jazz fans and musicians talk about the Village Vanguard, they all seem to agree that there is something about it that gives it a special character. Some say it is the 74 years of history that is still alive in the small Greenwich Village basement, others say it's the "vibe" of those walls that witnessed the music of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and other jazz giants who played there. It could be the great acoustics provided by the pie-shaped room.
XXXHow the Vanguard preserved its character in and out of jazz times is no mystery for those who know the place.
XXXIt's the grit and tenacity of Lorraine Gordon, who took charge after her husband died in 1989 when she was 67 years old.
Today, at 86, Lorraine is at the club six days a week, sitting by her small table at the entrance or in the kitchen that doubles as both her office and the backstage for musicians.
XXX"Speak up, I can't hear you, I'm an old woman and I'm deaf," she tells anyone who approaches her at the club or calls to make reservations. She answers the phone that rings frantically all afternoon, takes reservations, books the musicians, and runs the club during any given night's two sets. And then, if she doesn't need to worry about anything, she sits back and enjoys the music that she has loved passionately since she was a young girl in Newark.
XXX"She loves what she does," said her daughter Deborah, who helps her mother at the club. Deborah said the biggest challenge was trying to maneuver through the bureaucracy of running a small business in New York City.
XXX“Many of the great old jazz clubs that I knew – I’ve been in New York 30 years – have either closed, or changed,” says musician Fred

Hersch. “But the Vanguard is the Vanguard. It’s the cathedral of small band jazz.”
XXX"Because the club is so famous, they could really cash in on the name and a lot of facets of the business, but they have totally resisted that, and that really keeps it authentic," said Douglas Purviance, producer and bass trombonist with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. "It's really impressive. I'm sure she could get a boatload of money by franchising the name or doing certain things, but she wants to keep it pure, the way it should be."
Max Gordon created the Village Vanguard in February 1935 in a basement on Charles Street, before moving it to its current

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location in December of that year. At the beginning it wasn't exclusively a jazz club; Gordon presented poetry, comedy and folk music shows.
XXXMany stars -- Judy Holliday, Comden and Green, Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, and Barbara Streisand -- began their careers in that small basement in Greenwich Village. Max began introducing jazz at the club in the early 40s, and by 1957, he re-invented it as a jazz club exclusively. That year, Sonny Rollins recorded his album “Old Devil Moon” live at the Village Vanguard, the first of over a hundred albums to be recorded live at the club. Lorraine and Gordon got married in

1947, and even though she had always been and continues to be passionate about the music, she never interfered with the business.
XXX"Max Gordon simply never dreamed of me, Lorraine Gordon, his wife, taking over his club, the Village Vanguard," she writes in her memoir, “Alive at the Village Vanguard.” "Very old-fashioned man. I was a wife to him. I'd raised the children. I worked on the side. He didn't think very much about what I could or could not do. Never thought about it."
XXXThe day that Max died in the operating room in 1989, Lorraine closed the club for the night. But the next day, she was back with the doors open and in charge. She's been there since.
XXX“Certainly after Max Gordon died, there was a bit of trepidation in the jazz community as to how she would take over the club,” says Hersch. But Lorraine quickly demonstrated her uncompromising commitment to the music. “I think the grit and determination are caring enough about the art form and the place that that would be your priority,” says Jed Eizenman, Vanguard manager.
XXX"If I didn't do this what would I do?" she writes. "I wouldn't know how to sit back. Retire? What's the point? Max left me this wonderful little club. Except he didn't actually leave it to me. It was there. So I took it. By the horns. And I shook it up."X XXX- COLLIN CROWELL & LINA EJEILAT