New York

The drummer Roy Haynes throws back his head and laughs, his voice a mixture of awe and delight as he tells a hushed New York audience: “Welcome to the Village Vanguard. Man, anything can happen at the Vanguard.”

A year ago, Haynes, a jazz icon who has played with some of the music’s biggest names — Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane — won a standing ovation from a packed Royal Festival Hall in London. Yet here he is on a tiny stage in a cramped, dimly lit Seventh Avenue cellar with a sign inside the door saying: “Legal limit: 120 customers.” Why?

To find the answer you need only look at the photographs lining the club’s walls. The images of past greats who have played here amount to a who’s who of modern jazz. Fans, meanwhile, view a night at the club as some sort of pilgrimage. “You’re from Berlin?” I overheard one say to his neighbour. “I’m from Boston. How you doin’?”

As the Vanguard approaches its 75th year, it’s still a place where anything can happen. But this is New York, after all, the city that took the dance music of New Orleans, mixed it with Midwest blues and blended in immigrant influences from Cuba to India to create that most polyglot of musical forms — modern jazz.

And, as far as the music goes, New York’s clubs are still setting the pace. Ignore those who say that big European festivals, with their roll-call of visiting stars, offer the same opportunities as a visit to the Big Apple. This is music that should be heard in small venues — the Roy Haynes quartet that played and joked a few steps away from our table in the Vanguard was a very different creature from the one that worked hard to get to grips with the space of the Festival Hall.

When it comes to jazz venues in New York, the main problem is the dazzling choice.

Want something more up-market than a downtown basement venue? For sheer style, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola on the fifth floor of the Lincoln Centre, close to Central Park, can’t be beaten. With its panoramic views, Southern-inspired food, and the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as artistic director, it has won a legion of admirers, including the singer Tony Bennett, who describes it as the “best jazz room in the city”.

Too tired after a day’s shopping to make the trek to Greenwich Village? The Iridium on Broadway, a few blocks north of Times Square, may be a tourist haunt, but wait until the midnight session and for a mere $10 (£5) you can hear some of New York’s best up-and-coming performers.

Those wanting to bask in the music’s history can go uptown to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, a national landmark that launched the careers of artists including Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown with its famous amateur nights, a Harlem fixture since 1931. The theatre’s spectacular stage productions are still the showcase for emerging young talent.

Afterwards, step out of the past and leap into the future with a cab trip to the Knitting Factory on the edge of SoHo. The “Knit” has been at the heart of New York’s experimental scene since the Eighties. But be warned: acts such as Lungs of a Giant make no allowances for timid souls.

Ears ringing from the final set at the Factory? Desperate for some tunes that you can, er, hum? A brisk walk north to the Village will take you to an informal, intimate venue, Smalls. This basement club features up to three bands nightly, with nonstop music on weekends. It is a favourite with musicians who drop by to mingle and play long after the other clubs have closed. The manager sits outside on the sidewalk chatting with passers-by and is happy to explain what acts are playing. If you’re not sure about the music, take a look before you decide. For just £5 you can see out the rest of the night.

As you stagger out into the predawn light, turn left on to Seventh Avenue, walk a couple of blocks north, and you’ll find yourself once more outside the Village Vanguard, where the notices have already gone up for the next night’s show — and the journey starts all over again.

Need to know

Les Webb travelled with British Airways Holidays (0870 2433406, www.ba.com/holidays), which offers a two-night stay at the five-star Mandarin Oriental, New York, from £858pp (two sharing) and return flights from Heathrow.

Chicago

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen,” the white-jacketed band leader purred into his microphone. “It is 1939 and we are live across the nation on WAOK from Chicago’s North Side. The band is hoppin’, the joint is jumpin’, the sorority girls are runnin’ amok.”

A tattooed waitress passed holding a tray of highball glasses above her head as the orchestra launched into the opening phrases of Minnie the Moocher. In an instant the dancefloor was packed. Couples swung one another about like extras in a Fred Astaire film. A woman I had never met before grabbed me and pulled me into the throng.

There are those who would have you believe that Chicago is a straight-up American town, built on sweat and bacon, on hard work and an honest buck. Maybe, somewhere, Chicago is like that — maybe there are ordered streets where men leave home to catch the 8:10 to work.

But the Chicago that steps on your toes the moment you step out on Michigan Avenue, the fast-talking, rip-roaring, disreputable town with the racy reputation, ain’t that kind of place. Everything that has made this city famous — architecture, music, literature, theatre, organised crime, playmates, the malted milkshake — was created by late-night people who weren’t up in time to catch the 8:10.

Hot jazz has been inextricably linked with Chicago since before the days of the speak-easies. A hundred years ago in juke joints on the South Side boogie-woogie piano players were getting everyone hot and sweaty. When Dixieland began to drift north from New Orleans it headed for Chicago. When Prohibition hit the city the citizens perversely decided it was time to party, and the Jazz Age was born of bootleg liquor and wailing saxophones. I went in search of the jazz clubs of the modern city. Like most evenings in Chicago, it was a happy descent into madness.

I began with the serious stuff in Chicago’s most serious venue — the Jazz Showcase. The atmosphere was a trifle reverential. The punters sat silently at candlelit tables, all facing front, like a congregation. The dark walls were crowded with portraits of jazz icons. On stage was Hank Crawford, a sax player who played like an angel. Or even like Charlie Parker, whose huge portrait dwarfed us all.

For something less earnest I headed uptown into that wonderful patchwork of neighbourhoods that is north Chicago — Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lake View, Wicker Park — gentrified residential areas of leafy streets and big parks, of delis and wonderful bars.

In the Back Room, a stylish joint on the edges of the Gold Coast, Chicago’s most prestigious neighbourhood, I chatted to Dave while Bob Perna’s ten-piece band was sliding happily between jazz, R&B and Motown. “Thing about Chicago,” Dave confided, “is that it’s the American city. New York is too cosmopolitan. LA too Californian. Chicago is America. And jazz is Chicago’s soundtrack.”

Next stop was Green Dolphin Street. The Jose Valdes Trio were wooing the crowd with some seriously rhythmic Latin jazz. Girls with J-Lo bottoms were shaking their stuff while their underfed dates shuffled in their wake.

In Irving Park I discovered Katerina’s, a small neighbourhood bar with big musical ambitions. It was flamenco night. A singer with a rose in her hair was clapping her hands in an intricate rhythm. In a moment we were on to the main action, a throaty fantastic heart-rend of a song that inevitably worked itself to a thrilling foot-stomping climax. It wasn’t jazz but who cared?

After Katerina’s, things were a bit of a blur frankly. In Davenports two gay guys manfully performed a series of big show tunes to me and a hen party of seven women dressed in matching pink boas.

It was a relief to get back to the mainstream jazz at the Green Mill Tavern, where it was Swing Night with the Alan Gresik Swing Shift Orchestra. The place was packed. Everyone was in hilarious mood and dancing like they didn’t believe in tomorrow.

It was 2am. No one would be catching the 8:10.

Need to know

Stanley Stewart travelled with British Airways Holidays (0870 2433406, www.ba.com/holidays), which has five-night breaks at the Fairmount Hotel, Chicago, from £831pp.

Further information: Chicago and Illinois Tourist Office (0870 0503410, www.gochicago.com); Chicago Jazz Festival (www. chicagojazzfestival.org )

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