For 90-year-old Everett jazz man, the gig rolls on and on

In fact, someone has. Leonard Brown is a professor in the department of African-American studies at Northeastern University. He met Vega about 10 years ago, at a talk given by the jazz historian Nat Hentoff, whom Vega once taught some music theory. Brown was enthralled with Vega’s stories of playing some of Boston’s biggest ballrooms and nightclubs - the Roseland, the Hi-Hat - back in the heyday of swing and bebop.

Over a couple of years, Brown and Vega met at the Green Street Grill in Cambridge for afternoon rap sessions. Brown kept a tape recorder running, and the result is the self-published book “Boston’s Jazz Legend: The Al Vega Story.’’

“If you push him, there’s all this incredible history that comes out,’’ said Brown, speaking via Skype from the island of Tobago, where he was leading more than a dozen Northeastern students on an annual Afro-Caribbean musical research project.

Vega, who taught for years at Berklee and continues to give lessons, long ago chose the stability of local gigging over a life on the road. He cut a few records for the Prestige label in the 1950s and a novelty single, “The Basketball Twist,’’ with members of the Celtics in the early ’60s. But he was committed to supporting his family. His wife, Martha, told Al he could go on the road if he wanted; she’d move back to her native North Carolina. Instead, together they raised their two children - Alan, 60, who lives in Methuen and works in the financial industry, and Diane, a music therapist who works at New York University. Martha died in 2000. When Alan was a boy, his father found time to coach his Little League and Babe Ruth League baseball teams.

After Alan went off to school, Vega continued coaching. He just completed his 49th Babe Ruth season. Vega’s tales of sitting in with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Count Basie, and countless other jazz giants are phenomenal, said his biographer. More importantly, Brown said, “He’s a wonderful person. That’s the real story here.’’