Once the celebrity performers of the Village Vanguard (earthy
downtown) and the Blue Angel (ritzy uptown) come on the scene here,
these memoir jottings by incorrigibly unpretentious nightclub-owner
Gordon become a bit too sketchily anecdotal and oblique - but the
first few chapters, with young Max setting up shop, are jauntily
splendid. A college grad from Oregon who didn't want to go to law
school (his immigrant parents' dream), Max hung around the
late-Prohibition Greenwich Village joints with waitress Ann - who
knew everybody and disapproved of every place they frequented. Why
don't we open a "no bullshit kind of place?" she said - on a
borrowed $100; but though the "Village Fair" thrived, Ann
disappeared, and the cops shut Max down on a phony liquor-selling
charge. So Max, now possessor of a bohemian following (he'd really
have preferred a Dr. Johnson set), had to open another place -
which he did with help from "Harry the Plumber," rat-killer (with
empty ginger-ate bottles) and stove-mover (on his back); they
borrowed barrels for chairs, got a mural painted on the wall, and
opened with no cabaret license. (Hauled into court, Max argued that
poetry-reading by such as M. Bodenheim was "no entertainment" - and
the judge had to agree.) Max's composite picture of a typical night
at the Vanguard in 1935 is great fun too (drunks, hecklers, poets,
demeaning M.C. Eli Siegel), and the youthful dash carries over into
the story of Max's first big discoveries: the Revuers (Judy
Holliday, Comden & Green, et al.), and then - thanks to
Nicholas Ray - Josh White and Leadbelly (who were ready to open
only after a week or so of nonstop rye-drinking). Then, however,
with success, the addition of the Upper East Side's Blue Angel, and
the Vanguard's switch to jazz, Gordon's short chapters slip into
lists of auspicious performers, or into oddly angled, virtually
all-dialogue closeups that don't quite work: reminiscing with
Richard Dyer-Bennett; negotiating with Charlie Mingus' drummer
after Mingus' death. Plus: recollections of auditions by Wally Cox
and Harry Belafonte (a Gordon non-favorite), a tribute to elusive
Sonny Rollins, and an account of a trip to Russia with the Thad
Jones-Mci Lewis band. Despite Gordon's humor and no-nonsense zing -
"Jazz owes me nothing. Jazz did more for me than I ever did for
jazz" - these later sketches are primarily for aficionados. But
those early days (and Nat Hentoff's jazzy, tender introduction)
will please all those with any feel whatever for the bygone Village
scene. (Kirkus Reviews)
Since 1934, the Village Vanguard in New York's Greenwich Village
has hosted the foremost in live jazz, folk music, and comedy. Its
owner, Max Gordon, has now written a personal history of his club
and the hundreds of entertainment legends who have played there.
Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lenny
Bruce, Woody Allen, Woodie Guthrie, Betty Comden and Adolph Green,
Josh White, Pete Seeger--Max has stories about all of them. And
what stories! As Nat Hentoff says in his introduction, "A good many
so-called professional writers have not done nearly so well."
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