The Best Advice You'll Ever Get About a Creative Career

The advice is from Max Gordon, the legendary founder and owner of the Village Vanguard nightclub in New York City. Gordon launched the Vanguard in 1935 in a former speakeasy on Bleeker Street. At first he booked poetry readings and folk music, but in 1957 he changed the format to jazz and comedy. Almost all of the jazz greats appeared at the Vanguard, which also recorded their performances for their own record label. The advice from Max Gordon is from a conversation between Max and Jeff Levenson, who is now the head of the jazz label Half Note records, but in the early 1980s wrote for Downbeat, the leading jazz magazine of the time. Here's the story from Levenson: "I was the East Coast Editor for Downbeat, and I went to interview Max Gordon. I start asking him, how did he know when he began the club in 1936 that he was going to change the course of popular culture? That he was going to redefine how we view jazz and folk singing and even comedy? Did he know how visionary he was? I'm gushing; I'm a kid in front of the great Max Gordon. And he was just so beautiful to me. He had a cigar, and he was listening to me, just going on and on. And then he said, 'Look. Just shut up, OK? I want to tell you how it works. This is it: I got up, and I went to work. And I walked down my steps, and I put on my show, and I counted my money, and I closed my door, and I went home. And then the next day, I did the same thing. I walked down the steps, I counted my money, and I went home. I went to work. I went home. I went to work. If you do that long enough, then, if you're lucky enough, some kid comes up to you and asks you what your great vision is about life and how you changed the course of popular culture. But in fact, I was just doing what I felt like doing.'" Take it from Max: Do your work every day. Keep at it, and maybe someday they will be interviewing you about your vision.