AprilCadence2013

Jazz Stories Lewis Porter
was recently at the vanguard to see the marvelous Barry harris, who still plays
i beautifully, and it inspired me to share some village vanguard stories. The first time
i was at the vanguard was in most unusual circumstances. it was the summer of
1966, i was 15, and my mother had joined mensa. if you’re not familiar with mensa,
it’s an organization that you have to take an iQ test to join. The idea is for people
who socially and otherwise wojuld like to be with intelligent folks like themselves.
my mom had joined and asked me and my brothers to take the iQ tests, and we all
became members. my mom was divorced when i was young so she was hoping to
meet people that way. for ourselves, we didn’t expect to participate at all, but my
mom brought to my attention that there was a little jazz interest group starting. she
said “you really should go to that.” she was funny that way, i mean she hated the
idea that i wanted to be a professional musician, which i knew since age 10, but
she was still my mom and knew i’d be interested in this. The truth is i was so shy
i wasn’t sure i’d be interested, but she convinced me to go. We lived in the middle
of the Bronx, near crotona park, and this meeting is in riverdale, where the people
who were kind of doing okay financially lived. i’d never been there before but i found
the place, took the bus. When i got there it was an apartment belonging to a tall
jewish man, with only him, me, and three other people. and here i am, super shy,
i thought “whatever, i’m here, what am i gonna do.” so first thing, he said “let’s all
introduce ourselves.” he introduced himself, i introduced myself...there was a woman
with her daughter about my age, but i was too shy to practically say boo to her. They
introduced themselves, and then there was an african american man who said “my
name is pete la roca.” The other people there showed no glimmer of recognition but
i said “pete la roca! are you the pete la roca, the drummer?” he said “well yes,
actually, i am.” i said, you know, “well, why are you here?” and he said something
about yes, he is a successful drummer and so on, but he also wants to meet other
intelligent people and so forth and so on. pete is a brilliant guy, in fact, i recently
worked with dave liebman on his autobiography and he had some very nice stuff
about pete in there. so i really focused on pete that night, i was so excited he was
there, i maybe didn’t pay enough attention to the other people. But we had a meeting
just as though it were a regular social group, and the question came up, “let’s go on a
trip to a jazz club, oh what should we go to, what do we do?” and pete said “There’s
this great new band at the village vanguard on monday nights. They know me there,
and even though we’re a small group they can get us kind of a group discount. Why
don’t we do that?” so we did agree to do that, and sure enough, approximately july
of 1966, there we were at the very back of the vanguard. at that time there was a
slightly larger table that was at the back. We saw the original Thad jones and mel
lewis band. i think roland hanna was on piano, i know richard davis was on bass,
he’s great and very memorable. and pepper adams, of course. in my family, with
my mom divorced and me having two brothers, we didn’t have much money, and this
was my first time at the vanguard. it wasn’t my first time at live jazz, but i don’t think
i’d been to a club, only these sunday afternoon concerts that were sponsored by
71 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013