A ROOM WITH A VIBE

By CHARLES MICHENER

WOODY ALLEN, MAYA ANGELOU, Pearl Bailey, Harry Belafonte, Lenny Bruce, Betty Carter, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Woody Guthrie, Judy Holliday, Johnny Mathis, Wynton Marsalis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Mort Sahl and Peter, Paul and Mary and countless other legendary jazz and folk musicians, poets and entertainers all have one thing in common. They made their name at a basement dive in New York City called the Village Vanguard. Last week what may be the oldest nightclub in America threw itself a 60th birthday party, and the joint was more jumping than ever.

As they have since the Vanguard opened, the faithful arrived at a scruffy block in Greenwich Village and descended a precarious flight of stairs to a dark, low-ceilinged room. Sitting on rickety wooden chairs, squeezed in along scarred red leather banquettes, they heard, over six nights, the sort of performers who have made the Vanguard the Mecca of Hip for the past half-century: jazz diva Shirley Horn, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, cafa swell Bobby Short, folk singer Pete Seeger and Professor Irwin Corey, the "World's Foremost Authority," who was once a comic mainstay of the club. Back in the '40s, when the Vanguard's founder, the late Max Gordon, asked the professor whether he thought the place would last 60 years, Corey replied, "It's a small club. Why not?"

Intimacy, a lack of pretense and an openness to the freshest, smartest talent were the Vanguard's hallmarks from the beginning. Gordon, a Lithuanian immigrant with a degree in English literature from Oregon's Reed College, first envisioned a neighborhood hangout for bohemian intellectuals-"the kind of place," as he wrote in his memoir, where "when the conversation soared and bristled with wit and good feeling, perhaps a resident poet would rise and declaim some verses."

Show biz arrived in 1939, when an aspiring actress named Judy Holliday stepped into the club to get out of the rain. Holliday got to talking to Gordon and persuaded him to give her and a couple of pals, Adolph Green and Betty Comden, a showcase for a revue of patter borrowed from the likes of No`l Coward. Last week Comden recalled how her musical-comedy career with Green "all started right here, when someone told us we should be paying royalties, and we belatedly realized we had to write our own stuff."

In the 1940s the Vanguard was a launching pad for black folk singers like Leadbelly, Josh White and Harry Belafonte. Pete Seeger arrived with the Weavers in 1949. That year Gordon married a woman who was an ardent jazz fan, and by the end of the '50s the Vanguard had become the world's premier showcase for modern jazz at the highest level. Gordon had a genius for discovering talent very early, recalls his 72-year-old widow Lorraine, who has run the club since he died in 1989. "That's why people like Wynton Marsalis still come back every year and play for a cover charge of 15 bucks,'' she says.

Huddled on a wintry day near the club's only heater, an ancient foot-long radiator, she points to the gallery of jazz greats' pictures that line the green felt walls. The subjects range from a threesome of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk (whom Lorraine discovered) to the hot young sax player Joshua Redman. Redman's upcoming Vanguard performances will be recorded for a CD-the latest of more than 100 recordings that have been made at the club over the years.

What makes the place so exceptional? For one thing, the acoustics are a marvel. The room is a long triangle with the stage at the apex, and there isn't a dead spot anywhere. "It's like playing inside a great horn," says piano veteran Tommy Flanagan. To Jacky Terrasson, a fast-rising young pianist who made his Vanguard debut three years ago, what's important is "the vibes-all your heroes have been there before, and you get this incredible energy." Not even a jazz immortal like Sonny Rollins is immune to the aura. "You feel the history-it's spiritual," he says. And for Bobby Hutcherson, the brilliant vibraphone and marimba virtuoso, it's the audience that makes the difference. "They're the keenest listeners in the world," he says, "and they're right there with you on the same journey. When you're all in the pot, it starts cooking."

Food service was abandoned years ago, and credit cards are unheard of. The club may not be swank, but it still pulls in people from all over the world. "The other night," says Lorraine, "a young Japanese guy came in and walked around the room with his mouth open. He told me he'd dreamed of coming to this place all his life."