04/28/2000

Take a look at this remarkable new book, a retrospective about some of the greatest jazz musicians ever!

The Great Jazz Day, by Charles Graham with photographs by Art Kane. Additional text by Dan Morgenstern, Whitney Balliett, Gary Giddins, and Ralph Ellison. Additional photos by Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Hinton, and Mike Lipskin. Woodford Press 2000.

The Great Jazz Day celebrates a historical day in 1958 when 57 jazz musicians gathered in Harlem for a special family portrait. With priceless candid photographs, memoirs, and essays, this book immortalizes the people who played the music we love.

On the morning of August 12, 1958, Art Kane waited at an unremarkable brownstone in Harlem. Hired by Esquire to take pictures for an issue called "The Golden Age of Jazz," Kane boldly invited all the big players he could think of to 17 West 126^th St. at 10 a.m. Among those on the invitation list were Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young andSonny Rollins.

Fifty-seven men showed, and Kane’s first gig as a professional photographer produced one of the best-known pictures in music. The chosen photograph from that session, depicting monuments from Monk to Mingus with 12 neighborhood kids at their feet, has been reproduced and recreated to the delight of jazz fans worldwide.

What Jazz Day does best is capture the musicians in their humanness. Here’s a bunch of players keeping an appointment, smoking cigarettes, looking at pictures of each other’s grandkids ... checking out what the world is like at 10 a.m., because most aren’t up that early. This is the way anyone would act at a family reunion.

In the book’s first chapter we read how small Kane felt when all those golden fingers and chops arrived: "I had never felt so alone in my life, watching them milling around and paying no attention to me, this idiot kid across the street who had the audacity to set up the whole thing."

We learn how the musicians arranged themselves for the photo, and how 12 curious boys sat at the feet of their Fathers, uninvited but integral to the composition.

Through profiles of all 57 musicians in the Big Picture, we get to appreciate the massive collection of talent present that day. We sigh upon reading that only two men brought their instruments, and only one contributed some brief noise to the mightiest potential jam in the history of jazz.

Chapter Two, "The Trumpet Players in Central Park," remembers another famous jazz picture, taken by Herb Snitzer for Metronome magazine in 1961. Accompanied by "The Trumpet in Jazz," Metronome editor Dan Morgenstern’s masterful overview of ’60s horn culture, this section features Louis Armstrong, Rex Stewart, and Red Allen.

The book’s final chapter shifts from moment to era. We can use the map of Harlem’s jazz spots to trace an imaginary nighttime walk from club to club. Ralph Ellison takes us on a nostalgic tour of Minton’s Playhouse in his essay "The Golden Age/Time Past." Journalists Whitney Balliet and Gary Giddins offer in-depth profiles of eight jazz pillars, including Charlie (Bird) Parker, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Lester Young.

Not enough people appreciate jazz. It’s been over-intellectualized, separated from its roots, confined to too small a category. As a companion to the music itself, The Great Jazz Day is a perfect introduction to an era when jazz was simple: it was what everyone listened to.

Links:

Woodford Press

A Great Day in Harlem

Review written by Nikki Bruno

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.