Invitation to Openness: The Jazz & Soul Photography of Les McCann

Invitation to Openness: The Jazz & Soul Photography of Les McCann
Curated by Pat Thomas and Alan Abrahams
Seattle: Fantagraphics Books
2015: 200pp

With the holidays coming up this book focused on the photography of keyboardist-vocalist Les McCann is one that might well be high on your list for the jazz lovers on your gift list. McCann is of course famous for his recordings, including a classic album that helped launch Lou Rawls career and the epic live performance with Eddie Harris at the Montreux Jazz Festival that was issued as the legendary album "Swiss Movement." This book's title derives from a 1972 album on Atlantic. Not only a musician, McCann is also a photographer who has photographed a wide variety of performers as well as political figures and others. Now, from thousands of photographs we are treated to a wonderful coffee table book of his Black and White photography.

One of the selling points of books of musical photography are the specific individuals presented. Here, one will find a wealth of photographic treasures with images of such greats as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Payne, Gerald Wilson, Miles Davis, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Yusef Lateef, Cannonball Adderly, Gene McDaniels, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King, Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gerry Mulligan, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie (including a shot with Herb Albert), Ray Charles, Jean Luc Ponty, Ray Nance, Grover Washington, Ben Webster, Toots Thielemans, Richard 'Groove' Holmes, and others along with shots of Redd Foxx, Bill Cosby (taken far before his present disgrace), Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Richard Pryor, Tina Turner, Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Lemmon, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Muhammad Ali.

These pictures range from concert and nightclub shots, backstage images, and informal ones taken outside. We see Cannonball Adderly relaxing and smoking a cigar backstage, Roberta Flack both performing and sitting on a garbage pile. There are street scenes such as a boy on a bicycle in Washington DC as well as a Man on a bicycle. Redd Foxx is shown at the microphone and back stage, and Wilson Pickett with a fan in Ghana. Then there are some contact sheets such as those of Dizzy and Bobby Streisand in performance, and one contact sheet has pictures from the Los Angeles Lakers (Jerry West-Elgin Baylor years) playing the Boston Celtics with also off-court pictures of Johnny Mathis with Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. The negative size shots suggest that he was a more than capable sports photographer as indicated by a terrific picture of then San Francisco Warrior Wilt Chamberlin going up against Lakers Gene Wiley, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.

Interspersed  are  comments on some of the famous people and others. There are so many pictures that brim with their subject's personality whether capturing them informally or in performance. The reproduction strikes my amateur eye as quote good and having looked at this for the first-time in months, I am reminded how much I enjoyed this after I purchased it. Les McCann joins Milt Hinton among  jazz musicians to have their photography documented so well. Highly recommended.

I purchased this. You can check online sites like Barnes and Noble and Amazon for prices. Barnes and Noble has preview of some the images on the page for the book.

RIP Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall was known as one of the great rock and roll photographers. You might visit visit http://www.marshallphoto.com/ to get some sense of his iconic images of such folk as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.

Obituaries have appeared in the NY Times, SF Chronicle and Rolling Stone and you can easily reach their websites. The outstanding photographic blog site, The Online Photographer had a marvelous remembrance of him by the photographer Ctein, who also did printing for him. Here is the link to that story.

Ghosts of Harlem Will Be Great Gift For Jazz Lover

The following review has been written for Jazz & Blues Report and hopefully will appear in the December issue. I certaainly think this book (with an included CD) would make for a terrific present for the jazz lover in your family or a gift for yourself. This lists for $75 but amazon has it for a bit over $50 as I post this.

The Ghosts of Harlem
Hank O’Neal
Vanderbilt University Press

At one time Harlem was the center of the Jazz World with such bands and performers as Duke Ellington, the Savoy Sultans, Chick Webb and others playing as part of shows at such legendary places as The Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, the Savoy Ballroom, the Lafayette Theatre and the Apollo Theatre along with other places such as Monroe’s and Minton's. In “The Ghosts of Harlem,” Hank O’Neal provides a brief history of Harlem’s jazz scene from its heyday to its decline after World War 11, as well as provides interviews of 42 artists who were part of Harlem’s vibrant scene and get their memories as well as views on what led to the decline.

Its not a dry oral history either as author O’Neal is a gifted and noted photographer. While some may know him as the principal person behind the Chiaroscuro Records label, he was at one time on duty for the Central Intelligence Agency, before his more known musical activities which also included producing the Floating Jazz Festivals, the source of the various jazz, blues and other themed music cruises of today. Also he is well respected as a photographer and author having compiled “The Eddie Condon Scrapbook of Jazz,” “Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Day Parade,” and “Berenice Abbott”, about his friend, the noted photographer. His talents as a writer, interviewer, photographer and record producer are all given effect in this handsome coffee table volume that is richly illustrated with both his own portraits, mostly taken with a view camera, as well as archival photos from various sources. This updates the original version which was published in France in 1997).

The early chapters set the table as he explores some of the that made Harlem, contrasting his contemporary photos with historical photos as he discusses the venue, who played there and lets us see how its now a church, an apartment building or a few clubs still exist and feature live entertainment, including some jazz. The bulk of the book is devoted to the interviews of The Ghosts of Harlem. They are Ghosts only in a figurative sense, as O’Neal has common themes in the interviews including some basic biographical information, when and how they first came to Harlem, what memories they had of the places they played and what performers they remember as outstanding as well as thoughts or observations on the decline in jazz and any recent visits or experiences they had.

The persons interviewed range from such prominent jazz figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Milt Hinton, Clark Terry, Benny Carter, Illinois Jacquet, and Joe Williams, along with such important persons, if not as widely known among the general public, as Andy Kirk, Eddie Durham, Sammy Price, Buddy Tate, Danny Barker and Sy Oliver. The recollections are fascinating as O’Neal is a gifted interviewer (some of his Chiaroscuro CDs included jazz speak tracks with the performers recollections included), and his contemporary portraits are mixed in with historical photo as well as label shots of 78s that the artist was featured or performed on.

Added to the interviews is a compact disc with eleven performances from the Chiarascuro catalog featuring 17 of the Ghosts of Harlem including Illinois Jacquet, Buddy Tate, Milt Hinton, Jonah Jones, Doc Cheatham, Eddie Barefield, Red Richards, Al Casey, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Danny Barker, Frank Wess, Harry Edison, Major Holley, Benny Carter, Clark Terry, and Joe Williams, and a bit of Jazz Speak with Eddie Barefield, Cab Calloway, Eddie Barefield and Milt Hinton recollecting about the times together in Cab’s great band as they joke about whether Cab had his Studebaker or Lincoln in the Pullman Car they traveled in while touring.

This is a large and heavy book. 432 pages with 475 b&w photographs and the CD with over an hour of music and talk. Its is fascinating and by its very nature invites one to delve back into it again and again. “The Ghosts of Harlem have come to life in this superb book. Something to keep in mind when looking for a gift for a jazz lover in your circle of friends or family.

Michael P. Smith JazzFest Photographer Supreme RIP

I remember years ago attending a Smithsonian Institute Folklife Festival in Washington which was devoted in part to the culture of Louisiana and New Orleans. It was chance to hear some blues like the late Boogie Bill Webb as well as it was my first exposure to the Mardi Gras Indian tradition other than the recordings of The Wild Magnolias and The Wild Tchoupitoulas, as members talked about and demonstrated the making of a costume as well as the various traditions involved. At the store where they sold items related to the Festival was a book of black and white photographs, Spirit World: Pattern in the Expressive Folk Culture of African-American New Orleans, It was essentially a catalogue of one of his exhibits documenting aspects of the cultural life and communities of New Orleans that was totally new to me, such as spiritual churches, and I slowly began to understand the interrelationship between the churches, the Indians, the music and other interrelated aspects that were the foundation for the New Orleans Rhythm and Blues Music that I loved (well I still d0). The book was republished by the Louisiana print house, Pelican, and is readily available.

I soon became aware of the importance that Smith had in documenting the music, culture and communities of New Orleans. His photos graced album covers and t-shirts (I proudly had t-shirts of his photos of James Booker and Clifton Chenier). Subsequently I acquired his marvelous book, A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music, which is out of print.

When I first attended the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, in the mid-190s, I went to his tent in the crafts section of the Festival grounds which his daughter Leslie (herself a very fine jazz singer) was manning, and eventually purchased his then recently published book on the Mardi Gras Indians as well as a poster made from the Dancing Cat Professor Longhair album cover that was signed by him. Since I framed it upon getting home, it hangs in my bedroom.

Subsequently I purchased his New Orleans Jazz Fest, A Pictorial History, which chronicled the first 20 or so years of the festival from images of Mahalia Jackson with the Eureka Brass Band; Jackson with Duke Ellington, George Wein and Cousin Joe, Rashaan Roland Kirk with Herbie Mann's Band, Como Fife and Drum Band, Sonny Stitt with Ellis Marsalis, Sweet Emma Barrett, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Stevie Wonder with the Meters, Dizzy Gillespie and Bongo Joe, Benny Spellman, Professor Longhair, Nina Simone, etc (and that's in the first 50 odd of 200 pages). This book is in black and white and was followed by an JazzFest Memories with color photography which was done in collaboration with Allison Miner who wrote about the Festival's history.

I am obviously a fan of his work and was saddened when I found out he passed away on Friday, September 26. The New Orleans Times-Picayune celebrated his marvelous life in an obituary, Cultural archivist Michael Smith dies. If that link does not work, try http://tinyurl.com/3oz49v

An excerpt from John Pope's piece.

"Michael P. Smith, a photographer who spent three decades capturing vivid, vibrant images at jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indian ceremonies and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, died Friday at his New Orleans home of two diseases that destroyed his nervous system. He was 71.

A man of boundless energy who devoted himself to the culture he chronicled, Mr. Smith seemed to be everywhere at whatever event he was shooting. Fellow photographers joked that every good Jazzfest picture they took included the back of Mr. Smith's head.

Mr. Smith's subjects included Mahalia Jackson, Irma Thomas, James Booker, Harry Connick Jr., Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, as well as anonymous mourners, strutters and Indians whom Mr. Smith always managed to capture caught up in the moment.

"I don't think there's another photographer who has more sensitively documented very significant aspects of the second half of 20th century New Orleans culture," said Steven Maklansky, a former curator of photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art."

The biography of him on his website, www.michaelpsmithphotography.com notes the many honors he earned. "In the last few years, Mike Smith has been honored with numerous awards. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2002 and was named Music Photographer of the Year by Offbeat magazine. In 2004, he received a Mayor's Arts Award from the Arts Council of New Orleans and a Clarence John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Orleans/Gulf South chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). In 2005, he received the Delgado Society Award (New Orleans Museum of Art), the first photographer to be so honored."

In Spring, 2007, the collection of his negatives and copyright to his work was transferred to the New Orleans Collection. The collection was over 500,000 negatives, most of which have never been printed and the New Orleans Collection intends to make more of his work available in the future. Smith's photographs are also in the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and, locally, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Louisiana State Museum.

His work has not only entertained my eyes but enriched my understanding and love of the music of New Orleans. I know that I am not alone with this sentiment.

A brief sample of his images can be downloaded from the website of The Historic New Orleans Collection. One can download issues of the newsletter, THNOC Quarterly at http://www.hnoc.org/publications/publications-quarterly.php#. It is the Spring 2008 issue.

Milt Hinton's marvelous life

I just finished this morning reading Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs, by Milt Hinton, David G. Berger & Holly Maxson (Vanderbilt University) and while I still have a more formal review to write wanted to spread the word about this remarkable book. The late Milt Hinton was one of the most venerated jazz musicians. In addition to his bass playing, he also was an accomplished photographer. Some twenty years ago, Hinton and Berger authored The Bass Line which the present volume updates and serves as a pictorial autobiography as it includes family photos and others from the Hinton family collection in addition to over 100 new photos by Hinton that was added to this upgraded addition. And there are phots of everyobe from Coltrane, Ellington, In addition to recounting his days with Cab Calloway or the New York recording studios, he also has several pages discussing his photography, how Keg Johnson convinced him to get a Leica (his first camera was an Argus) and later purchasing a Canon (I believe one with a trigger). There is also a CD of interview segments with the late jazz master and the book’s dimensions are of a coffee table book. This is not a book to casually lug around, rather one to sit back, kick one’s shoes off and savor.