I admired Lorraine Gordon tremendously, though on my various trips to the Vanguard over the years, I did my best to stay out of her way — and out of her line of fire…you never knew when you might get zapped. She was an intense and highly informed listener, dating back to the early ’30s, but never allowed nostalgia to inform her judgments when booking the VV after Max Gordon died. She always remained in the here-and-now, and kept the Vanguard on the cutting edge of the music.
In 2002 she asked me to conduct an oral history with her for the Hatch-Billops Oral History collections. We did it, and I transcribed it, but unfortunately don’t have the text of that interview, which is in the Hatch-Billops Archives at Emory University. If you’ve read her autobiography, pretty much everything we discussed is in there anyway, and she also told elements of her life story in an oral history conducted by Anthony Brown for the Smithsonian after she was dubbed an NEA Jazz Master (this is easy to find on-line if you’re interested). I did have a chance to write about her in 2005, in a Downbeat piece framed around the Vanguard’s 70th anniversary. (You can find it on my blog, if you google my name and Lorraine’s.)
I’m linking here to the full Downbeat piece, which was about the emergence of modern jazz in Greenwich Village during the ’50s; and am pasting below a more targeted and pithy article for the New York Daily News about the Vanguard’s 2005 anniversary, and the interview that I conducted with Lorraine Gordon for this article.
******
Lorraine Gordon (Village Vanguard, Jan. 20, 2005):
TP: …the decor hasn’t changed. Over the banquettes on the west end of the club, paintings of the Vanguard, vintage jazz photographs–Monk, Mingus, Coltrane, Thad Jones, Charlie Haden, Cecil Taylor, Joe Henderson, Sphere, etc. There’s the Butero painting over the bar, which looks like it hasn’t been clean or lit in 70 years. A big euphonium against one wall. Old posters…
LORRAINE: Here I am. Let’s go sit over here, if you don’t mind. It’s cold here.
TP: All right, Lorraine. At 70 years old, the Vanguard, it seems to me, doing a quick guess, is roughly 45 years older than any other jazz club in New York. It seems the Blue Note would be second. Why has the Vanguard lasted so long?
LORRAINE: Hmm. Which answer do you want? Column A, B or C?
TP: Why don’t you give me all of them?
LORRAINE: Because it just happens to be a special room that is the way it almost was 70 years ago. It’s not exactly the same. It’s been cleaned up, gussied up, painted. The shape is the same. The atmosphere is the same. So it’s a room that hasn’t been transformed with some glitz and glamour to keep up with today’s instant times. It tries to be what it IS—a jazz room. Right now, it doesn’t serve food. It did years ago. So that’s one reason that people like to come here. They’re familiar with it—the ones that have been here before, obviously. And even the ones who have never been here are always amazed to see what a simple room it is, but so aligned to the feeling of jazz with the photos on the wall, and the bandstand so close to the people. When they come here, the’re not sitting out in Siberia. So there’s an intimacy about the room as far as jazz music goes, because if you’re going to sit in a hall with 5,000 seats, you’ll hear things, but you’re not getting the essence of at least what I think is real jazz.
[LORRAINE’S FRIED RICE ARRIVES]
TP: Do you recall when you first went to the Vanguard?
LORRAINE: Oh, I certainly do. I remember standing back at the bar with my friends at the Newark Hot Club. I didn’t know who Max Gordon was. He was sitting over there by the bar, and we were in the corner there. We came from Newark. Right there at that left corner. The globe wasn’t there, the painting wasn’t there. No, I was 16 or 17. It was the dark ages. We were kids, came from Newark, because it was good jazz here. I came to see Leadbelly, who I particularly loved, or whoever was here—if we could get the fare to take the train from Newark to here. We didn’t have a lot of money. We came here, and we’d have a beer, a couple of beers, and pass it around between us. I heard a little man by the cash register, I thought I heard him say, “Get rid of those kids.” Whoa! I vowed revenge.
TP: So you married him.
LORRAINE: Yeah! [LAUGHS]
TP: So apart from the accoutrements, the banquettes are as they were?
LORRAINE: Everything is the way you see it. But the pictures on the wall were cockeyed. Max had no eye to straighten pictures. And there weren’t as many as these. We had done the whole walls with the photos, at least made them audible to the eye. Before they were just helter-skelter. The original murals were done by Paul Petrov, the most fabulous murals in the wall. I wonder why Max took them down. I have copies of them on long paper. But they were so sophisticated, so elegant. I remember those murals more than anything, exactly, because you were just captured by them. Paul Petrov. He’s alive and well, living in Washington, and we keep in touch. But those were the most terrific murals. They were so New York! They were so sophisticated! But then they disappeared.
TP: So when you came here from Newark, you were coming to hear Leadbelly and coming to hear hot jazz mainly, right?
LORRAINE: The only jazz I knew was hot. But before I came here, I used to go to 52nd Street when somebody would take me. So there’s the golden age of jazz, 52nd Street. If you haven’t been there, and obviously you’re too young, that’s where kids like me hung out—if our parents would let us to go to New York. We were very young. So I would go with whomever would take me to hear… Well, let’s put it this way. On one night, you could hear Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Max Kaminsky… I mean, just go from one club to the other. It was a very romantic period in my life.
TP: So this was your late teens and early twenties when you were going…
LORRAINE: Yes.
TP: And did you go at all to the… About when did it start for you? Around 1940-41? A little later.
LORRAINE: It started for me in Newark at the Club Alkazar(?), which was a black club in the black neighborhood where Jabbo Smith was playing. No whites ever went there, except us kids from the Newark Hot Club who were allowed in. Because we were a phenomenon. What were these white kids doing here? Then when Benny Goodman came to town, I ran over to the Adams Theater where the Benny Goodman band was playing. I never went to school when he was in town. And I started collecting jazz records. That was my life.
TP: As far as some of the 52nd Street clubs, did you ever go the Famous Door?
LORRAINE: Yes, that’s on 52nd Street. That was one of them. The Famous Door, the Onyx Club, the Three Deuces… They were just lined them up one after the other. Little places.
TP: Were they all the same to you, or did they have distinct identities?
LORRAINE: Well, the identity of the clubs was… They were like long, narrow first floors in brownstones. Mind you, a lot of these clubs during Prohibition were Speakeasies. So there was a long narrow. There were banquettes on this side, there was a bar as you come in at the right, and they served food as well. Nobody bugged you. You sat down, you ordered a drink or something to eat. There were no minimums or things like that. What did you ask me…
TP: I asked if the clubs had distinct characters, or if they were very similar to each other.
LORRAINE: No, the characters was who played there. Is Billie Holiday the same as Art Tatum? Or you’d go to Jimmy Ryan’s. That was more of a Dixieland (I hate that term, but that’s what we have to call it today) type of musician—Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell, Joe Marsala, people like that. Then you go down the line… It depends who’s playing there. I ran always to hear Billie Holiday. But not always. I didn’t go that often, believe me. Every visit there was just a rapturous treat. And I couldn’t go. I was a kid in New Jersey. But it was an experience. And that will never happen again in jazz clubs in New York.
Then after that came Broadway, with Birdland, the Royal Roost… It kept changing. But it wasn’t the same for me. Even though great artists played there, it was nothing to capture the essence of 52nd Street, which was small and intimate. Like the Vanguard. You’d go to 52nd Street, you’re sitting… You could touch the musicians. They were small and beautifully happy places. That’s all I remember.
TP: Did you ever go to the Spotlite Club, which Clark Monroe owned?
LORRAINE: No, I don’t think so. I was not a specialist. I was glad my mother let me out certain nights.
TP: So you’re trying to maintain in some way the ambiance you recall on 52nd Street in those years.
LORRAINE: I used to love to go to Café Society Downtown, which had Meade Lux Lewis, James P. Johnson, Albert Ammons… This was a very fancy place, fancier than the Vanguard. And that was a great treat to be able to go there. You had to really get dressed up a little.
TP: Can you remember any details about Café Society?
LORRAINE: Yes, it was a wonderful room, with also fantastic murals of the New York scene. Very sophisticated. I think the Vanguard and Café Society, before it all went uptown to the East Side, were very sophisticated clubs, as far as their decor.
TP: So the Vanguard used to be more sophisticated…
LORRAINE: Well, they both were. Because who had murals? These were murals done by very good artists who captured the essence of the New York scene. What can replace the murals that were here when Paul Petrov did this… There’s a huge baby grand piano, and a horse is playing it, and two people are leaning over the hood of the piano listening to the horse… I mean, incredible! I have copies of the murals, which are simply remarkable.
TP: Was Café Society at 1 Sheridan Square, where the Sheridan Square Bookstore used to be?
LORRAINE: Yes. It’s now a theater or whatever it is.
TP: Then you got in the club business after you married Max Gordon.
LORRAINE: No, I didn’t get in the club business at all. I got into the motherhood business, and I had two daughters with Mr. Gordon. I never worked for Max in my whole life until the day he died. I did not get involved with his business. This was his baby.
TP: You had no involvement?
LORRAINE: No, none whatsoever. I had another job. I worked other places, other things. I came to hear the music. But…never.
TP: But how did the Vanguard develop, let’s say, between when you started having kids and when Max died?
LORRAINE: Well, he never gave up the club. He used to have a club uptown, very elegant (I used to be there a lot) called the Blue Angel. Very uptown, East Side, where the beautiful people hung out, shall we say. I spent a lot of time there, because we lived on the East Side, on East 79th. Max was in that club a lot. So this was left, hunkering along somehow. And we had other clubs. We had an old-fashioned ice cream parlor across from the Plaza Hotel, and Max and his partners took over what was Café Society Uptown, and it became Le Directoire. So there was so much action, it’s a miracle I’m talking to you today! Because this is what I did all night. Besides raising the children, being in the peace movement, and being with my husband at night—because we were night people now. There was no daytime except for me to take the kids to school. We had a housekeeper then. All of those accoutrements come into play.
TP: The Vanguard in the late ‘40s and ‘50s didn’t book so much jazz, did it.
LORRAINE: Well, it always had some jazz. It didn’t start out as a jazz club. When we started out… Well, read Max’s book. It’s all in there. It started as poetry. Max was a homeless person in the Village who lived in furnished rooms and hung out at some cafeteria over there on Fifth Avenue where all the poets hung out. Max was a poetic man. He wrote poetry. He was a writer, graduated from Reed College, a very intellectual man. So he really wanted to be with these people whom he admired, but there was no place to go. That’s how he opened the Vanguard. He opened another one around the corner for a little while, and then he came here for the remainder of the 70 years. So this place was simply for poets to go up there and declaim their poetry. There were barrels to sit on. There were war posters maybe from World War One on the wall, political posters. People threw money on the floor. That’s how people got paid. Max didn’t have a fancy bar, and nothing grandiose, no rugs on the floor.
That’s how that started, until the moment one year when these four people came in and asked Max could they maybe introduce themselves, and he should listen to them, and he said, “Sure, go ahead,” and they went up there, and he thought they were brilliant, and he hired them, and the poets went out, and the revuers came in, who turned out to be Judy Holliday, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, and a couple of other people in the act. So Max was off on a new tangent. He suddenly discovered, hey, there’s talent out there beside the poets! So he started listening around and getting more and more people. So that’s how that started. So now he had folk singers, he had vocalists, he had all kinds of talent. But all good talent. Nothing commercial or stupid. It was all very high-class talent, which he would book here and train here, and then bring them up to the fancy Blue Angel on East 55th Street. So Eartha Kitt got up there, and Pearl Bailey got up there, and Harry Belafonte got up there. They all started here.
TP: Then you had the hipsters and the comedians later on, in the ‘50s.
LORRAINE: Yeah, then there was Lenny Bruce. Irwin Corey forever [1942], the funniest man in the world.
TP: Kerouac.
LORRAINE: Kerouac was not a comedian, but he was here. He came always in the back. We kind of looked at him…
TP: By that time, when Lenny Bruce and the comedians were here, was the Vanguard booking primarily jazz?
LORRAINE: Look, this place became a jazz club when television took all the artists away that Max could employ. Stand-up comics, singers, whatever. Television wiped out the Blue Angel, and could have wiped this place out. So Max switched to jazz in the early ‘80s.
TP: Late ‘50s, I think.
LORRAINE: I meant ‘50s. I’m sorry. You can correct that.
TP: You get the last word.
LORRAINE: No, not with you. I try hard, though. It’s a fight to the finish.
TP: Most people who read the Daily News aren’t jazz aficionados, and they’re not going to know that there have been how many records recorded at the Vanguard since 1957? 50? More than 50?
LORRAINE: Over 100 recordings. Look on our website. They’re all on there.
TP: I guess beginning with Sonny Rollins.
LORRAINE: Some people say that. Sometimes I think the first one (I may be wrong)… [COUGHS, PAUSE]
TP: Granted you weren’t here much during those years…
LORRAINE: During what years? I was here…
TP: The ‘50s and ‘60s.
LORRAINE: Why wasn’t I here?
TP: Oh, you did come down.
LORRAINE: Of course I came down to hear the music, or whatever I wanted to hear. If I could make it, I did. I had a job of my own, by the way. I worked…
TP: What were you doing?
LORRAINE: I worked in an art gallery for many, many years. I worked at the Brooklyn Museum for many years. I worked in the peace movement for many years. I’m not an idle person.
TP: What were you doing in the peace movement?
LORRAINE: I was running it. I saved the world. Look at the condition we’re in! I did a rotten job.
TP: Which organization?
LORRAINE: We were not an organization. We were a grass roots movement called Women’s Strike For Peace. Women who had children suddenly realized that nuclear testing was very dangerous, because Stronthium-90, CC-131, settled in the grass that cows eat, and our children drink the milk that’s poison. That’s one part in a movement of women who wanted nuclear testing to stop in the Soviet Union and in the United States of America. Okay? That was a big project. To me. It went on for years, and I gave all my time and devotion to that that I could. A non-paying job, but full time. To protect everyone’s children, if possible. That was it. Then when that faltered… It didn’t falter, but when I had to get a job, I went to work in a gallery for 15 years. It was a poster gallery called Poster Originals a very fancy place on Madison Avenue. It’s out of business. Fifteen years I ran the place. It was the wrong time. I worked at the Brooklyn Museum for five years. About that time, Max was getting a little shaky. So I’d go to the museum and leave there at 3, and come here to open up for him if he couldn’t make it.
TP: So while you were at the Brooklyn Museum and started coming down, that was around ‘80 or so?
LORRAINE: I guess so. Max died in ‘89. That’s the date I remember.
TP: Let me bring up some iconic moments in jazz. I’ll ask what you can remember about the protagonists, and if you can’t I’ll move on to the next one.
LORRAINE: I probably can’t. I don’t know what iconic means.
TP: Iconic means landmark…
LORRAINE: I know that.
TP: I know you know. Miles Davis. Do you have any memories of…
LORRAINE: Lots of memories of Miles, because I lived through two husbands with Miles. Don’t forget, my first husband was Alfred Lion from Blue Note Records, and he recorded Miles a lot. So I was a part of his business more than a part of Max’s business. I worked for Alfred.
TP: Didn’t you tell me you introduced Alfred to Monk?
LORRAINE: Not Alfred. I introduced Max. Alfred and I were introduced to Monk by Ike Quebec. We didn’t know who he was… Well, we may have heard about him through the musicians, but not really. So I introduced Max Gordon to Monk, who he had never heard of in his life.
TP: Let me ask you about Monk after Miles Davis.
LORRAINE: What about Monk after Miles Davis?
TP: Basically, any particularly pungent memories about any of these people.
LORRAINE: Well, when Max and I went on my maiden voyage to Europe, and went to Italy, Max had some splendid shoes made to order in Italy. Gorgeous. Had his foot measured and all that. They were going to send it to us at home, which they did eventually, and he tried them on and they were a little bit too short, a little too tight. He couldn’t wear them. So Miles Davis was next in line. He was playing here, and Max gave him these beautiful, brand-new shoes. And it killed me! Because he loved them. But wow, I figured… Well, that was it. Miles was wearing Max’s shoes at that particular time. I know that’s thrillingly exciting.
TP: Did Miles have a cordial relationship with Max?
LORRAINE: That’s interesting. Alfred and Miles had a very cool relationship, because Alfred Lion was… They knew he knew jazz. They were not fooling around with him when they did recordings. And I was there; you know, we would hang out, we’d be up all night at the Royal Roost or whatever, hanging out. When he came here to play with Max, I knew him from the Alfred days, he was a cooler guy. Of course, he played with his back to the audience, which bugged Max. I said, “What do you mean? So what? He doesn’t have to look at them and smile and say ‘hi guys, how you doing?’ He’s playing for his musicians that way.” It never bothered me. I kind of liked his insolent manner. It didn’t bother me. I thought it was kind of terrific. I’m listening to the music, not to what he looks like or what he’s wearing.
One thing bothered me about Miles towards the end, when he was not going to be here any more and he was going into his fancy clothes, dresses or whatever, changing his gender! Max was at the bar with him and some other people, just hanging out talking, as we always did, and Max came up and he said, “Hi, man,” some innocuous thing. Miles said, “Hey, don’t ever say ‘man’ to us. You’re not black. Remember that?” I was there. I said, “Would you rather be called ‘boy?’” Okay? End of that story. That was very nasty and insulting to Max. I couldn’t stand that. That was I guess the end of Miles. Not because of that incident. Because he went on to where, as I say, beads and dresses and glamour, and played some terrible music.
TP: The Vanguard survived a period that none of the other clubs survived, when Rock came in.
LORRAINE: That’s right.
TP: How did the Vanguard do that?
LORRAINE: Well, plenty of bad times here. Everything wasn’t just peachy-dandy. Plenty of slow times. We survived it, because Max wouldn’t do it, and I would… The little I had to say would certainly be listened to. He knew I knew music. Max was not overlooking whatever I felt I could contribute by talking about it. We had lots of ups and downs, many-many-many. And who knew if he was going to hang on? But he did. Don’t ask me how, but he did. He was a very tenacious man, and he had to do bookings, and he did get wonderful men…artists to play here who weren’t even that well known. I mean, who the heck was Gerry Mulligan? He had Ornette Coleman when nobody ever heard of him. He had Sister Rosetta Tharpe. He had so many people that it’s mindboggling to think who passed through these rooms. Who’s the one wrote “When The Caged Bird Sings?” Maya Angelou used to play guitar here. She was a folk singer. I used to hear her a lot, and I liked her. And Abbey Lincoln played here many times. Hardly anyone didn’t pass through at some point.
TP: Monk played here quite often, didn’t he?
LORRAINE: Monk was introduced in this room. I brought him here in those years. Max didn’t know… Nobody knew him.
TP: They knew him uptown, not downtown.
LORRAINE: Some musicians knew him. He had no public at all at that time. And he laid a big egg here, and Max was furious with me. “What are you doing? You’re ruining my business. This man gets up, walks around and says, ‘And now, human beings, I’m going to play.’” Max says to me, “What kind of an announcement is that?” I said, “Mr. Gordon, please. Be quiet. This man is a genius.” Some years later, when Max brought him back, I hear him telling people, “Hey, I want you to hear this genius.”
TP: This was way before the Five Spot.
LORRAINE: Way before any spot, except inHarlem.
TP: Sonny Rollins told me that Monk hired him when he was 17 to play a gig at Barron’s. How about Bill Evans?
LORRAINE: Well, he was very beautiful. One of my favorites. I would hang out here a lot in front here just to hear him. Everyone was crazy about Bill Evans, even through his…what shall I call it…his bad long periods where he could only play with one hand, but it was so beautiful. And he had a checkered career as far as his habits went. But he always played here, and everybody just… He was just beautiful. He had a beautiful trio, where he had Paul Motian, a wonderful bass player who was killed in a motorcycle… That was a very sad time, because Bill loved him.
TP: Did you have a personal relationship with Bill Evans?
LORRAINE: Not me. Max may have had one more than me. Because you know, I didn’t hang out in the kitchen, you know, talking with the guys. I’m a different person, Max’s wife or whatever. I’m not a hanger-outer in that sense. I did all my hanging out with Alfred Lion. All those clubs up there on Broadway, and the record studios, and recordings. That was hanging out.
TP: A few more names. Dexter Gordon, who made… He’d bee playing in the States, but working at the Vanguard in ‘76 had an impact on the jazz world…
LORRAINE: Are you talking about when he went to work?
TP: I’m talking about the so-called “homecoming.”
LORRAINE: Well, his wife, so-called, was responsible for bringing Dexter back. She certainly communicated with Max about doing it, and Max was more than happy. After all, we had put on a big concert with Dexter and Johnny Griffin…
TP: But that was two years after he played the Vanguard.
LORRAINE: Whatever. They had a relationship, and Dexter was absolutely phenomenal and beautiful. And where was he going to go in New York City but the Vanguard? It was home.
TP: He played Storyville once…
LORRAINE: I don’t know where he played. The man has played all over the world. I don’t keep track of their gigs. I barely can keep track of whatever is going on here. I can keep track of it, but that’s enough.
TP: When you were married to Alfred Lion, in your hanging-out days, you spoke about the Royal Roost. Can you talk about the ambiance?
LORRAINE: The ambiance? [LAUGHS] Loud. They had bleachers. You could sit in the bleachers. You could get up and go out and come back. It was a very loose place, very loose going. Then you’d all congregate on the sidewalk afterwards, and then we’d go around the corner to a place called the Turf. We used to call it the Turd. It was a bar, where they stood in the back and they drank their heads off. I was pretty young and naive. I wasn’t exactly a swinger in the sense of… I’m Alfred’s wife. I’m part of his business. But I went along, and I guess I enjoyed it, because I did it.
TP: Did you like bebop when you first heard it?
LORRAINE: Not at all. Not at all! I was living in California for a very short time. My parents had kind of moved there. There was a man there who had a record store, Ross Russell was his name, and I used to go there because it was very close to my father’s little business. I sat on a bar-stool, and who was sitting next to me but Charlie Parker. I disdained that music. I was not interested in him, or making an acquaintance, or the music. No. I must say no. I was deeply involved with people like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday… All the great artists who were there before bop came to rule the roost. I was not into it. Not at all. Today when I hear people say bop is old-fashioned, I look at them kind of surprised. To me it’s still very modern! And I like a lot of it. I mean, I can get with it if it has a beat.
TP: What’s interesting about the Vanguard is that of all the major clubs, it probably has the most progressive outlook of any of them in the booking. Consistently, week-in, week-out…
LORRAINE: Yes. Well, because I understand that music changes. I listen to records or CDs constantly at home if I’m not here. I listen to music here. I’m aware of what’s giong on in the world of jazz. I’m very keen about jazz, to keep it alive, to observe who is good coming in. You know, everybody was not Coleman Hawkins. We have new guys. We have Dave Douglas, we have so many different people who I listen to very carefully. I’m here a lot of nights. I may not stay til closing. I don’t have to. I have wonderful people who work here, who’ve worked here for years, who help me. I don’t do everything alone. Nevertheless, I’m listening very carefully… I’m not listening carefully. I’m listening, and if it moves me and I dig it… I mean, I dig Brad Mehldau and I dig Bill Charlap, two entirely different artists, and I love them each for what they do, because they’re very pure and jazz is very pure. You know it when you hear it if you really know what it’s about. You can’t fool me. Well, you can a little bit. But most jazz lovers hang in with what’s really terrific. And if it’s new, just coming up, they have to recognize it. Suddenly these new acts become big! You don’t know that this is going to happen to Brad Mehldau. We couldn’t even spell his name in the past. So today he’s a star. I love him. He hates being compared to Bill Evans. He doesn’t feel that way about it. It’s just his look. He’s got that dreamy, sexy look.
TP: Let me ask you about some of the famous Village clubs? Did you go to the Bohemia?
LORRAINE: I know these names, but I don’t think so. Maybe I did. Not enough to force me to remember.
TP: How about the Five Spot?
LORRAINE: Maybe once or twice. I was loyal to the Vanguard. And once you’re loyal to a place… I mean, who’s got the time? I didn’t run around all night. I still had children and I still took kids up to school and made dinner, and I liked to cook. I still had a home life. You know, I wasn’t rousting about all night.
TP: With Alfred, did you ever go to Minton’s?
LORRAINE: Oh, yes. I can’t tell you much. It’s not there any more, though it has a sign. It was just a perfect club in Harlem that was very mysterious as a kid to me. I mean, I thought this was really livin’ it up! I never went to the Cotton Club. It’s not my style, and I was too young for that anyway. But Minton’s was a hangout, and that record that came out with Monk and Joe Guy, I believe, a quartet, was done at Minton’s. I can play it all the time, and it brings me back to this smoky club, filled with musicians or their friends and patrons. What is there to remember? It was a square room, and it was a famous place at that time. It did not maintain itself, although it’s made some efforts, but…
TP: They were around throughout the ‘50s. Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Ike Quebec were there…
LORRAINE: Everybody was there. There’s no doubt that people were there all the time. It was a real jazz club. Of course. I wasn’t following everyone’s career, frankly. That would be hard to do. I’d read something or meet somebody, but that wasn’t my whole life. It was a segment of it, to know what’s happening. I actually didn’t have to know what was happening. It wasn’t going to further my knowledge of anything. [ICE CUBES CRASHING INTO MACHINE] The ice revue! I know.
We’re not that modern here. We really need a big facelift. But I don’t want to do it. I just signed a new lease, honey. I have a lot to do. Ten more years. I just have a lot of things to sign, and liquor licenses, and Department of Health licenses, and the Fire Department, and this and that. I just took out that big old stove, the Vulcan that was there for a million years. I got rid of it, and I gave it to a wonderful young man who’s got a restaurant, but he’s going to try to use it in his home which he just bought upstate. But it’s gone. I had a wonderful man who came here and put up a beautiful wall, which is now being covered with coats. That’s not how I saw it! I want to get rid of the coats. But the stove is gone. We don’t serve food, and it’s just a thing sitting there.
TP: A general question. You’ve been following jazz for about sixty years, maybe more.
LORRAINE: More. Me following jazz is… I hate to tell you!
TP: Tell me.
LORRAINE: I’ve been collecting records since I’m a teenager. There goes the ice! No skiing here, please. [One more.]
TP: It’s very old-school. Ice during the bass solo.
LORRAINE: Yeah. Ha. Well, I could modernize every square inch here, but I do a little at a time. It’s a big job for me, and I don’t have contractors to come in. I have my good friends who are carpenters and this and that, who do things for me.
TP: So you’re not running the Vanguard on the business school model, or hotel or restaurant management school.
LORRAINE: Not at all! If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. That’s Max’s school, which I carry on to the best of my ability. But a big pain in the neck here was that post up in the front of the bandstand where the drummer always sat. It was a big post, and everybody complained and complained. “That post, it’s impossible; I don’t want to sit there, I want to sit here.” So one day, I had my friend Robbie, who works for me occasionally when he’s in town… “Let’s go look at this post. Open a hole. What’s inside?” So we did. And in there is a pole this big. So he took the whole outside of that little post down, and put the smallest one possible. Wow, hey, you can almost see the drummer now! That was a great step forward.
TP: A great innovation for the Vanguard.
LORRAINE: And how!! Because those are the meaningful things in this room.
TP: Have you ever added things for the acoustics, or have the acoustics just been what they are because of the way the room is made?
LORRAINE: No, we have fabulous equipment in the little music room back there, the most expensive kind of equipment. Well, it’s not new any more; it’s been there a while. The speakers and the equipment were upgraded long ago, and they’re fantastic. I did do something remarkable for people who are looking for the men’s room or the ladies room. I put hot water in the… [LAUGHS]
TP: That was a great innovation.
LORRAINE: Yes. [Can I have something in there? Anything you desire. Because my throat is getting dry. I talk so much.] Yes, and I have to thank the Department of Health. Because in almost seventy years, this place was never inspected for anything. I mean, I stopped smoking down here over ten years ago when J.J. Johnson played here. I cut the smoking out. And we don’t serve food. So I didn’t even know there was a Department of Health. I’ve got all the other departments on my back. I won’t go into the whole story. It’s a long one.
TP: But they made you put in hot water.
LORRAINE: Yeah, they came. Max never put hot water in. I didn’t know how to put… How do you put hot water in? “Yes, we have plenty of cold water.” So they said, “Well, how do they wash their hands?” I said, “You use soap. Soap and water. Hot or cold.” Never mind. You’ve got to have hot water. Well, I fortunately found a master plumber, a wonderful guy, who attacked… He knew all the pipes in that kitchen. If you look at the kitchen, there’s a million pipes. And he found the one to connect to the men’s room and ladies room. He even put in new sinks, and we have hot water! I think that’s an innovation here. People have come out to congratulate me!
TP: I would have if I didn’t think I’d get yelled at.
LORRAINE: I wouldn’t yell at you if you’re saying something nice.
TP: As I said before, you’ve been following jazz for a good chunk of your life, which is a little older than the Vanguard, right?
LORRAINE: Yes, it’s a lot. But I’m not going to tell you. I know you’re angling, but I’m not going to help.
TP: But having followed jazz for all those years, and on a rather personal level, what’s the same? What are the continuities. One thing that’s so unique in this music is that a young artist has to be connected to things, even if they don’t know it, that were current 70 years ago. Tenor saxophonists still use devices Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, pianists still play the vocabulary of Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, bassists still do things that Jimmy Blanton did. There’s an inter-generational continuity. What qualities are similar in musicians, and in what ways are they different?
LORRAINE: Well, if someone invents a new chord change, that’s different. He picked it up from someone else, changes it around… “How High The Moon” has 15,000 different chord changes, and you don’t know what the heck you’re listening to, but it’s there. It progresses. The musicians have very lively minds; when they playing their instrument, they experiment all the time. They pick up all kinds of things. They write their own music, that’s never been played before. It has to change. It’s not a dead art. That’s the beauty of jazz. It’s alive and well.
TP: I’m also talking about the personalities and characters of the musicians.
LORRAINE: Well, I don’t know. They’ve all got a different character and their personalities vary from God knows what.
TP: But you know what I’m asking.
LORRAINE: No, I don’t.
TP: Can you generalize through your experience… Every musician is a different person, but they also have certain things in common…
LORRAINE: Same girlfriend. I will leave you on that happy note! I can’t think of all the things! Of course they all look at each other, play together, jam together, take from each other. I don’t know how to answer that. They’re all basically accomplished!
TP: The musicians who are 30-40 years old today, do they have a different attitude than the ones you encountered back in the day?
LORRAINE: I think musicians are doing a lot better today financially than they were long ago. I do believe that. They have much more opportunity. They’re playing all over the world. There are so many jazz festivals, sometimes it’s hard to hire somebody here because they’re playing in Oslo, or Nizhni-Novgorod, or on a boat, or God knows where. They’re all over the lot. So jazz has certainly grown immensely, I think. And they play in other countries, they pick up sounds from other countries, they come back and play the Swedish something or other… The men are alive and well, and always listening and learning, and always…
[END OF SIDE A]
TP: Music isn’t the only thing they talk about.
LORRAINE: Well, when I’m around. When I leave, who knows? I’m going home now.
TP: Can you tell me anything about the Half Note?
LORRAINE: I can’t tell you anything about it because I was not there in a sense, nor involved. The musicians who played here, played there. Look, I was not loyal to any club but here and the Blue Angel uptown. That’s where my loyalties lay. I had no time to run around to other clubs. They were there. Obviously, they were important clubs, and the same musicians played there that played here. Sometimes they got more publicity playing there. I mean, Monk got all the publicity playing at the Five Spot, when he had played here!
TP: That’s because he had a six-month gig there with Coltrane.
LORRAINE: Coltrane played here all the time… I don’t know about the other clubs. I can’t give you dates or times or who did what to who. I’m not everywhere, and I’m not all things to all clubs. Or musicians. Now I am only all things to myself.
TP: No credit cards also.
LORRAINE: I can’t tell you how many people are grateful for that. But we do have a website that takes credit cards. http://www.villagevanguard.com. They will take credit cards. A certain amount; it’s a small club. But we have instituted that. That’s a step ahead.
TP: In a certain way, you do things the way you did them 30-40 years ago, with the exception of the website. And you’re the only one that does.
LORRAINE: Well, look. We don’t serve food. If you serve food, you should have credit cards. What you get here is what you pay for at the door. Is it worth having a credit card for $25, and so you’re going to order another beer, it’s another $5? It doesn’t pay. We tried it once. It was a total failure. It doesn’t pay. If you serve food, then you should have credit cards, of course. I don’t serve food. I simplify life. This club caters to people who really love jazz, or people who want to learn about jazz who don’t know anything. Many people call and they say, “Well, I’ve never been there before. How does it work? What do you do?” Then if I get insolent, they holler at me. [LAUGHS] “Don’t come here.”
TP: Then you tell them not to come if they speak back.
LORRAINE: This guy who just came here, I talked to him today on the phone twice, told him how it worked. They had left a message on the machine, and it came out like “raisonette.” You could barely understand what they were saying. For six people. I took that, made up what I thought. Then he called on the phone, he said what the name was, I cleared that up, and made it four people. I gave him everything. “You have a reservation; you pay when you get to the door.” So now he’s there, just wanting to pick up his tickets. You know what I mean? As much as I explain, they are also into their own thing, too, of how things work everywhere else but here.
TP: How have the audiences changed over the years?
LORRAINE: I don’t think so. I know we have so many new people because nobody can find the men’s room or the ladies’ room. So I know there are new people. They haven’t changed. The only way they’ve changed, they’ve grown older, and their children are coming, and in some cases the grandchildren are coming. That is one thing that’s changed—growing up and growing older. So audiences haven’t changed, to my way of thinking. I mean, they’re not going to hear Sidney Bechet here, because he’s not alive and it doesn’t exist. So they’re going to come to hear, well, whoever happens to be there, if it’s Don Byron or Chucho Valdes when we’re lucky enough to have him, or Branford. Wynton is coming to play for one night for the 70th anniversary. Next month, the 20th, is the seventieth anniversary of the Vanguard. We’re closed Monday night for a party here. I’ll give you your invite. I’ll save a stamp. It’s going to be very glorious. I don’t want entertainment. I want friends and drinks and food and a party. I have no room at home to have a party.
I want the ten-year-lease off the record.
TP: But that is one question people would logically ask about the Vanguard.
LORRAINE: I cannot tell you every darn thing that exists!
TP: But to stay 70 years in one place without ever having owned it, which Max talks about in the book and which you spoke to me about.
LORRAINE: It’s wonderful.
TP: Great landlord, then.
LORRAINE: You’re darn right. I appreciate it. We do have a wonderful landlord. But leave that section out. Nobody cares. It’s none of their business. You got me talking. There are certain things I regret saying, and if I have the privilege…
TP: You told me it’s off the record.
LORRAINE: Do you have more questions? I have to go.
TP: That’s it.
LORRAINE: Oh, good.
[-30-]
************
New York Daily News ©
http://www.nydailynews.com One giant step at a time
BY TED PANKEN
Sunday, February 13th, 2005
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” said Lorraine Gordon, proprietor of the Village Vanguard on a frigid recent afternoon. The heating unit was off, so Gordon, wearing a sweater and down jacket, sat next to a struggling steam radiator near the coat-check room, sipping water and nibbling on takeout fried rice.
“We’re not that modern here,” she continued. “We need a big face-lift. But I don’t want to do it.”
Hundreds of jazz clubs have come and gone since the Village Vanguard first occupied the triangular basement at 178 Seventh Ave. South in 1935.
Flourishing where other clubs have withered, the Vanguard ignores modern ideas of hospitality management. It doesn’t accept credit cards and doesn’t serve food. Hot water in the restrooms is a recent innovation. The ice machine, often heard punctuating bass solos, is an artifact, as are the red banquettes and dime-size tables. Complaints? Gordon or her waitstaff will quickly put you in your place.
To celebrate its 70th anniversary, the Vanguard begins a week-long festival on Tuesday. Spanning a 30-to-80 age range, the acts – Roy Hargrove, Wynton Marsalis, the Bad Plus, Jim Hall, the Heath Brothers and the Bill Charlap Trio – all have long histories with the club.
As Gordon reminisced about the Vanguard, she looked at the back corner of the bar, where she sat 60 years ago with friends from the Newark Hot Jazz Club and heard Leadbelly sing the blues.
“Everything was as you see it now,” she said. “We’d have a couple of beers and pass them between us. I saw a little man by the cash register. I thought I heard him say, ‘Get rid of those kids.’ Whoa! I vowed revenge.”
The little man was Max Gordon. After a brief marriage to Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records, Lorraine married Gordon. When he died in 1989, she inherited the Vanguard.
He had been born in Lithuania in 1903 and raised in Portland, Ore. A wannabe poet, he relocated to Greenwich Village in the mid-’20s. In 1932, he opened a café on Sullivan St. The police closed it. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1934, Gordon opened the Vanguard in a shuttered Charles St. speakeasy. A year later, he moved the club to its current premises and launched it with a poetry slam.
The room drew attention outside the Village in 1939, when Gordon booked a young comedy troupe called the Revuers, comprised of Judy Holliday, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
Over the next two decades, Gordon – who also ran a posh East Side spot called the Blue Angel – launched performers like Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Woody Allen, and Nichols and May. Priced out of such acts by TV in the late ’50s, he turned the Vanguard into a jazz-only venue.
HOME OF CLASSICS
Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and Coleman Hawkins all worked the Vanguard. More than 100 live-at-the-Vanguard albums exist, including classics by Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Dexter Gordon, Joe Lovano, Wynton Marsalis and the Paul Motian Trio.
The latest addition to the list is “Magic Meeting,” guitarist Jim Hall’s release on ArtistShare. “I like to move forward and not live in the past, but the Vanguard has so much poignancy. It’s the ambience, the memories, the photos on the wall…” said Hall, who performs on Thursday. He got married during a Vanguard gig 40 years ago, and first played there opposite Miles Davis in 1958.
“The Vanguard has the atmosphere I like to play in, and I’d go when I wasn’t playing, too,” said tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath of the Heath Brothers. “I like the sound, the intimacy, the clientele, the owners.”
Gordon compares the Vanguard’s atmosphere to the feeling of the joints that filled the ground floors of the brownstones lining 52nd St. between Fifth and Sixth Aves. before the block became an urban canyon.
“It was the golden age of jazz,” she said. “On a given night, you could go from one club to another and hear Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Lester Young and Max Kaminsky. They were small, happy places. You could touch the musicians. Like the Vanguard.”
However vivid her memories, Gordon is no slave to nostalgia. She books as progressive a schedule as anyone in town, regularly presenting such cutting-edgers as Dave Douglas, Don Byron, Greg Osby and Jason Moran.
“This club caters to people who love jazz, or want to learn about it,” she said. “Nobody can find the men’s room or ladies’ room, so I know there are new people.”
The customers have “grown older, and their children and grandchildren come,” she said. “They won’t hear Sidney Bechet here or John Coltrane. They’ll come to hear… whoever happens to be here.”
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 