People You’d Like To Know: Legendary Musicians Photographed By Herb Wise Omnibus Press 2010
Herb Wise was an editor for Oak Publications who published Sing out as well as various books on folk and blues (Samuel Charters’ The Bluesman was originally published by Oak), when photographer David Gahr took him outside gave him a camera and had him start shooting pictures. While his initial efforts were not productive, it led to him becoming a fixture with his camera at festivals and concerts throughout North America documenting a wide spectrum of music, focusing on folk, bluegrass with some blues, country and jazz mixed in from Mariposa in Toronto, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the American Folk Life Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
This is a coffee table sized volume of his photos. There is an amiable quality to many of these which are often informal portraits although there are some very fine performance images included. Graham Vickers includes brief descriptions of the artists depicted and sometimes the circumstances the photos were made of. Striking images of Richard Havens, Sam Chatmon, Jaco Pastorious, Professor Longhair (one great picture with reflections showing in his sunglasses) , Chuck Berry, Charles Mingus, Saul Broudy, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, Frank Zappa, Jackson Browne (great portrait), Sonny Terry (reclining against a trailer), Joan Baez & Kris Kristofferson, Joe Zawinul, Arlo Guthrie, Ray Charles, Doc Watson, Leon Redbone, Stephane Grappelli, Bob Dylan with the Band, an early Taj Mahal and Koko Taylor sitting in front of her van at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival. Its a pretty diverse group of images, and some are devoted to showing dancers at the festival while a young Rosanna Arquette is seen at the 1971 Philadelphia Folk Festival. Blue Lu Barker and Danny Barker are seen in their living room, while Roosevelt Sykes is backstage at the 1981 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.The pictures mostly come from the sixties and seventies.
The reproduction (with a slight sepia tint) seems quite satisfactory and there is a wealth of performers captured here, some famous, others less so. People You’d Like To Know is a book you might skim through when you first get it and return to look at the images again and again. It is reasonably priced with a list price of $34.95, should be reasonably easy to fine and makes a nice addition to one’s collection of music photography books. This review originally appeared in the September 2010 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 329). I received a review copy from a publicist. Needless to say this would make a great holiday gift for music lovers.
This past Saturday night I attended the Kennedy Center’s NPR Christmas Piano Jazz concert at the Terrace Theatre here in Washington. I have enjoyed the Jazz at the Kennedy Center shows I have attended. I had the misfortune to sit in Row W in front of the photographer who had two Nikon DSLRs on tripods and telephoto. It is curious that the Kennedy Center rules against photography does not apply to the Kennedy Center itself. Furthermore, to have the loud shutter and mirror slap noise during solo piano performances in a room of attentive listeners shows no respect for people who paid to see and listen to the performances. Every time she took pictures, it completely distracted me from enjoying the performances. The fact that she did not show restraint in shooting the performances but shot during every song at that show (Each of the two numbers by the four pianists) showed total disregard for those sitting near her.
I will acknowledge that I was told that I could be moved if I wanted, but as my wife stated to me afterwards, they shouldn’t sell any seats near the photographer. I would assume the Kennedy Center’s policy against people taking photographs isn’t merely proprietary, but also to prevent the visual and aural distractions of camera shutters and flashes. Yet the Kennedy Center impacted the enjoyment of my wife, myself and I would assume those sitting adjacent to me by the highly distracting shutter sound.
I understand the Kennedy Center wishes to document performances, but certainly they can do it less obtrusively than with a noisy DSLR (She used a Nikon although I suspect Canon DSLRs would also be similarly loud). If they insist on shooting from far away from the stage they must look into using quieter equipment or find ways to totally muffle the sound. Additionally, during a jazz performance such as this one, the photographer might be on stage using a quiet camera like a Leica. While some in the audience may be briefly visually distracted by a photographer on the side of the stage, at least no one’s attentive listening will be interrupted by a loud shutter.
One other point is that in future shows of this type, the photographer be restricted in when they take pictures of each performance. If the photographer had limited herself to simply shooting during the first of the two performances, it would have been somewhat tolerable. However, my evening of seeing and listening to wonderful solo jazz piano was spoiled by the Kennedy Center itself.
Since I posted this initially, it was suggested that whoever is shooting be required to use a sound blimp around the camera to muffle the sound. In any event, there are solutions that the Kennedy Center needs to implement
I have a penchant for books on music (especially blues and jazz) and photography. Books of photographs of blues and jazz musicians have a specific place in my heart, so when I saw on amazon the description of “Jazz” by Ed Van Der Elsken, I added it to my shopping cart but it wasn’t only until recently that I purchased the book. It is published in Amsterdam and it does include some introductory text which I am unable to understand since I do not read Dutch, but it contains a number of black and white photos from the fifties that look like they were taken during European tours by touring American Jazz Masters.
If the technical information on camera equipment and such matter is provided, it must be in portions of the text that I cannot decipher. In addition to the covers, there are 79 pages of photographs in this 7.2 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches hardback that weighs just under 15 ounces. I give the physical dimensions because most of my recent photo book acquisitions are not easily transportable, and despite being a hard cover, this is readily transportable. Their are audience pictures showing some showing unbridled enthusiasm and others more restrained. Notable groups include the Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar peterson, Duke Ellington (one picture has him jubilant as he conducts the Orchestra) , Art Blakey with Lee Morgan, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and the All Stars, Miles Davis on stage with Lester Young and with a big smile as Lester plays in one picture and Jimmy Rushing with Benny Goodman. Of course there is more here, but this gives some sense of who is included here. There is a grittiness in part from the grainy reproduction of many of these wonderful shots and there is a nice range of views including some from above like a two-page spread of Armstrong & the All Stars with the concert hall audience clearly visible. Van Der Elsken marvelously captures much of the flavor of the music in his images here. I have no regrets about purchasing this book and suspect lovers of vintage jazz photography will share my enthusiasm for this.
Sonny Rollins recently turned 80 and part of the celebration is a superb new coffee table book, Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins (Abrams 2010) with Photographs by John Abbott and text by Bob Blumenthal.
Photographer Abbott has been photographing Rollins for twenty off years and was JazzTimes cover photographer for a number of years. The images in here come from a variety of sources including festival and concert performances as well as at his home, both his former apartment near the World Trade Center and upstate form New York City. There are a number of formal portraits mixed with Sonny in a silhouette with a festival audience in front of him. There are shots of members of Sonny’s Bands in some of the performance shots as well as some of individuals who had associations with Sonny over the years including a 2002 portrait of Max Roach. There are also pictures of Sonny with Roy Haynes and Christian McBride taken around the time of Sonny’s concert to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his Carnegie Hall Concert, and backstage as he examines album covers of his older vinyl albums that have been brought for signature. Black & White and Sepia toned images mix with color images and the images are marvelously reproduced.
Simply as a book of photographs of Sonny Rollins, one would have little trouble recommending this volume. Additionally it has the musings of Blumenthal on Sonny Rollins and his music. The book is divided into 5 chapters, each named for one of the tunes that Rollins recorded on the album “Saxophone Colossus,” which enables Blumenthal to provide some musical commentary on Rollins’ music and life. He not only discusses the specific performance but also a variety of other recordings and performances, and includes some discussion of the views towards Sonny’s music. This is obviously not a full biography of Sonny Rollins or a full detailed discussion of Sonny’s music, but Blumenthal’s discussion and the listing of performances in the Appendix provides a concise guide to the central core of Sonny Rollins considerable musical legacy.
For purposes of FTC regulations, I purchased my copy of this. I have seen it at one of the big national book chains and of course should be relatively easy to find online.
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