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Masters of Jazz Photography
The great improvisational American jazz musicians of
the mid-20th century inspired a generation of photographers to develop a
looser, moodier style of visual expression. That evocative approach is on
striking display in The Jazz Image: Masters of Jazz Photography. Covering
six decades of performers — from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
to John Coltrane and Miles Davis — this unique collection is as much
a comprehensive catalogue of jazz greats as it is a salute to the photographers
who captured them.
Lee Tanner, a leading authority on jazz photography,
has selected works — by such noted jazz photographers as Herman Leonard,
Bob Willoughby, Milt Hinton, and Bill Claxton — that are iconic, candid,
explosive, and intimate. They provide a simultaneous look at jazz, photography,
and America from 1935 into the 1990s.#
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In cooperation with Tanner, Jerry Jazz Musician
will present twelve editions of "Master of Jazz Photography," featuring
a work by one of the photographers featured in The Jazz Image.
This edition: Jerry Stoll
"Pee Wee Russell was a man of seemingly infinite gentleness and love for music. He listened to musicians of every style...from traditional through to the likes of Mulligan and Monk."
- Nat Hentoff
Traditionalist Pee Wee Russell with modernist Pee Wee Russell at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1963
Photograph by Jerry Stoll
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Sound samples of Pee Wee Russell and Gerry Mulligan
Lulu's Back in Town , by Pee Wee Russell
Out of Nowhere, by Pee Wee Russell
Festive Minor, by Gerry Mulligan
Jerry Stoll was born in 1923, the son of tenant farmers on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, in Minnesota. Stoll's older sister was a jazz vocalist, and she introduced him to the music. He was the resident photographer at the Monterey Jazz Festival, creating a visual document of the years 1958 to 1964. Rupert Jenkins, the director of the San Franciso Art Commission Gallery, wrote, "Stoll was for many years one of several prominent Bay Area post-war photographers to document the changing face, economics, and politics of the city. His early works were influenced by sources as varied as Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibition, Cubism, and the Soviet films of Sergei Eisenstein…His change of style coincided with the emerging art renaissance in San Francisco, led by the Beats - 'a non-revolutionary cultural revolution,' in Stoll's words." Working out of San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC, Stoll has authored books and pictorial essays and has produced and directed several documentary films, including Sons and Daughters, The Years Yet to Come, The Pentagon Papers, and The War Economy. In 1955 he helped create the artists' group Bay Area Photographers, and in 1965 he founded American Documentary Films. Stoll died in 2004.
About the Author
Lee Tanner has been photographing jazz musicians for
nearly half a century. His photographs have appeared in Down Beat, Jazz Times,
American Photo, and Popular Photography, on the covers of many record albums,
and in several books. He lives in Sonora, CA.
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Masters of Jazz Photography index
# Text from the publisher
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