Jazz icon reflects on her years at the Village Vanguard

By TOM KANE

BEACH LAKE, PA — One of the leading proponents of jazz in America has had a home here in Beach Lake on the banks of the Delaware River for a number of years.

Lorraine Gordon, who has been involved in the jazz scene from its early days and is now owner of the renowned New York City jazz club the Village Vanguard, is glad her house is on a bank above the river. “I love the Delaware and am happy that the waters can’t reach me during floods,” Gordon said.

Gordon took over the management of the famed club in 1989 after the death of her husband, Max Gordon, who started the club 75 years ago. Before Max, she was married to Alfred Lion, the original owner of Blue Note Records, one of the earliest labels for music in America. Both these marriages took her deeply into the world of music, where she found her anchor and her destiny.

“So many wonderful things happened to me in that little space on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village,” Gordon said. “When I took over, I certainly had no fear. I didn’t arrive at the Vanguard out of the blue. I have loved jazz all my life. I’m not a musician. I’m not a singer. I’m not a painter. I’m not an actress. I was simply following the course of the music that I loved. I’m very proud of what I loved. And that is what allowed me to take on the Vanguard and carry on what was started there and is certainly not finished yet.”

Despite her 85 years, Gordon is still full of enormous energy and lust for life. It’s evident in the way her eyes flash and her face transforms when she talks about the Vanguard. She still works in the club regularly; in the afternoons planning the programs, lining up the artists and contacting them. If they are young and inexperienced, she will listen to their work, and, if she likes it, give them a chance. In the evening, she is at her usual table directing traffic and seeing that the machinery of the club is well oiled.

“The Vanguard place is my home,” she said. Her life story is contained in her recent book, “Alive at the

Village Vanguard: My Life in and out of Jazz Time,” published in 2006.

The Vanguard went through four stages, she said.

The first stage happened 72 years ago when Max provided local poets with a place to read their poetry aloud. “I didn’t know Max then,” she said. The second phase occurred when Max opened up the club to reviews by comedians like Judy Holiday, Adolph Green and Betty Comden, Woody Allen and others.

“Many of the people who went to the top in show business got their start here,” Gordon said.

The third phase brought in folk singers like Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Richard Dyer-Bennett and Leadbelly.

That went for a while until television came along, she said. “It was TV that closed down the clubs. People were not going to come to the club when they could sit in their parlors to see and hear the big stars on television every night.”

It was then that Max turned to jazz, the fourth phase.

“That’s where the club is now and where it’s going to be as far as I am able to direct it,” she said.

The solo directing of the Vanguard changed her life.

“This is where I was destined to end up,” she said. “It was all destined to end here. I didn’t marry a banker, or a broker, or a butcher. I married music promoters and that has made all the difference.”

“I never felt entirely free until now,” she said. “When I took over the Vanguard, it was entirely mine. No one to tell me what to do. No husbands. I was free. I took care of myself. I wouldn’t know what to do if I retired. Retirement is not for me.

Another important phase of her life occurred outside of the Vanguard.

“Early in the days of the Cold War, I was deeply involved with a group called ‘Women’s Strike for Peace,’” she said. “Our goal was to educate people about peace and war and the need for mutual understanding.” A few years later, the movement took her to Russia and thereafter to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. “We were welcomed with open arms by the beautiful women of Vietnam who wanted the same things we wanted.”

Gordon’s book is available at local stops such as Signature Gifts in Narrowsburg, NY.