Jimmie Lunceford, William Gottlieb, Gene Krupa

William Gottlieb's photography has introduced countless people the world over to the beauty of jazz as art. His ability to capture performances by the likes of Ellington and Sinatra and Basie and Billie Holiday during the Golden Age of Jazz led to the great art now associated with jazz.

From 1938 - 1948, he lived and breathed this art form, going from Washington's "Mr. Jazz" as a result of his work at the Washington Post and on NBC Radio, to editor of Downbeat Magazine. He put together jam sessions, helped steady a reluctant Billie Holiday, and located a reclusive Thelonious Monk. He was at the center of a piece of our history that grows in eminence with each passing day.

The 81 year old Mr. Gottlieb is now reaping what is justly his. His work is now part of the Library of Congress.

On June 30, 1997, it was our priviledge to have interviewed William Gottlieb for Jerry Jazz Musician.  If you wish to contact him, or to get information on buying any of his photo prints, go to The Golden Age of Jazz.

All photos are Copyright William P. Gottlieb




JJM Your own life as a young man......I understand you went to Lehigh University in the 1930s, is that correct?

GOTTLIEB Yes, I graduated in 1938.

JJM What did you and your folks imagine yourself doing?

GOTTLIEB I was in the college of business and majored in economics. I was their hot economic student at the time, although I realize I learned very little. Later, I did graduate work at the University of Maryland in economics, taught economics, and actually worked professionally for the US Government as an economist, but that was a very minor part of my career.

JJM How did you get into music?

GOTTLIEB I got sick with trichinosis one summer, and while recuperating at home, my most constant visitor was a fellow that had been my mentor in high school. He was a classical piano player of no merit whatsoever, but a jazz fan. He was very erudite, and subscribed to music magazines not only from the US, but also from England and France. It was in the foreign publications that he became aware that jazz was America's great contribution to the arts. He became a collector of jazz records. He couldnt play jazz but he could buy the records and listen to them. When he visited me, he knew that I was the editor of the college newspaper and that I had the priviledge of reviewing records. At the time, let's just say I was a Guy Lombardo fan, who was a great guy and an important fellow. This fellow straightnend me out though and put me on to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. By the time I recovered and went back to college, I was a jazz nut.

JJM Do you recall the very first recording you heard?

GOTTLIEB No

JJM So you grew up listening to Lombardo in the house? Is that a result of an influence of your parents?

GOTTLIEB I dont think my parents were interested in any popular music, or even classical music. They were not in that groove, especially. Actually, I was an orphan by the time I was 14, so there is a lot about them that I don't know. Through outside influences I became interested in jazz.                                                                                                                                          

JJM And you wound up as a journalist.

GOTTLIEB I was a writer in college, and was feature editor in the campus newspaper, so I was a writer, and to this day I still consider myself a writer. My first job, however, was in advertising, and that was by serendipity. I had an introduction to the business manager of the Washington Post. This was in the Easter vacation just before graduation, and I had not yet even applied for a job, yet alone had one. I had a protege on the campus magazine whose uncle was the business manager of the Post. At the time I was on the Lehigh tennis team and we always traveled south to schools like Duke and North Carolina State and this nephew suggested I stop in and make some inquiries at the Post. I knew that we'd be passing through Washington on Saturday, because that morning we were scheduled to play against Johns Hopkins but I figured there wouldnt be time to get to visit anyone in Washington and that ...anyhow....I doubted that someone as high up as the Business Manager of the Post would be working on a Saturday. However, that proved not to be the case. It turned out that at the Post, even the executives worked hard! Finally, I doubted that even if he were there that he would have time or the desire to see me. As a precaution, I took a number of magazines with me that I had edited so that I could use them as a pitch for the job. I also sent to this very fellow that introduced me to jazz, (by this time he was producing plays at American University in Washington) a letter saying that if I had time I would pick up a girlfriend of mine in Baltimore (now my wife of 58 years), and we would stop and look at his show. And if the tennis match would be rained out, I would stop to visit the business manager of the Post. Sure enough, it rained, and while i parked my car outside the Post building, with my wife to be in it, I went up and saw the business manager and told him I wanted to be a writer on the Post. He introduced me to the managing editor, who much to my astonishment and great delight hired me. When I went back to the business manager and reported that, he said "Listen, why not come work for me instead, because in the long run you will make more money in advertising." Our personalities meshed, and he proved to be a delightful man who lived into his 90s. At any rate, I went to work with him, and it turned out I disliked advertising. So to get back to writing, and to spread the gospel of jazz, I went back to the managing editor, and asked that in addition to my advertising duties, would he let me write a weekly jazz column?

JJM So, this music that you reviewed for the Post, was that confined mostly to music from the Washington metro area?

GOTTLIEB Partly. I also got records from record companies all over, so I reviewed records. So to that extent it went beyond Washington.

JJM How did you get into the photographic aspect of your work?

GOTTLIEB I asked the Managing Editor if he would assign me a photographer to go around the clubs, and he said ok, we will give it a trial run. But after two weeks, he said it was too expensive, so he stopped my having the priviledge of the photographer. I was so determined though to have these events photographed. This was the time when Life Magazine was the focus of all aspiring journalists, so I went out and at my own expense bought a Speed Graphic, that big, expensive, complicated camera that press photographers used in those days, and with a little help from the staff at the Post I learned to use it, and from that point on I became a writer/photographer. I quit my advertising job and went back to college at the University of Maryland and taught economics. Later, when war became imminent, I became an Economist at the Food and Price Administration. That was the organization that set prices during war time. Then the army got me, and because of my background, I was able to become a photo officer in the Army Air Corps. After four years in service I got out and very promptly got a job as an assistant editor with Downbeat Magazine. No one ever paid me for my photos, but it enhanced my columns, I enjoyed it, and it was easy compared to writing.

JJM You had a show on NBC radio. Was this simultaneous to the time you are talking about?

GOTTLIEB Yes. I had a weekly Saturday show on the NBC outlet, WRC. I also had a three time a week show on a local station, and I was sort of the "Mr. Jazz" of Washington during that period, and I was only about 22 at the time. Then the Army put its hooks into me and I had to give up all of that. When I got out of the serivice, I went to New York, and the people at Downbeat knew of me because of the reputation I built up in Washington, so I got a job rather quickly. I was there for 2 and a half years, and by that time, for a variety of reasons, I got out of jazz completely. I then established a business producing educational film strips and other educational material.

JJM This was 1948 or so?

GOTTLIEB Yes. I quit cold turkey

JJM So, you were in the business of jazz from 1938 to 1948?

GOTTLIEB Yes, except for the 4 and a half years I spent in the Army, so actually it was a very small window when I was involved primarily in jazz.

JJM As a fan, and to somebody that was too young to live in that era, it feels like a time that people are curious about, that we wish we could have taken part in the excitement....the idea of 52nd Street and the Golden Age and all that. What event sparked the Golden Age of Jazz? What happened that sparked that whole era?

GOTTLIEB You can pinpoint certain specifics but that in itself would not explain this huge interest. But when Benny Goodman did a cross country tour, it was rather unsuccesful until he hit California, where he hit a crowd that had been listening to his radio broadcast and the rest of the country hadn't because the hours were awkward. His music was broadcast live, and by the time it came on the radio, the only people still up were those on the west coast. Almost overnite, there was a jazz craze, and it became the most popular music of the time, a status that it no longer has, even thoutgh there has been a resurgance in jazz, especially in its intellectual aspects ...books, magazines, festivals, etc. Its bigger now than 10 years ago, but nearly as big as it was in the late 1930s into after the war. Then, Goodman and Artie Shaw and performers like that were the most popular people in music, and today its rock and roll, country and so on.

JJM You put together the bands of Bob Crosby and Count Basie in an after hours session...How did that come about? What are your memories of that night?

GOTTLIEB I sure do have memories of that night! First of all, I had given a great deal of attention to the black theatre in Washington, called the Howard theatre. All the great black orchestras and movies played there. The Earle Theatre downtown was a white bastion and they had white orchestras. Simutaneously and by coincidence, the Count Basie orchestra was playing at the Howard, and the Bob Crosby orchestra was playing at the Earle. Crosby played a sort of Dixieland, and its members were not only all white, but most were southerners. As I said I was "Mr. Jazz" at the time and I had the backing of the Washington Post so I had considerable amount of prestige and muscle and nerve. I was young, so I had enough nerve to approach both Crosby and Basie. First, though, I went to the manager of the Howard because he owed me. Prior to my entering the scene, the activities at the Howard Theatre were seldom mentioned in white newspapers, but I featured them not because they were black but because that is where the big jazz was coming from. He was very anxious to return the privilege and when I asked if I could have the use of the Howard Theatre after hours one night to have a private jam session he said sure. So then I convinced Count Basie to show up with some of his key men, and more surprisingly, I convinced Bob Crosby to send his key men up to the Howard, which I learned 15 - 20 years later was an uncomfortable mission for the members of the Crosby orchestra. But they showed up, and I had someone record it..the brother of what was then a silent movie star, Milton Sills. His big passion was making recordings, and he had a very big, heavy, expensive recording machine. He brought that along and we had this private dance session with an audience of only a dozen people, including the sons of the Turkish ambassador, Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun, who became the founders of Atlantic Records. I still see Ahmet. At any rate, we got photos of the event, one or two appear in the book. I carried that recroding with me for years, but finally it dawned on me that it was an extremely valuable piece of property. When I went to check it out, it was in a dozen pieces. The recording was a transcript that was 16 inches in diameter, and had a glass vase covered by acetate...these were not pressings, these were cut on that recording machine...a stylus cut into the acetate, but underneath the core was glass, and by the time it dawned on me I should do something with it, the recording was hopelessly shattered.

JJM Was this also around the time that there were other "Battles of Swing Bands"?

GOTTLIEB Yes. I was Master of Ceremonies of a couple of them, and there is a photo in the book of me with Gene Krupa and Jimmie Lunceford during a competition between their bands.

JJM Were these planned events?

GOTTLIEB Yes.

JJM It sounds as though they were sort of events that inspired comaraderie among the leaders and players of the orchestras. Did that seem to go on?

GOTTLIEB Yes. It went on in certain locations on a semi permanent basis up at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem for long periods, and there would be battles of swing all the time.

JJM Who judged the competitions?

GOTTLIEB In the couple in which I presided, they had all kinds of dance competitions, and they were judged by applause from the audience. In the case of Lunceford and Krupa, Lunceford won. He had an overwhelming, powerhouse orchestra, and furthermore, the audience was largely black.

JMM Was the audience of jazz in that era typically mixed race?

GOTTLIEB In Washington, not so much, very little as a matter of fact. That was a southern town at that time, before the war. Because of my special position in jazz, and because of my personal inclinations, I had many black friends, but because it was such a southern place, the only place we could meet together was in our respective homes, with one exception, the Union Station (train station) restaurant. That was the only restaurant in Washington that would permit blacks and whites to eat together.

JJM In your book you described how Sinatra had a negative effect on jazz because he brought about a decline in the big bands. Explain that if you would.

GOTTLIEB I consider Sinatra to be possibly the best singer that America has ever produced. He had a way of handling his delivery, the microphone, so that everyone in the audience would feel that he was singing just to him or her. He always had an underlying jazz beat, but a lot of people object to me even including him among the jazz people.

JJM He must have taken the focus away from the band leader.

GOTTLIEB Yes. Where he had a negative effect was in that by 1948 or 1949, there was a recession going on and the band business was in decline. A lot of the bands had blown up in size to 19 pieces; big payroll, and they began to fail.. About that time the singers, notably Sinatra, became dominant. In prior years, the singer was the adjunct to the orchestra, but the singers became so big it got reversed, and that was certainly true with Sinatra. The attention was switched over to the singer and the orchestra was less important.                                                                                                                          

JJM In essence then what happened the ensembles were forced to shrink because the orchestras couldnt bring in the money to pay for 19 musicians.

GOTTLIEB Yes. Thats right. It got to the point where the singers almost didn't need an orchestra. They could get any four or five guys and they had a show.

JJM Lets talk about 52nd Street. When you think about 52nd St, it has the same sort of appeal to a fan of jazz historically as, say, Ebbetts Field does to a fan of baseball. It was something that was so rich and alive.

GOTTLIEB Yes, but see it was even bigger than the Ebbets Field metaphor. It was the center of the jazz world. One block had four or five very important jazz clubs, and a couple more just a block or so away. And you could go there and for 50 cents get a beer or soda and stay at the bar as long as you wanted and listen to great performers like DIzzy Gillespie for half a buck. Then you could go next door and listen to someone like Art Tatum and listen to him for a while for another half a buck or a buck. It was a sort of a paradise, and there were some of the clubs that specialized in Dixieland and other period jazz, and still others that were the centers for bop music, that ultimately dominated the street.                                
                                                                                         
JJM How did this evolve? What was the first club?

GOTTLIEB First club was the Onyx Club, and that was on the south side of the street and later it moved to the north side of the street. Carl Kress, a distinguished jazz guitarist was a partial owner of the Onyx, and it stayed on for a good while, and there were others that came along.

All photos are Copyright William P. Gottlieb

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