Article by Marco Molendini that appeared in the newspaper Il Messaggero (dated Oct. 24, 1979) with an interview with Max Gordon, founder of the Village Vanguard, a historic jazz club located in the Manhattan borough of New York City In the interview Max Gordon, then 76 years old, tells the story of the famous New York jazz club in Greenwich Village as follows – “I opened the first place in 1934 in the same area (Greenwich Village).
Then I moved here a year later. It wasn’t a jazzclub then. A kind of coffee-house, rather, full of poets, writers… we started doing folk around 1940… when be-bop came up, there were jam sessions every night. Pork pie hat would come, what’s his name, ah yes, Lester Young, and Billie (Holiday). That was the music I liked, that one, however, also Trane and Rollins–this is where the history of jazz of the last forty years passed.
On the stage over there they all played, Bird (Charlie Parker) went through there, Miles (Miles Davis). He was a good guy, Miles, he grew up here.” The Village Vanguard was opened in 1934 by Max Gordon in a basement, formerly a clandestine liquor store, on Seventh Avenue South in Manhattan, in the “bohemian” Greenwich Village neighborhood In its early years the venue hosted poets, authors, comedians and entertainers sui generis, in line with the alternative culture movement of the New York neighborhood: Eli Siegel, Maxwell Bodenheim, Joseph Ferdinand Gould, Harry Kemp others. But also actresses and actors, later to become famous in U.S. and international cinema, Judy Holliday and Woody Allen, and folk and blues musicians, including Richard Dyer-Bennet, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger.
Since the 1950s the Village Vanguard’s programming has been devoted exclusively to jazz music, to become in the years to follow the destination of choice for established jazz musicians and as many young talents seeking visibility Among them, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Errol Garner, Coleman Hawkins, Dinah Washington, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Jim Hall, Art Blakey, Arnett Cobb, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Dexter Gordon, Wynton Marsalis, Martial Solal, Enrico Pieranunzi, Brad Mehldau, Michel Petrucciani
Contribution shared by Marco Molendini