All those classic B&W jazz photos from the 50's and 60's, probably because during jazz's golden age, B&W was the only chance you had of getting quality images in low light jazz clubs. I like the higher contrast stuff the most. I'd never heard of him either, but had heard of Bill Claxton and Herman Leonard, who've also died in recent years. And the great bassist, Milt Hinton, was also a pretty damn good photographer (and had amazing access!).
I suspect that jazz will keep going as long as the oxygen holds out, but the B&W art form of jazz photographs has probably died with the improvements in photo technology... I'd love to try to do more of this kind of stuff - I shot a bunch at an outdoor jazz performance in Atlantic City a few summers ago and shoot the little combo that plays in Washington Square Park every weekend anytime I'm in New York and always have a blast doing it - but I'm getting too old to keep those hours and very few clubs will let you bring camera's in these days.
Thanks for pointing this out. This may inspire me to get one of the coffee table books of jazz images - there's a great book of Blue Note album covers out there - because I got rid of all of my albums several years ago and even got rid of my CDs a few years back. And streaming music has really poor cover art! But damn, being able to dive DEEP into the back catalogs of all of the greats is not a bad tradeoff!
-Ray