In 1957, the club changed its roster to a (mostly) jazz lineup, featuring John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor and Bill Evans, though there were some outlier events. Belafonte in his 1982 memoir, Live at the Village Vanguard, though he did approve of his voice.) (“I still don’t like his unveiled navel,” the curmudgeonly Gordon wrote of Mr. It also had comedians such as Irwin Corey, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen and jump-started the careers of Judy Holliday and Harry Belafonte, among many others. Opened in 1935 by Max Gordon, a Lithuanian immigrant and impresario, it originally operated in the tradition of a Viennese cabaret and poetry house, featuring the likes of Maxwell Bodenheim and Joe Gould, described by Vanity Fair as “notorious bohemian poet-alcoholics.” Sonny Rollins, in 1974, who recorded the first full-length, live album at Max Gordon’s Greenwich Village jazz club.Īs it developed into a sort of petri dish of experimentation, the Vanguard showcased a motley assortment of folk and blues artists like Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Richard Dyer-Bennett, presaging the ethos of Cafe Wha? and the Bitter End by a generation. T he Vanguard, the Zelig of New York nightclubs, has borne witness to some of the greatest performers in the history of American entertainment. “It’s really the only quote unquote holy place left in jazz-period.” “There’s no other place on the planet where so many greats played for so many years, and that’s one of those statements that seems like hyperbole, but it’s not,” said Loren Schoenberg, the artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. There will be solo piano performances, poetry readings, comedy and an evening devoted to the music of Thelonious Monk, among other things. To celebrate that occasion, the pianist Jason Moran is presenting a weeklong string of concerts, running March 10-15, that attest to the club’s rich history. This Sunday, the Vanguard, which is the oldest jazz club in the city, turns 80.
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