by Joseph Levendusky
In these dark days I have been listening often to Bill Frisell. Years ago, a choreographer friend turned me on to his music and ever since he has been a favorite of mine among guitar players. His idiosyncratic chops excite the imagination, while at the same time exuding calm and reassurance. (Hippie friends of mine used Frisell’s music as an aural snuggle blanket to comfort their young daughter.)
Jazz meets roots music meets rock and roll–an eccentric amalgam that often evokes the sixties and yet is wholly transcendent—Frisell’s music exudes Americana from a boomer’s point of view. Bill is one of those players, who, like Coltrane, Monk and Miles, is distinguishable upon hearing a mere bar or two.
Lately, with dreams of normalcy dancing in my head, I have been thinking that I must catch Bill Frisell the next time he plays the Village Vanguard. (He is a regular attraction.) Sadly, I then realized it may be a long time, if ever, until I can do so.
The Village Vanguard is one of the last of New York’s great listening rooms. It is a place where every note is given rapt attention. Any boisterous tourist is summarily introduced to the New York edition of the hairy eyeball. It is an intimate downstairs room that precludes loud drummers and where nuanced players thrive, even as listeners ignore the muffled sound of passing subway cars. But to an epidemiologist, the Vanguard would appear to be a subterranean petri dish. One sits elbow to elbow with other avid listeners and the exhalations are as palpable as the attention to the music.
My first Vanguard experience was as a seventeen-year-old pisher working a summer job at New York PIRG in lower Manhattan. One day at quitting time, one of my co-workers said, “Anyone up for going to the Vanguard tonight? George Russell’s big band is knocking them dead.” Big band? Is that like Benny Goodman? Still I was game for new adventures in the big city. Though I was underage, no one asked for ID when I descended the long staircase to that well-worn (even then, in the late 70’s) devotional chamber of jazz.
George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra blew the top of my head off. I suspect that there might still be bits of my cranial matter stuck to the ceiling some forty years on. This was not my father’s big band. It was a band at once sophisticated and savage. Stunningly tight, at Russell’s direction, the band could start and stop on a dime and corner like a fine European sports car. As I leaned against a pillar sipping an illicit Heineken and drinking in new sounds, I became a jazz fan for life.
Since then, I have many times been a pilgrim to the Vanguard. Ron Carter, Lonnie Smith, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, Anat Cohen and George Cables are but a few of the artists I have heard in that venerable room. George Cables was a happy find, a veteran of many bands and recording sessions, but not quite a household name in his own right. Yet he is a pianist whose music offers many delights. Typical of the Vanguard, you don’t need to be familiar with the headliner, you can simply go because it’s always worthwhile.
An Israeli clarinetist with two prominent horn playing brothers, Anat Cohen was living in the Village and recording an album, Notes from the Village, in the October prior to the 2008 elections. At one point between numbers in her set, she made a comment about what a fascinating time it was to be living in the States. When she and her band then broke into a version of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come, the room erupted in exuberance.
The Village Vanguard has existed in the same 7thAvenue South location since it was opened by Max Gordon in 1935. It had previously been a club called The Golden Triangle owing to the shape of the room. At the outset programming consisted mostly of poetry and folk music. But the Sunday afternoon jazz jams became increasingly popular and slowly jazz gained prominence. By the late 50’s jazz was indisputably at the top of the bill and historic performances began to accrue. More than one hundred live albums have been recorded there by such artists as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Art Pepper, Betty Carter and, yes, George Russell, Bill Frisell and Anat Cohen too.
Max Gordon died in 1989 but his wife Lorraine kept watch until her death in 2018. An avid jazz fan, she was first attracted to the club and its owner by the Sunday jams, and was a familiar presence on the floor (and at the till) even in her later years. In her memoir, Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time, written with Barry Singer, she recounts how Frisell, in an afternoon rehearsal for a Vanguard stand, drew her out of the kitchen and brought her nearly to tears with his arrangement of Goodnight Irene.
It would be ironic and tragic if the Village Vanguard became yet another casualty of COVID 19, owing to its main assets—its intimacy and proximity of audience and artists. The Vanguard website, underneath a picture of that iconic red awning that stretches across the 7thAvenue sidewalk, proclaims that the club is “Temporarily Closed March 16-May 31”. Further, it says, “Stay well and we look forward to seeing you soon.” We can only hope.
Addendum: As of July 25, the Vanguard is still closed, but is offering a ticketed streaming series with top line talent. If you are a jazz fan, please support the Vanguard and get your live music fix at the same time. Tickets and schedule at www.villagevanguard.com.
Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan, Epistrophy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox4Bmi-7fao
Bill Frisell, A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtQfqpKi1I
Bill Frisell, Surfer Girl, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c
Bill Frisell,Pipeline, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4NLY8vi5Q8
Bill Frisell, Goodnight Irene, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfl4Yt5f5nw
George Russell, Big City Blues, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tU3fhI_Xb0
George Russel, Cubano Be, Cubano Bop, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6YI98ZHNQ
George Cables, Beseme Mucho, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJWwAxqxztc
George Cables and Art Pepper, Isn’t She Lovely, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBA6Ee5htc
George Cables, I Should Care, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyLiuXUld0M
Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and George Cables Trio, Helen’s Song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAcMQIZAXk
Anat Cohen, A Change is Gonna Come, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjdiD8MAGys
Anat Cohen, Child’s Song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAtLa0OWsE
Anat Cohen Quartet, La Vie en Rose, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwCF-ue7Qpo
Anat Cohen with Paquito D’Rivera, While the World Weeps, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6V030_WP78
Bill Frisell, Guitar in the Space Age, available on iTunes
Bill Frisell, East/West,available on iTunes
Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan, Epistrophy, Live at the Village Vanguard,available on iTunes
George Russell, New York Big Band, recorded live at the Vanguard, 1978, available on iTunes
Anat Cohen, Notes from the Village, available on iTunes
Anat Cohen, Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard, available on iTunes
George Cables, Icons and Influences, available on iTunes
George Cables, A Letter to Dexter, available on iTunes
Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life In and Out of Jazz Time, Lorraine Gordon and Barry Singer, Hal Leonard Books
Photo of Bill Frisell by Monica Frisell