Bill Crump: A Great Day in Harlem's “Mystery Man” - by Steve Siegel, Jazz Profiles

[Elmo]

The most iconic group photograph in the history of jazz, entitled “A Great Day in Harlem" was taken on August 12, 1958 in front of a brownstone at 17 East 126^th St. The photographer was Art Kane who was on assignment from Esquire Magazine. The image was to become the centerpiece of the January 1959 “Golden Age of Jazz " issue.  The “cast” for the picture included 57 jazz musicians, 56 of whom were either legends, soon-to- be legends or men and women with at least rather thick jazz resumes. The 57^th musician was one decidedly non-legendary mystery man, a talented, yet journeyman musician who, decades after the image was taken, was still unknown to most jazz experts viewing the photo...

https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2020/07/bill-crump-great-day-in-harlems-mystery.html?m=1

Edited 23 hours ago by Elmo

[medjuck]

Great story. I've always been impressed that the editors of Esquire understood that they were living in a Golden Age.

[Big Beat Steve]

Didn't the background story of Bill Crump get some mention here before?

https://www.organissimo.org/forum/topic/82644-some-never-before-seen-photos-from-the-great-day-in-harlem”/#comment-1616133

A couple of years ago I found the below link on the internet that had the original publication of the research by Steve Siegel on Bill Crump:

https://jazzbuffalo.org/2020/07/22/bill-crump-a-great-day-in-harlems-mystery-man/

All in all I feel Bill Crump totally deserves his place on that photograph as a represenative (along with Scoville Browne, in a way) of all those journeyman jazz musicians who staffed the countless bands that formed the basis of the entire jazz scene in clubs, stage shows, roadhouses and wherever ... and without whom it would have been far more difficult (and far less likely) to sustain a vibrant scene that allowed for interaction and interchanges among musicians as well as their audience in many ways and in that many places in all corners of the country and elsewhere.
So it was quite fitting that he actually was a member of the Apollo house band  (wonder how many budding stars he backed - if only briefly each time - at the Apollo talent shows)?
And being a multi-instrumentalist is no mean feat either. 

There also is this person-by-person rundown of brief biographies of all those present here:

https://harlem.org/index.html
https://harlem.org/people/name.html

Bill Crump is here (his entry reflects the findings of the above story of 2020):
https://harlem.org/people/crump.html

Edited 4 hours ago by Big Beat Steve

[Big Beat Steve]

Another detail:
As also mentioned on Bill Crump's Wikipedia page, he was a member of the J. Frank Terry Chicago Nightingales territory band around 1934.
A photo of this band (including 27-year old Crump) figures in the "Swing Out - Great Negro Dance Bands" book by Gene Fernett (first published in 1970):

[Elmo]

Postscript:

After my article appeared in Jazz Profiles,  I received an email from a recording engineer who had inherited some tapes from another recording engineer friend of his, who had passed away. The tape box stated that it was recorded in 1960 at a house party in Jamaica, Queens, New York at the home of Eldred “Skippy" Williams. The musicians included Williams, the tenor sax player who followed Ben Webster into Ellington's band in 1941 and Bill Crump.

 Given that my research failed to turn up any recording in a small group context that Crump might have participated in, this was an amazing find.

 I requested that he provide me a CD of this, which he did. The recording quality was amazing (in stereo!). I could identify Crump as soloing on tenor sax, flute and bass clarinet. His work on the latter instrument placing him among the earliest jazz artists to master the bass clarinet.

In terms of Crump's ability to adapt to different styles of jazz over a six-decade career, as well as being a multi-instrumentalist who played a non-traditional jazz instrument, he reminded me of Garvin Bushell (bassoon) who was only five years older.

I was also able to provide a copy of the CD to Crump's daughter who had never possessed a recording of her father.  Steve Siegel