Village vanguard nyc8/25/2023 Lorraine had already secured her place in the history of American music by discovering Thelonious Monk. In 1949, he married Lorraine Gordon, the ex-wife of Alfred Lion, founder of the jazz label Blue Note. The Vanguard opened in 1935 as something like a beatnik cafe, run by proprietor Max Gordon. The drinks menu seems blissfully unaware of today’s craft cocktail trends, though it has been updated this year with the addition of a Boulevardier, a Negroni made with whiskey instead of gin. To go to the men’s room, you have to walk through the kitchen, where you are likely to see the musicians waiting to go on, killing time among crates of soda cans. Its dark green walls are covered with photos of jazz musicians, only a small handful of which seem to have been taken in the past two or three decades, and all of whom, it’s safe to assume, have appeared on its stage. Somehow, in spite of being in good working condition, the room seems not to have changed since approximately the mid-1960s-when the most famous Live at the Village Vanguard records were recorded. Inside, you find an interior that seems frozen in time. To enter, you descend an inhospitably steep flight of stairs and pass through a narrow door. The club stands on 7th Avenue in New York City, under a long red awning, between a pizza parlor and a nail salon. I had been listening to many of these records, by Sonny Rollins, Kenny Burrell, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, and others before I ever had a chance to go there myself. I knew what it sounded like to be in there because nearly every major figure in the history of modern jazz has released an album titled “Live at the Village Vanguard,” or some variation thereof. The Vanguard is probably the oldest continuously running venue for jazz music in America. I don’t remember who I heard play the first time I went to the Village Vanguard, but I know it was not the first time I had heard the sound of the room.
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