'A Great Day in Harlem' Celebrates 60th Anniversary


Photographer Art Kane's legendary jazz photograph, 'Harlem – 1958', commonly known as 'A Great Day In Harlem' celebrated its 60th anniversary on August 12, 2018, and is the subject of a new book, Art Kane: Harlem 1968, published in November 2018.

In 1958, Kane pitched Esquire magazine with the idea of a photo shoot gathering together as many New York-based jazz musicians as possible. Esquire took the plunge and Kane put the word out to the jazz community via record labels, managers, agents and clubs to meet on 12 August outside a Brownstone house at 17 East 126th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem at 10am, a time of day not that familiar to many night-owl jazz players.

Come the day, 57 musicians turned up, including big rollers such as Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins and Pee Wee Russell to then up-and-coming names, Benny Golson, Marion MacPartland, Mary Lou Williams and Art Farmer. Some local children also blagged their way into the frame, Kane got his shot and the photo was published in Esquire's Golden Age of Jazz special issue in January 1959, subsequently becoming one of the most iconic photos in jazz history. Thankfully, the Brownstone house has survived the gentrification of the area over recent decades, though a large number of the musicians and Art Kane are long passed.

"There was going to be an unusual shooting of a photograph for Esquire magazine and I was going to be part of it." said Benny Golson. "I couldn't believe it! Nobody really knew me that early in my career. But zippo, I was there on the intended date. When I arrived, there were all of my heroes."

The book, Art Kane: Harlem 1958, is published by Wall of Sound Editions on 1 November 2018 and tells the story behind the photo together with outtake images from the shoot, as well as many of Kane's jazz portraits from the period, and includes Kane's original text, an introduction by his son Jonathan Kane and forwards by Quincy Jones and Benny Golson.

Jon Newey

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The JimiI Hendrix Experience 'ELECTRIC LADYLAND' 50th Anniversary Anthology

Image
THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE 'ELECTRIC LADYLAND' 50th Anniversary Electric Ladyland is the third and final studio album by English-American rock band the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released by Reprise Records in North America and Track Records in the UK on my 10th birthday, October 16, 1968, 50 years ago, the double LP was the only record from the band produced by Jimi Hendrix and mixed entirely in stereo. By mid-November, it had charted at number one in the United States, where it spent two weeks at the top spot. Electric Ladyland was the Experience's most commercially successful release and their only number one album. It peaked at number six in the UK, where it spent 12 weeks on the chart. Electric Ladyland included a cover of the Bob Dylan song, 'All Along the Watchtower', which became the Experience's highest selling single and their only top 40 hit in the US, peaking at number 20; the single reached number five in the UK. Although the album c...
Read more

Down Memory Lane

Image
The Jackson siblings Randy, Janet and Michael (1972) The Jackson family seen at home here is the best-known family in music history and they were on the scene for decades. The children of the family first began their careers in the band called The Jackson 5 and this led to the solo careers of Janet and Michael. Out of the ten Jackson children, Randy Janet and Michael were the youngest and at the time this photo was taken.  At the time, Michael was only 14 but even though he was the youngest member of the Jackson 5 (Which consisted of Michael and his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon), he was the only one of the five who was starting a solo career. Randy was 11 at the time and even though he still wasn’t an official member of the Jackson 5, he still occasionally performed with them on percussion. Janet was only 6 years old here and wasn’t successful just yet, but she too would find her fame in the '70s and early '80s as an actress. Willie Nelson (1949) Wi...
Read more

The Queen of Folk Joan Baez 'Fare Thee Well' Tour 2018-19

Image
Joan Baez is 77 and her voice, as she freely admits, is not what it was. That outrageously pure soprano is long gone, replaced by a lower, less reliable instrument .  Her set is a clever combination of songs from the new disc and classics, among others Bob Dylan’s 'Farewell Angelina', a powerful rendition of Woody Guthrie’s 'Deportee', as relevant now seven decades on as she points out, and a fresh version of 'Joe Hill'.  Joan's slow, more-wistful-than-angry Diamonds & Rust, her great lament for former lover Bob Dylan , who she introduced to the world  inviting him on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival  in 1963, is brilliantly melancholic.  It is a tribute to the new songs, including the heartfelt The President Sang Amazing Grace, a modern civil rights song echoing the struggles of the 1960s, recited rather than sung, that didn’t pale in that exalted company. Her protege,  Grace Stumberg , accompanies her on 'D...
Read more