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CNN&Time

Fireball; Queen of Jazz

Aired June 5, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight, "Fireball": No one saw the problems with this underground pipeline until it sprung a leak and gasoline exploded in a park where children were playing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY KING, MOTHER OF VICTIM: There was just smoke everywhere and a huge wall of flames.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: A federal agency said the pipeline was safe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK KING, FATHER OF VICTIM: Why would we spend $35 million on a regulatory agency that -- that -- that doesn't do anything to regulate?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Half a million miles of aging oil and gas pipelines run beneath communities across the nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY KING: It's just a time bomb everywhere else, and this will happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: "Queen of Jazz."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LORRAINE GORDON, VILLAGE VANGUARD OWNER: Here's Dizzy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: She's known them all...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: Thelonious. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: ... and worked with the best.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: That's Coleman Hawkins. This is where he was sitting, whatever chair was here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: The diva of New York's jazz scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: There's this wonderful record with Flip Phillips (ph). Oh, yes. Barbra was there. Yes. As a matter of fact, she was at the Vanguard, too, when Miles was there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Stories from the most famous basement in the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: Well, you'll come back again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will come back again.

GORDON: My pleasure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME, with Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw.

BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: Good evening, and thanks for joining us.

When it comes to underground oil and gas pipelines, the general consensus is usually out of sight, out of mind. That was certainly the case for many of the residents in Bellingham, Washington -- at least until last summer.

On June 10th, 1999, a pipeline in Bellingham ruptured, and gasoline raced down a creek in a city park. An explosion sent plumes of smoke thousands of feet in the air. When it was over, three people were dead.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CO-HOST: This week marks the first anniversary of the Bellingham explosion and, to this day, no one is really sure what went wrong. What we do know is that what happened in Washington State could happen again almost anywhere in the United States. That's because, whether Americans realize it or not, there's a vast network of aging pipelines snaking beneath this country, delivering oil and gas and potential disaster.

A CNN & TIME investigation now from Aram Roston. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

911 DISPATCHER: 911.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's been an explosion.

911 DISPATCHER: OK. Do you know what exploded?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't. There is just a cloud of smoke.

911 DISPATCHER: Hang on one second.

ARAM ROSTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The explosion tore through Bellingham, Washington...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need all officers here immediately. We have a big explosion.

ROSTON: ... through a park close to the home of Mary King.

MARY KING: And I was standing in the living room and looked out the window, and there was just smoke everywhere and a huge wall of flames, and -- and I said, "Where's Wade? Where is Wade?"

ROSTON: Ten-year-old Wade King was in the park. It was the last afternoon before school was out for the year. He was with his best friend, Stephen Tsiorvas, his classmate in the fourth grade.

Stephen's mother Catherine Daylin (ph).

CATHERINE DAYLIN, MOTHER OF VICTIM: I looked out and saw this huge cloud of smoke and immediately became terrified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

ROSTON: Gasoline from a leaking pipeline had exploded. The boys were at ground zero. The blast tripped more than a mile through the city.

The pipeline was just one piece of a half a million miles of interstate gas and oil lines threaded like underground plumping throughout the country. Each year, oil lines spill more than six million gallons into the ground and water.

MARY KING: I mean, I knew there was a pipeline up the street, but I never thought about it. I mean, I never questioned what went through it.

ROSTON: The line, owned by Olympic Pipeline Company, carries gasoline and fuel oil -- half a million gallons an hour -- from refineries along the coast, south to Seattle and Portland.

DAYLIN: It's going under our homes, our parks, across our streams, by our schools, under our freeways, and they're not taking care of it. ROSTON: Government investigators think the Olympic line was damaged during a construction project near the city water plant in 1994. They say Olympic learned of a potential defect at that site in 1996.

In 1997, records indicate an Olympic engineer came to take a look at the pipe buried here seven feet down. He marked the problem spot "Defect" on this report but then wrote "Did not inspect this location because it was a difficult area to access."

FRANK KING: We have a copy of his dig report.

ROSTON: Frank King is Wade's father.

FRANK KING: He just decided that he wasn't going to dig up that section of pipe that split because it was too hard to get to it. That makes me very angry.

ROSTON: Two years later, at 3:30 p.m. on June 10th last year, this pipe cracked open at the very same spot. A quarter million gallons of gasoline drained into a small creek that flowed into a larger one where Wade and his friend were playing.

FRANK KING: I think the boys were right here and -- and got down here to the -- to the creek, and that's where all the gasoline is coming down, gushing down.

ROSTON (on camera): As the boys played here at Walkum (ph) Creek, 90 miles away in Renton (ph), Washington, employees at Olympic Pipeline's control room were supposed to be monitoring the flow of gasoline. Investigators are trying to piece together what those employees were doing for an hour and a half as the gasoline poured from the ruptured pipeline.

(voice-over): This is how a pipeline is run today -- by computer showing pressure and flow along the line. In this training demonstration, when a pipe breaks, the yellow line plunges. This is what a high-tech control room should see when the alarm bells go off.

At first, the Olympic control room cut off the flow of gasoline from the refineries. But, at 4:16, 46 minutes later, Olympic restarted the flow.

FRANK KING: And I think that that's when the river of gasoline really starts flowing down this creek.

ROSTON: Olympic policy requires controllers to confirm there is not a leak, rather than keep on running the line. Investigators have yet to be told why the pumps were turned back on.

(on camera): That day, Olympic executives had a reason to want to show the company at its best. A major share in the pipeline was up for sale, and a group of potential buyers was taking a tour of these facilities.

(voice-over): Restarting the gasoline flow was like turning on a high-pressure hose. The phone calls to 911 began at 4:23 p.m.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is some kind of incredible chemical odor that made my daughter and I both sick just stopping at the light.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The creek is discolored, and there's a strong, strong odor of petroleum.

ROSTON (voice-over): At 4:30, an hour after the leak began, the man in the plaid shirt, Rick Keeney (ph), an off-duty Olympic chemist, was driving home past the park. He, too, called 911.

RICK KEENEY, OLYMPIC PIPELINE CHEMIST: On the bridge, though, there was a very, very heavy smell of gasoline...

911 DISPATCHER: Right.

KEENEY: ... that was there when I drove through it.

ROSTON: Keeney also called Olympic's control room. At 4:32, the pumps were stopped. The line was shut down again.

OLYMPIC PIPELINE SECRETARY: I'm calling from Olympic Pipeline Company.

911 DISPATCHER: Right.

ROSTON: It took almost an hour and a half after the rupture before an Olympic secretary phoned the fire department at 4:56 to report a leak.

OLYMPIC PIPELINE SECRETARY: We're suspecting that it came from our pipeline.

ROSTON: By then, firefighters were already on the bridge and seeing explosive readings on their meters.

Liam Wood (ph), a teenager fishing in the creek, was the first to die. He was overcome by the fumes and drowned.

Police believe Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas were upstream playing with this fireplace lighter. It was 5:02.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's burning everywhere. I don't know if you can see this.

ROSTON: The creek exploded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God.

FRANK KING: He said that -- that they saw a spark and the whole sky turned orange.

ROSTON: The 3,000-degree heat burned off 90 percent of the boys' skin. They plunged into the water to douse the flames and struggled to get home. FRANK KING: I came running down through here -- through here, and I met Wade right about here and -- you know, of course, he doesn't have any hair, and -- and he doesn't have a shirt on, and -- and his shorts are just atatter.

MARY KING: He was standing, and he was talking. He said, "Mom, don't look. Don't look, Mom." His beautiful face was stretched, distorted, and all I could think of was "Is he going to be scarred?" I never thought "Is he going to die?" I never ever thought "Is he going to die?"

ROSTON: The two victims were airlifted to a burn center in Seattle.

FRANK KING: The doctor took us in a little meeting room, and he said, "Your son's going to die." I'd never heard of a doctor saying that.

ROSTON: Stephen and Wade died within hours.

FRANK KING: I remember leaning down and -- and, you know, sitting by his ear and saying, "Wade, it's OK to go."

ROSTON: A federal grand jury is investigating. So is the National Transportation Safety Board which looks into pipeline disasters, just like airline crashes. But people at Olympic who know the most about what happened that day will not talk. They're taking the Fifth Amendment.

FRANK KING: In my opinion, as a law-abiding citizen, the only way I'm going to plead the Fifth Amendment is if I've got something to hide.

MARY KING: It feels deceitful...

FRANK KING: Right.

MARY KING: ... to me.

ROSTON: Kevin Divig (ph) was on duty in the control room when the line leaked and exploded. He is one of those who has taken the Fifth. Ron Brenson (ph) isn't talking either. He was the control room supervisor.

MARY KING: This to me is a pretty big responsibility. You're moving a flammable product through pipes all over the state, and -- and, you know, Wade might have done a better job in that control room.

ROSTON: Olympic referred all questions to its public relations person, Maggie Brown (ph).

MAGGIE BROWN, OLYMPIC PIPELINE PUBLIC RELATIONS REPRESENTATIVE: And so I simply can't discuss any of those events that are under investigation at this time. I'm sorry.

ROSTON (on camera): The pipeline ruptured, according to the NTSB, at 3:30. Forty-five minutes after that, Olympic controllers turned -- 46 minutes -- at 4:16, they turned the flow of gasoline back on. How could that happen?

BROWN: Well, that's the purpose of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, and because of that ongoing investigation -- we'll have to wait until the investigation is complete.

ROSTON: How come Olympic didn't know for almost an hour that there was -- for more than an hour that there was a leak? Shouldn't Olympic have known?

BROWN: Once again, because of the criminal investigation, the NTSB investigation, and the lawsuits, I simply am not able to respond to questions.

DAYLIN: I don't believe the pipeline company really wants us to know what really happened that day.

ROSTON (voice-over): Olympic, like other lines, is regulated by the Federal Office of Pipeline Safety. Less than three months before the explosion, agency inspectors gave Olympic an almost perfect score for safety.

MARY KING: This isn't just a mistake made in the control room. That was part of it, and that may have led to the explosion. But it's -- it's just a chain reaction of irresponsibility down the line, starting with the -- the company, Olympic Pipeline, going through our government, and it's -- it's irresponsibility all the way across the board.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole sky is black.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 911, there's a big smoke -- the sky is filled with smoke.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: How could Olympic Pipeline receive such high marks for safety in the months leading up to the Bellingham explosion? Some unsettling answers when CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: When gasoline from a leaking pipeline in Bellingham, Washington, erupted into a fatal explosion, that accident became a rallying point for the debate over pipeline safety nationwide. The concern: If it could happen in Bellingham, it could happen anywhere.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM HALL, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD CHAIRMAN: The bottom line is that most of the pipe in this country is now decades old, and we need to -- to monitor it closely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: But who exactly is monitoring America's oil and gas pipelines?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK KING: And the OPS isn't paying attention and the pipeline company isn't paying attention because neither one of them really have a -- a strict sense of what public safety is all about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Part two of our look at the problem with pipelines ahead on CNN & TIME.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: There's Leadbelly. I used to come here as a kid to see Leadbelly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: And later...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: This is Charlie Mingus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: ... to the legends of jazz, it is a shrine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: All right. There are two on this bankhead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: To her, it is a way of life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: Maybe I wanted to book you. Is that possible?

You really have to take care of it. You have to nurture it. You have to feed it. You have to clean it. You have to book it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: A lady in the Vanguard, as CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SHAW: During a routine inspection last year, federal regulators gave the Olympic Pipeline Company a near perfect score for safety. Less than three months later, one of Olympic's lines in Bellingham, Washington, ruptured, spilling gasoline for more than an hour and a half, eventually touching off a deadly explosion in a city park. Did the company ignore warning signs? More importantly, did federal inspectors overlook serious flaws.

Here again is Aram Roston.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSTON (voice-over): It's been almost a year since Frank and Mary King watched their 10-year-old son die of horrible burns.

FRANK KING: I mean, I can stand in the front yard. I can feel the heat on my face.

ROSTON: They are angry with the government agency they say had a chance to save him.

FRANK KING: Why would we spend $35 million on a regulatory agency that -- that -- that doesn't do anything to regulate? You know, they let the pipeline industry regulate themselves.

ROSTON: Only three months before a leaking pipeline blew up in Bellingham, Washington, the Federal Office of Pipeline Safety did an inspection of the Olympic Pipeline Company. Kelley Coyner at the Department of Transportation oversees the Office of Pipeline Safety.

ROSTON (on camera): But in that inspection, things were satisfactory.

KELLEY COYNER, OFFICE OF PIPELINE SAFETY: The inspection that -- did show that things were satisfactory. That's true.

ROSTON (voice-over): Forty-six times on this checklist, the inspectors marked satisfactory for control room training, maintenance, inspections, almost everything on the list.

(on camera): How could that be? What kind of inspection is that?

COYNER: Clearly, that inspection was inadequate, and going forward, we have to make sure that we're doing the right kind of inspections that get at real safety problems, as we move forward.

ROSTON: Clearly, that inspection was inadequate, though?

COYNER: Yes, clearly.

ROSTON (voice-over): Only after the explosion, after the deaths of Wade King, his friend Stephen Tsiorvas, and Liam Wood, did the pipeline office find serious problems, according to documents they sent to Olympic. They said the company produced no training records since 1994, that much of its aging pipeline was prone to cracking, subject to seam failures, and that potential defects were not all corrected.

(on camera): How could it not find these flaws that you found so easily after this disaster?

COYNER: Well, I think that it was important to understand that it is sort of like your -- your inspection of a motor vehicle. An inspection shows you a snapshot in time, and these kinds of accidents tend to be caused by multiple factors. There are...

ROSTON: Is there any guarantee that any inspection the Office of Pipeline Safety does is any better than the one you did of Olympic Pipeline?

COYNER: I think what's important in Olympic Pipeline is that we've taken a hard look at the inspection approach and we've revamped our inspection approach across the board.

ROSTON (voice-over): After the explosion, the pipeline office got tough on Olympic. It ordered strict, new inspections of the pipeline and retraining for the controllers.

MARY KING: It shouldn't be, "We've had a disaster. Now we need to really teach you how to do your job."

FRANK KING: It's a joke. Why do you have to have an accident to be safe?

ROSTON: Olympic PR person Maggie Brown.

(on camera): Why didn't Olympic simply take these steps, like training, like maintenance, like inspections, prior to this disaster?

BROWN: I can't discuss anything about what Olympic may or may not have done prior to June 10th or events on the day of June 10th.

ROSTON (voice-over): Olympic promises now its pipeline will be the best inspected in the country.

(on camera): Frank King, the father of one of the victims of this tragedy, says that's really a joke. First of all, you were ordered to by the federal government. Secondly, you could have done it prior to this tragedy, prior to his son dying.

BROWN: Frank King suffered a terrible loss. There's no doubt about it.

ROSTON: So is he wrong?

BROWN: I can't talk about what the company should or should not have done prior to June 10th.

ROSTON (voice-over): Steven Hunter (ph) oversees the oil spill cleanup program for Washington State. Hunter says Olympic had a minimalist attitude on safety and a record of spills nearly as old as the Bellingham pipeline.

STEVEN HUNTER, WASHINGTON STATE OIL SPILL CLEANUP PROGRAM: The environmental management at Olympic Pipeline was pretty much of the opinion that "It can never happen here." That was with reference to a worst-case spill and, in some ways, that capsulizes the style that we saw.

ROSTON: Like many pipelines, the Olympic line was laid in the '60s, more than 20 years before Stephen and Wade were born.

NTSB Chairman Jim Hall.

HALL: The bottom line is that most of the pipe in this country is -- is now decades old, and we need to -- to monitor it closely.

ROSTON: Most companies run regular inspections inside the pipes with devices like this called smart pegs (ph) to check for rust and dents. An Olympic peg (ph) run found trouble signs at the very spot that later broke open in Bellingham. The Olympic engineer decided not to dig up the pipe to look inside.

HALL: First of all, there were no federal regulations in place that required it to be dug up. That's fundamental. That should have been in place.

ROSTON: The government has closed the 37-mile section running through Bellingham for the time being, but fuel is still being pumped through the rest of the line, and the very people who have taken the Fifth Amendment, from controller Kevin Divig to supervisor Ron Brenson, are still helping run the pipeline.

(on camera): Everyone wants to know why Olympic doesn't take them out of those very important positions where they control the flow of gasoline.

BROWN: Well, I think the answer is -- as I said before, is that there is nothing out of the investigation so far to demonstrate that these people should be removed from their jobs, and...

ROSTON: Like turning on the gasoline at 4:16?

BROWN: Again, I cannot make any comment about what controllers may or may not have done on June 10th.

ROSTON (voice-over): Frank King wants the entire 400-mile pipeline shut down until employees talk.

FRANK KING: How long do you think that they're going to allow these people to plead the Fifth Amendment if -- if they can't operate as long as they're pleading the Fifth Amendment?

ROSTON (on camera): If Olympic Pipeline does not reveal to you everything that happened because of employees and officials pleading the Fifth Amendment, why should you ever let them operate again?

COYNER: We do not have the legal authority to prevent them from operating or to require them to take someone off the job because they've exercised their Fifth-Amendment rights to refuse to be interviewed in the criminal investigation.

MARY KING: That's probably the hardest thing for me to understand, is how people can -- can do something and be totally unaccountable for it. Just -- it feels like they're just turning their back, and I -- I -- I can't imagine -- I can't imagine doing something like that. ROSTON (voice-over): The NTSB says the problems it found in Bellingham are not new. Jim Hall says the Office of Pipeline Safety has the worst record of any agency he investigates.

HALL: I give them an F because they have failed on just the basics that need to be done to ensure safety in this area.

ROSTON: In 1987, after a series of deadly pipeline explosions, the NTSB criticized the Office of Pipeline Safety for its, quote, "ineffective inspection and enforcement program." It said companies should be forced to inspect their pipelines periodically and fix their problems. But the NTSB has no enforcement power. It says the pipeline office did nothing.

(on camera): Jim Hall and you disagree on whether your agency's doing a good job.

COYNER: We agree that there's a need to address a number of the safety areas that are listed in his recommendations. We are addressing periodic testing, we are addressing human factors, and we've worked closely together to address the issues of outside force damage.

ROSTON: His assessment, by the way, is shared by state regulators, local officials who have dealt with the Office of Pipeline Safety and, of course, the relatives of the victims who died in many of these accidents.

COYNER: I think, though, the record shows that we are -- we've improved pipeline safety over the course of the pipeline safety program.

ROSTON (voice-over): Just this past Friday, almost a year after the disaster, the pipeline office announced it plans to fine Olympic $3 million, a record penalty.

COYNER: We see a pattern of numerous problems that relate to key safety areas ranging from training to design and emergency response.

ROSTON: Coyner said the problems have been going on for years.

MARY KING: It was totally preventable, but it's -- it's just a time bomb everywhere else because this would -- isn't the only unmaintained pipe. They're all over the United States, and this will happen again. This is not an isolated incident, I don't believe. I -- it will happen again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: How can you tell if there's an underground pipeline in your neighborhood? The government does require warning signs, usually red or yellow, wherever a pipeline runs underneath a public road. But take nothing for granted. There was no warning sign up the street from Wade King's home.

If you'd like to know more about efforts underway to make pipelines safer, links can be found at our home on the Internet, cnn.com/cnntime.

We'll be back in a moment.

ANNOUNCER: Next...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: Watch it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: ... she's been called diva...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: ... for you to give me one kiss.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: ... and difficult.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: Think about it. That's the nature of the -- of the beast at this club. Sometimes you have to be rude to people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: The queen of New York's jazz scene when CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SHAW: Welcome back to CNN & TIME.

For people who like jazz, New York in June is special, at least three major festivals draw audiences in search of the real thing. But for the truly jazz hungry, a steady diet of the biggest names is served up an unglamorous night club called The Village Vanguard. For 65 years, jazz lovers from around the world have been making pilgrimages to this cultural institution whose owner has a special place of reverence.

David Lewis has our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GORDON: Yes, I want that cab, thank you. That's the only -- you adorable man, that's the only way I could get a cab.

DAVID LEWIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Every afternoon at 3:00...

GORDON: That's the only way to get a cab, find a beautiful man like that.

LEWIS: ... Lorraine Gordon leaves her apartment in Greenwich Village...

GORDON: Stay straight on this...

LEWIS: ... and heads to work.

GORDON: ... and then make a left turn when you get to Greenwich and then I'll tell you the rest when we get there.

LEWIS: At 77 years old, Gordon is proprietor of what's been called the most famous basement in the world...

GORDON: I'm sorry, I can't find my keys, can I...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All sold out.

GORDON: All sold out, he says.

LEWIS: ... the jazz club, The Village Vanguard.

GORDON: Here we come. 11:30 it starts. Well, where else, in the morning? It's a night club.

It's for Saturday at 11:30, right? Yes, you want to bribe me? Yes, I'd like a round-trip visit to Paris and then I'll get you a seat.

LEWIS: For musicians, the legendary club is a temple...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right this way.

LEWIS: ... for audiences, a mecca...

GORDON: OK, next, Vanguard?

LEWIS: ... and for its owner...

GORDON: May I have your last name?

It's a way of life. It's culture. It's music. It's aggravation, you know.

All right, there are two on this bank here. I'd push this guy over toward the radiator.

LEWIS: With energy that belies her age, and a great sense of ears...

GORDON: I must have called you because I wanted -- maybe I wanted to book you, is that possible?

OK, that's it.

LEWIS: ... this feisty grandmother is the diva of New York's jazz scene. She works six days a week to keep the club humming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 5:00, great, thanks.

GORDON: Good night.

You really have to take care of it, you have to nurture it, you have to feed it, you have to clean it, you have to book it, you have to do everything imaginable 24 hours a day. There is not an end. And so, I call it my baby, but I love it. It's a wonderful baby, very good baby, mostly well behaved.

(MUSIC)

LEWIS: If the club is her baby, the musicians are her extended family.

JOSHUA REDMAN, SAXOPHONIST: Lorraine to me is a true artist.

(MUSIC)

LEWIS: Saxophone player Joshua Redman first met Lorraine when he was a college student at Harvard.

REDMAN: You know, I don't know that she plays any instrument, but she is a true pure artist at what she does, and what she does is present music in the Vanguard. She doesn't present music to make money or to attract publicity. She presents music by musicians that she believes in and that's artistic integrity.

LEWIS: Lorraine Gordon's interest in jazz began as a teenager growing up in Newark, New Jersey. Records and radio fueled her passion.

GORDON: I used to hear a record show on the radio that played a lot of great jazz and the label happened to be Blue Note, Blue Note Records. And I said, well, whoever made those records is truly a genius. Subsequently, on one of my visits to New York City I met the man who made the records and a few years later we got married.

LEWIS: That man was Alfred Lyon, founder of Blue Note Records, a label that would become one of the most influential in jazz.

GORDON: All we did was record, eat, sleep, go home, go to the office. I mostly knew musicians and if -- it could be Louie Armstrong, it could be Sidney Bechet. That was our life.

(MUSIC)

LEWIS: In the 1940s, Lorraine heard about an unknown musician with an unusual sound and an even more unusual name: Thelonious Monk.

GORDON: I had heard about Thelonious, but I never met him.

(MUSIC)

GORDON: So he took us to his apartment up there in Hell's Kitchen and, oh, we came and we sat, and we listened, and I fell madly in love with his music.

(MUSIC)

LEWIS: But getting Monk booked into clubs was a tough sell, until Lorraine approached the owner of The Village Vanguard, a scrappy night club impresario named Max Gordon.

GORDON: He booked him and nobody came. Max said, "What did you do to me, you're ruining my business." I said, "Shh, quiet, Mr. Gordon, that man is a genius." Well, years later, I heard Max tell everyone, you know, "He's a genius." I said, "Thanks a lot." However, we agreed to disagree about Monk for the time being, but we agreed about other things, so subsequently we got married.

LEWIS: In 1948, Lorraine divorced Alfred Lyon; a year later, she married Max Gordon.

GORDON: He was a bohemian, he was an intellectual, and he hung out in the Village with writers and poets, and since he didn't have a living room, he opened the Vanguard so all the poets could come there and recite their poetry.

LEWIS: Eventually, the poets were replaced by jazz musicians like Miles Davis.

GORDON: Miles was wonderful, he was arrogant, but he played such great trumpet, who cared. Max made the mistake of asking Miles one night, "Could you just accompany this kid who came in? She can sing, she needs a little help, a little accompaniment." Well, you can just hear what Miles said, "No, no, no."

LEWIS: That singer was Barbra Streisand. Max also booked comedians like Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce.

GORDON: My God, Max used to worry about Lenny Bruce, because Max was very much of a purist and he didn't like any cursing of any kind or -- and Max was always worried, "What's going to happen, they're going to close me down, you know, he's so bad." But he -- Max loved him anyway. He was just a little bit nervous.

LEWIS: With Max Gordon's knack for finding talent, the Vanguard's popularity soared.

GORDON: So Max had to get a liquor license, he had to get a telephone, he had to get a secretary, he had to get a desk. He fixed the club up and it got very -- as swanky as it will ever be and that's the way it is.

There's Dizzy, Thelonious, and Miles.

LEWIS: Little has changed. Even scars inflicted on the club by one of its legendary regulars, bass player Charles Mingus, remains.

GORDON: In his anger, he took his bass and smashed the light. People come and say, where's the Mingus light? So we just -- there it is. LEWIS: Today, musicians like Wynton Marsalis come to play and soak in the Vanguard's history. So many musicians have left their spirit and vibration in that club that when you go in there you know that you've got to take care of some business.

REDMAN: What this room really does is it demands a type of musical honesty. It demands of the jazz musician that he or she speak the truth.

LEWIS: Max Gordon ran the Village Vanguard until he died in 1989 at the age of 86. For Lorraine, there was only one thing to do.

GORDON: Oh, I went in cold turkey. I mean, Max died one day, right in the hospital, as a matter of fact, and I walked across the street to the club -- I closed it that night. That was one night. But the next day it was open. Well, I just jumped in.

Just wait a minute. Listen, there's more.

LEWIS: Even though Lorraine had been around the club for years, she'd never been involved in the day-to-day running of the business.

GORDON: I did make some mistakes in the beginning. There were great musicians. They just weren't right for the club for one reason or another, because if you put the wrong person in there, nothing happens. The pictures move, the walls don't look happy, all those pictures frown and all that.

OK, oh, you did? This way.

LEWIS: And she has been criticized for not running the club the way her husband Max had.

JOHN MOSCA, MUSICIAN: Being a woman in this business is very difficult. It's a tough business.

LEWIS: John Mosca is the leader of the Village Vanguard's Monday night band. He's known Lorraine Gordon for 25 years.

MOSCA: Jazz musicians, I think, haven't traditionally been the most forward-thinking in terms of women.

GORDON: Sometimes I feel that I, as a woman, have to pass certain tests of approval from certain people who wonder, what does she know and who is she and what this and what that.

I don't know what I mean. I mean, 1:00 a.m. is on the night it falls on, and I'm not, you know, a Nostradamus.

MOSCA: She has developed this dragon lady persona that serves her well in the business, but there are a few of us who know she's really a softy.

GORDON: I have a big mouth sometimes, but, well, that's the nature of the beast at this club. Sometimes you have to be rude to people. I have taken -- I have given people their money back. Don't stay here, please, it's not your kind of club. You cannot talk through the whole show. And don't use a phone. What are those phones in your pocket that's ringing?

Give me one kiss.

REDMAN: You can't help but love her, you know? I mean, I fell like part of me fell in love with Lorraine even as she was yelling at me, you know? And I don't even know what it was about.

GORDON: You're a what? A virgin? Wait a minute, what did you say you were? Oh, a virgin -- a surgeon. I'm sorry, you're a surgeon.

The phones keep ringing. I didn't make them ring. They just constantly ring.

Village Vanguard.

LEWIS: Most of the club's business is conducted in the kitchen: part office, part dressing room, part rehearsal space. The room, like the entire club, is virtually unchanged from its early days.

GORDON: There's Lead Belly. I used to come here as kid to see Lead Belly. That's Coleman Hawkins. This is where he was sitting, whatever chair was here, and this was filled with the bottles, you know, cases.

REDMAN: And that's inspiring. You know, it's a great sense of history, but it's not history weighing down on you, it's history uplifting you.

GORDON: They know when they're going to play at the Vanguard it's not going to change when they come back again. It's going to have the same red velvet drapes in the back and the same bandstand. It's not going to change. That's the beauty of the place. It's like always coming home to something you're familiar with. And very often, I just look out at the audience, and I watch everyone of them as they face the bandstand. And I watch their rapture. Each face is, like, transfixed. the enthusiasm, that is my reward.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You make me feel happy, and even that is (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

GORDON: How beautiful that you've come here, and that's wonderful.

All those beautiful people who are so grateful.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I will come back again.

GORDON: My pleasure.

I like that -- I like it? I love it. It makes me feel wonderful. I think it's -- it's not in vain, Lorraine. Even if they say you're tough, it'd OK. Don't feel bad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: Possibly the best tribute to Lorraine Gordon and her late husband is this: Over the past 40 years, nearly 100 albums have been recorded at the Village Vanguard.

We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Next, those fighting to keep Elian Gonzalez in the U.S. suffer a major setback. Are they running out of options?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM PADGETT, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: Any further appeal at this point is going to be very difficult for the Miami family, and that makes their chances of overall victory, in terms of keeping Elian in the United States, even all the more doubtful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: The story behind the story in "Dispatches," when CNN & TIME continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: When it rejected a bid by the Miami relatives for an asylum hearing, a federal appeals court Thursday not only handed a victory to Elian Gonzalez's father but also to the United States government. In its unanimous decision, the three-judge panel in Atlanta said the Immigration and Naturalization Service did not -- did not -- overstep its bounds when it ruled that only a parent could act for a 6-year-old Cuban boy in immigration matters.

More on the Elian Gonzalez case in tonight's "Dispatches."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUAN MIGUEL GONZALEZ, FATHER OF ELIAN GONZALEZ: I want to thank the American people. Thank you.

PADGETT: The Miami Cubans say the ruling was simply a battle lost in the war. But it was a very significant battle for one main reason. And that is any further appeals at this point on the part of the Miami family and their lawyers is going to have -- are going to have slimmer and slimmer chances -- not only of being successful but even being heard.

Most legal analysts tell us that it's very doubtful that the Supreme Court will be willing to listen to this case, particularly because it doesn't involve any sort of overarching, broad constitutional issues that are compelling for the nation.

MARISLEYSIS GONZALEZ, COUSIN OF ELIAN GONZALEZ: I will keep my faith, and I think the battle is not over with yet. He's still here. He's still in this great country. SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Those who are close to the family who remain in contact with them, prominent members of the Cuban exile community, say that the Gonzalez family is very depressed, distraught. there is a different atmosphere. In fact, there were not as many people outside the house prior to the ruling as there had been in the months leading up to the raid.

It's different there now. Marisleysis, for one thing, has not lived at the house ever since the raid. She's the boy's cousin. She's been staying with relatives. A spokesperson for the family says there are too many bad memories for her there, and that's why she has not been back to live there. In fact, the family has now decided to move from that house. It was a rental home for them. A friend of the family has purchased a new house for them some miles away.

A lot of exiles believe that Elian, ever since he's been living with his father in the Washington area and in Maryland, is currently being brainwashed. They're convinced of that. They believe that the boy -- some people believe that the boy is even being drugged. The photographs of the boy, they don't convince them. In fact, some of the Miami relatives believe that, as they put it, his smile is not the same. In fact, they have complained that in one photograph, where the boy is seen wearing a shirt with Jose Marti on it and a bandana around his neck to them represents the Young Communist Pioneers, another example, they claim, that the boy is being brainwashed.

PADGETT: One of the things that -- sad things that this episode has done is further polarize an already ethnically fractured community.

The day of the raid back in April, when youths were out burning dumpsters and overturning benches and other things onto the street, I talked with one of them an ad asked him, why are you doing this? And his response was pretty blunt and pretty telling. He said, we're not going to tolerate being treated like some damned minority in this country. And I think that said a lot about the panic that has driven the whole Elian drama for the beginning.

CANDIOTTI: Many people feel that just like following the 1980 Mariel boat lift that Miami will never be the same after this. The question is whether Miami can recover from this, can grow from this experience.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: While Elian Gonzalez's father says he wants to return immediately to Cuba, the ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court says that Elian must stay in this country for at least two more weeks to give his Miami relatives a chance to appeal. In the end, it could be months before Elian is allowed to leave the United States.

And that's this edition of CNN & TIME, I'm Jeff Greenfield.

Bernie, have a good night.

SHAW: Thanks, Jeff. Coming up next, CNN's encore of the award-winning documentary "COLD WAR" continues.

I'm Bernard Shaw. Thanks for joining us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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