Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time

Jazz fans get the inside story of New York’s legendary club.

At age 83, Lorraine Gordon is a jazz icon who has lived more than a few downtown bohemian, uptown grande dame, music business pioneer, wife, lover, mother, and finally – at a point when most women her age were just settling into grandmotherhood – owner of the most famous jazz club in the world, the Village Vanguard. The trajectory of her journey has been remarkable. The details are a Jackson Pollock-like swirl of fierce colors shot through with larger-than-life creative not just jazz figures but luminaries from every point on the political, social and entertainment from Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk to Lenny Bruce, Norman Mailer and Barbra Streisand.

• The legendary Village Vanguard has been an international jazz mecca since 1935. According to New York Magazine , “A musician hasn’t truly arrived in the jazz world until he’s played at the ‘Carnegie Hall of Cool ‘ the Village Vanguard.”

• There have been over 100 “Live at the Village Vanguard” recordings by premier artists from John Coltrane to Wynton Marsalis.