mandolin, singer-songwriter who was in a band in Lehigh and would very soon meet up with a group of guys who would become the Shimersville Sheiks, still an immortal local group. "I was looking for a place where I could go and listen to professional musicians; a place that wasn't a bar or total chaos," Dave told me, "I wanted a place where people would listen."
From the beginning, the noun that Dave sought for his place was "listening room" more than "coffee house." It fit. Most of us begin listening to music in a room, usually in our bedroom; something we had for our ourselves. For our consumption, not for our parents, not even for our friends.
But it was still a leap of faith for someone in his early 20s to open up a business on the Southside. "Why did you think you could make this work," I asked Dave. He had one word: "Tomfoolery." There was some tomfoolery inside of Dave — still is. The name Godfrey Daniels came from an old W.C. Fields curse line: "Godfrey Daniels," he used to say to get around censors. So, Godfrey Daniels, or Godfrey's as it became, opened on March 18, 1976.
Think of the music scene at that time — McCartney had formed Wings, Stevie Wonder was in his prime. Elton John, Queen, Steve Miller, Hall and Oates, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor. Hell, Elvis was still recording. But Dave was looking for something else; people who played folk music, people who told stories, people who liked sing-alongs, people who played, for want of a better word, quietly. People who brought people together.
He needed help, of course, and he got it from many people, such as Bruce Watson, the proprietor of the Lehigh Tavern on 4th Street, one of those loud places Dave was talking about. It was Bruce who suggested the locale for Godfrey's — a former donut shop located next door. There were dozens of willing volunteers, none more important than Cindy Dinsmore, who is Dave's cofounder.
"Word got around," Dave told me, "And it was because of the musicians themselves. It was word of mouth." The musicians learned from each other, too, and those who didn't know the lessons of an intimate club like Godfrey's had to learn them. You had to interact with the audience. You had to turn it into an experience. I have never gone to a show at Godfrey's when I didn't feel a joint connection: audience to performer, performer to audience.
Dave, himself, opened up that first evening at Godfrey's. Fittingly, he played Here Comes the Sun, written by George Harrison, the quiet Beatle. As he approaches almost 50 years in business, the sun is still shining on that former donut shop, now a listening room on the Southside of Bethlehem, thought of and executed by a long-haired kid with a long-range vision.
