Since 1934, The Village Vanguard in New York's Greenwich Village has hosted the foremost in live jazz, folk music and comedy. Its owner, Max Gordon, has now written a personal history of his club and the hundreds of entertainment legends who have played there. Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Woodie Guthrie, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Josh White, Pete Seeger - Max has stories about all of them. As Nat Hentoff says in his introduction, "A good many so-called professional writers have not done nearly so well."

"The book ...is not a cascade of names ...but a series of sharp funny dialogues between him and various interlocutors, some real and some distillations of people he has known. Gordon's literary dynamics are startling" - WHITNEY BALLIETT The New Yorker

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