I own copies of his photos, but I had never heard of him

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
 
I used to buy all those album cover books when I saw them cheap, thinking it would keep the urge to buy the album away. That didn't work. I just wanted more albums....LOL. I would like a nice book on William Claxton, though. I forget who wrote the tune. But some jazz guy wrote a song for him since he was always around the studios and clubs. "Clickin' with Clax" I think it's called...and my guess is Gerry Mulligan....definitely one of the west coast guys.
 
That's pretty cool - never knew about that, but just looked it up (on Apple Music, sorry) and it was Shorty Rogers, also done more recently by Pete Jolly. Kind of a fast-bop thing, which is not my favorite type of jazz, but quite well done. I always bought the albums but like having the whole catalog of a lot of these artists available for $10/month these days. But the cover art really suffers!

-Ray
 
pssst....don't tell my customers, but more often than not, I'm streaming music at home. Collecting records is well out of my budget. I always have a few thousand lying around to listen to, but I don't consider it "my collection".....that was sold a long time ago.
 
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