The Vanguard at 50, in 1985: Celebrating the Legendary Jazz club's Half Century with owner Max Gordon (Jazz Files/From the PB Archives)
On the scene in NYC: Music and some conversation with Gordon, Al Grey, Lee Konitz, Benny Powell, Milt Hinton, Cecil Bridgewater, Tommy Flanagan, Harold Danko, Jon Faddis, Sonny Fortune and more.
I have a long history, as a listener and critic, with the Village Vanguard, the Greenwich Village jazz mecca that remains the world’s greatest jazz club.
It’s still the place to find music of the highest order: Guitarist Bill Frisell’s quintet closed out an engagement there last night, and saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas will co-lead a band that begins its multiday run Tuesday. Love jazz? You owe it to yourself to make a pilgrimage to the Vanguard.
If memory serves, I first visited the legendary music venue on a trip to NYC in the early ‘80s, hearing the late, great guitarist Tal Farlow. Since then, I’ve caught performances at the Vanguard by bassist Christian McBride, trumpeters Tom Harrell and Nick Payton, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and probably several others whose names don’t come to mind at the moment.
I wrote about those shows for Billboard, several jazz-focused mags and other publications. And I recall doing a phone interview with Lorraine Gordon, widow of Vanguard founder Max Gordon; she authored the valuable jazz-history memoir “Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time,” published in 2006. My story on Lorraine Gordon and the Vanguard was published in the now-defunct Tampa Tribune (hope to dig that up soon); she passed away in 2019, at age 95.
My closest encounter with the Vanguard, however, came in June 1985, when I was briefly a grad student in cinema studies at New York University. That summer, I took a course on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, closely studying the director’s four films starring Jimmy Stewart, released between 1948 and 1958 — “Rope,” “Rear Window,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “Vertigo” (“Rear Window” and “Vertigo” remain on my list of all-time favorites).
Near the end of my time at NYU, I had a very short stint as a clerk in the jazz department at the old Tower Records on Broadway and West Fourth Street. Heady times for a kid from Florida.
I had already worked as a journalist, having spent nearly two years as a reporter for the Winter Haven News-Chief in Florida. I had written for Jazziz (I’m the last of the mag’s original writers still contributing to the publication, now a quarterly with a robust online presence) and DownBeat.
Somehow, I snagged an assignment for The Villager, a Greenwich Village weekly, to cover the Vanguard’s 50th anniversary concert, and interview owner/founder Max Gordon and some of the musicians.
Looking back, I’m amazed at how many legendary, influential jazzers I got to hear, and meet, at that show. And I’m saddened by the fact that only a few are still alive. Gordon died, at age 89, just four years after I interviewed him.
So, without further rambling, here’s that feature, lightly edited from the original — I kept the subheds, and of course I didn’t touch the quotes. It was published July 11, 1985. The Villager continues to publish, online at least.
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“I just wanted to say this, that I’m honored to have you here to celebrate the years that I’ve spent here. All these men behind me who play here are dear to me, you know. And I love them all. The Kool Jazz Festival dedicated their festival to me, which was a great honor. In any case, here I am, and I’m here every night. What else can I do, watch television?”
Characteristically modest and witty, 82-year-old Max Gordon made his closing remarks at the June 30 “Jam Session for Max” as if he couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. After all, it’s only a job, Max seemed to be saying to the admirers packed in to the Seventh Avenue basement for a belated tribute to the owner of what must be the most important jazz club in the world.
“Anyway, I’m here, and I’m glad you’re here too, to join me in this great event, this great feeling,” Gordon said. “I’ve enjoyed every moment of it, and I hope you did, too.”
The three hours devoted to Max Gordon turned out to be one of the most inspired events of this year’s Kool Jazz Festival. The opening set, which featured a group of largely old-line, swing-rooted performers, was physically and musically dominated by valve-and-slide trombonist Al Grey.
Grey, a raucous ex-Count Basie Band trombonist whose wah-wah plunger technique has to be seen to be appreciated, turned mellow on the ballad “Time After Time” (not the Cyndi Lauper tune).
Throughout the set, which concluded with a swinging “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” Grey, fellow Basie-vet trombonist Benny Powell and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater were ably supported by bassist Milt “The Judge” Hinton, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and drummer Mel Lewis, whose Monday night orchestra at the Vanguard is practically a Greenwich Village institution.
Midway through the set, 75-year-old Hinton offered a stunning version of a spiritual, “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho,” full of slides, some manic slapping and a final chord, built with pedal tones and harmonics.
Following his performance, Grey talked about Gordon’s vital contribution to America’s classical music. “The jazz musician, in a sense, owes him everything in the world,” said Grey, a 60-year-old dynamo whose rubbery, weathered face, with its unkempt moustache and toothy grin, provides as much entertainment as his rich, punchy improvisations.
SOMETIMES WITH MINGUS
“We used to play in here on a Sunday afternoon, sometimes with Charlie Mingus and his group and the Al Grey/Billy Mitchell sextet,” Grey said. “Lots of times, this Sunday it would be packed, and next Sunday it might not be. And that wouldn’t help the house. You knew that Charlie Mingus was gonna draw, but you didn’t know about Al Grey/Billy Mitchell. So that was on the side, which was more money being paid out, when he could settle for Charlie Mingus. By (doing) this, it gave opportunities for many musicians to get a chance to be heard.
“Max understands the musician. He feels the musician. If he didn’t feel the musician, he’d just walk on out of here and leave. But he felt the musician. That was his heart and soul too. I have a saying, that jazz is good for the soul, so this has generated this man to be strong right now. The way he walks around in here and everything, he’s looking at no tomorrow. Like today. It’s packed and jammed in here. He greets all his personal friends. I was invited back here today to feel what vibrates. And you’ve seen vibrations very strong here today.”
Also saxophonist Lee Konitz, who shared a second set bill with pianist Harold Danko, recounted his favorite Max Gordon story for the rapt audience.
“I was here with my nine-piece band,” Konitz said, “and Max was sitting in the back, and he was blowing some Zs. And his head was down, and his cigar was sticking in his chest. I tipped over, and reached for his cigar, and he said ‘Don’t touch that. I hear every note you’re playing.’ “
Following Konitz and Danko’s lighthearted and accurate vocal rendition of Lester Young’s solo choruses on “Lady Be Good,” trumpeter Jon Faddis and alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune fronted a hard-swinging quintet that allowed for the afternoon’s most inspired improvisations.
Faddis, at one time dismissed as a Dizzy Gillespie clone, exhibited a remarkable degree of musical maturity — something most lacking in Wynton Marsalis’s recent performances — during his brilliant, rapid-fire solos, which more than occasionally slipped into the stratospheric range. On the lush “I Can’t Get Started,” undergirded by Danko, bassist George Mraz and Al Foster (the drummer on Miles’ most recent recordings), Faddis demonstrated his eclectic approach, blowing warm, full whole notes and half-valve tones.
WAY TO MILK SOLO
A final set, featuring Bridgewater, Konitz and Powell out front, and the rhythm section of Flanagan, Lewis and Mraz, proved anticlimactic, although, on one ballad, Powell demonstrated the proper way to milk a solo.
The “tribute” musicians were largely chosen by Kool Jazz Fest organizers, Gordon said last week in the cluttered storeroom that also serves as his office and a between-sets hangout for musicians. “The greatest basement in the world,” as dubbed by one publication, wasn’t always home for jazz movers and shakers, he said.
Gordon, a native Lithuanian who grew up in Portland, Oregon, and dropped out of Columbia Law School after six weeks, opened the first Vanguard on Feb. 26, 1934 and moved to the current location a year later.
“This wasn’t originally a jazz club,” he said. “This place was a hangout for artists and writers. Poets used to get up and recite their poetry. That was the entertainment. We had comedians here, we had singers here, we had all kinds of people here.”
MINGUS, MILES, MONK
In the 1950’s, jazz became the main attraction at the Vanguard, and pivotal and influential musicians became regulars at the club. Gordon cites Bill Evans, saxophonists Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, and drummer Elvin Jones as the “most memorable” of the many Vanguard performers.
“I should say he (Jones) is my favorite drummer,” Gordon said.“ ‘Cause he’s a great drummer. He used to play with John Coltrane. He drums. He beats his drum. That’s all. I’m not a musician, and I’m not a critic.”
Gordon, initially reticent to talk about the reasons for the Vanguard’s reputation as a world-class haven for jazz artists, later described his feelings about the jazz institution he has created: “The Vanguard is the greatest place in the world for jazz,” he said. “First of all, it’s got a great sound. Some musicians, for instance Wynton Marsalis — he won’t play anywhere else but here. I’ve got him for four days in July. Some musicians will play other places — it’s a job; it’s money. When they come here, they love this place. We don’t serve food. We don’t have the clatter of dishes, forks and knives. The musicians like to work here because they’re heard,” says Gordon.
“A musician wants to be heard,” he continued. “He doesn’t want to just play in a place where there’s a lot of noise, and guys making broads and all that stuff. They don’t have that here. I say we’re a stiff little place. When the music goes on, it’s quiet. On a Saturday night, you can walk in here, you think you’re in (concert venue) Town Hall. And that’s the way it’s been.”
Gordon said he has “no passion for jazz. I mean, I run a place, and it’s a jazz place. It’s a jazz club. I like jazz. I like to listen to good jazz, to great jazz. I’ll go miles to hear good jazz, good men.”
And June 30th’s fiftieth anniversary tribute? “I think it went well. The people, the musicians were so sweet. It was really a warm, warm afternoon.”
Copyright 2024 by Philip Booth. All rights reserved.