Lorraine Gordon
Lorraine Gordon has died. She operated the world’s premier jazz club, the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, for almost 30 years. Gordon ran the place like clockwork. The New York Times obituary gives you the picture:
Ms. Gordon, often nursing a glass of vodka, presided over the scene with a personal brand of tough love. She played her role like the wisecracking star of a black-and-white movie, and she helped make the Vanguard an unfailing fountain of late-night music. But she was also a hard-driving manager; she had to be.
“We open at 3,” she once said, describing the daily grind. “Deliveries come in, the phones are ringing, the roof is leaking, there’s something always going wrong, and then musicians come to rehearse. Every Tuesday night there’s a new group, so every six nights there’s a changeover. Sound checks have to be done. Instruments have to be brought in or taken out.”
Back when I lived in New York City I went to The Vanguard from time to time. I’ll never forget listening to pianist Bill Evans perform to a hushed, reverential audience. Gordon was also a presence on Greater New York City radio. WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey (where Gordon was born) has revived a 2006 interview with her. It’s a remarkable discussion that covers her early years in Newark, her marriage to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records, her promotion of the celebrated jazz artist Thelonious Monk, her time in Mexico, and her subsequent marriage and collaboration with Max Gordon, founder of the Vanguard.
In addition, NPR’s Lara Pellegrinelli has a touching remembrance of Gordon, posted at WBUR-FM in Boston. The piece also reflects on her lonely championing of Monk. “He came here [the Vanguard] and played,” Gordon says in the interview, “and there was nobody here except Monk, the group on the stage, and me and a couple of my friends.” But she did not give up on him, doggedly carousing reporters to pay attention to his genius. Years later I attended a Monk concert at Cooper Union in Manhattan. He had obviously reached the end of his days, but the auditorium was still packed. Gordon can justly take some credit for his fame.
NPR has archived some of The Village Vanguard’s more recent events. Here is the Pellegrinelli piece, well worth a listen:
