Rarely seen jazz-oriented photos, ads, etc.

[Christiern]

Here's George Coleman by himself (BTW these pictures were taken by Charlie Nadell):

[Christiern]

And finally, from this session, Junior Mance and George Tucker:

[catesta]

That's my buddy on the piano.

Chris, have you ever thought about selling copies of some these great photos you have?

[Christiern]

  catesta said:

That's my buddy on the piano. 

Chris, have you ever thought about selling copies of some these great photos you have?

No, that hadn't occurred to me--even the ones I took myself.

Here's one of Earl Hines that I like a lot--it was taken by Steve Schapiro in Chicago when I recorded Earl for Riverside's Chicago: The Living Legends series, Sept. 8, 1961 (that's Pops Foster on bass):

Edited June 9, 2004 by Christiern

[Christiern]

I also did the New Orleans: The Living Legends series for Riverside, at Les Jeunes Amis Hall, in the Quarter. Here's a photo from one of those sessions. That's Percy Humphrey on trumpet, Emanuel Sayles, banjo, and Louis James, bass. James, who was in his 80s, received a call from his mother during the session!

[catesta]

  Christiern said:

No, that hadn't occurred to me--even the ones I took myself.

Well, should you ever decide, I'll only take a 25% royalty for the idea.

Seriously, they are some great pics.

[Bright Moments]

[Christiern]

In February of 1954, a tour called "Jazz Club USA" came to Copenhagen. The tour's member included Billie Holiday, Buddy DeFranco, Red Norvo, and pianist Beryl Booker. Here are Beryl's bassist, Bonnie Wetzler, and drummer, Elaine Leighton, having Danish open-faced sandwiches (smørrebrød) with snaps (Aquavit) and beer. The place was Forsvarsbrødrenes Hus, where we had a jam session which, unfortunately, I did not record. We had one there on Nov. 11, 1953, and I did get that one on tape (Clifford Brown, Lionel Hampton, Gigi Gryce, Quincy Jones, and others)--sorry, no pictures from that one.

That's Elaine on the right, Bonnie on the left:

[Christiern]

Here's another one from my Chicago sessions: trumpeter Leroi Nabors and Pops Foster (with Hines' trumpeter, Eddie Smith, in the background). You have probably never heard of Leroi Nabors, but he was a superb trumpeter who preferred to keep his day job as a biochemist. Howard McGhee told me that Andy Kirk always, when the band played Chicago, tried to persuade Leroi to join them. Leroi stayed put but he had his own band on the side.

[couw]

Eddie Smith seems... distracted?

[Christiern]

  couw said:

Eddie Smith seems... distracted?

He was probably tired--we recorded all day for 3 days, and the Lil Armstrong session at which this was taken, was particularly stressing. I had intended to do two sessions, each with Lil fronting a different group, but the amateur engineers a verging-on-bankruptcy Riverside saddled me with were late setting up. Because of that, I ended up doing one session with what almost amounted to two bands: two front lines collectively comprising 3 trumpets, 2 clarinets, and two trombones.

Anyway, here's an ad for the Sunset Café, which was located at 35th and Calumet, and I will follow that up (in the subsequent post) with a photo Steve Schapiro took on that well-known corner, with the building that housed the Sunset seen in the background.

[Christiern]

Here's the 1961 photo...

[Brad]

Chris, have you ever considered putting these out in a book of photos. It'd be tremendous and I, for one, would buy it.

[Christiern]

No, Brad, I have not consider doing that. Although I have many photos taken by myself, the most interesting ones are not mine, I just own copies. Occasionally, I do lend photos out for publishing--the Columbia Hot 5/7 set is an example of that.

Here's a letter Alberta Hunter received from Dick Campbell in Feb. 1945. He headed up the black USO shows, and the first one was headed by Alberta. She traveled extensively for the USO, in Europe as well as the Burma-China area, and--later--Korea. The photo shows her entertaining troops in Agra, India.

[sheldonm]

  Christiern said:

• On April 11, 1961, I brought blues singer Ida Cox into the Plaza Sound studio for the first of two sessions that became a Riverside album (Blues for Rampart Street). Here she is with Jo Jones. The other accompanyists were: Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Sammy Price, and Milt Hinton. Not a bad lineup.
  

....have you ever seen a photograph of Jo Jones when he wasn't smilin'? Man, everytime I see him in print or video, he has that big smile on his face!!!

Mark

[Christiern]

He never smiled when he told me how John Hammond fired Billie Holiday from the Basie band because she refused to be tagged as a blues singer. It was a story he told me at least twice. He also wasn't smiling at the first Ida Cox session when he and Roy Eldridge had a little friendly argument about whether or not Jabbo Smith was among the living. He was. Whitney Balliett, who was one of the many jazz writers covering the Cox sessions, captured the argument verbatim--it impressed me, because he didn't have a tape recorder. I had it all on the master tape.

[Bright Moments]

[Bright Moments]

[Bright Moments]

hey where did all of chris's pics go?!!!