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Product Description
In 1957, Eugene Smith, a thirty-eight-year-old magazine photographer, walked out of his comfortable settled world—his longtime well-paying job at Life and the home he shared with his wife and four children in Croton-on-Hudson, New York—to move into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue (between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth streets) in New York City’s wholesale flower district. Smith was trying to complete the most ambitious project of his life, a massive photo-essay on the city of Pittsburgh.
821 Sixth Avenue was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them—and countless fascinating, underground characters. As his ambitions broke down for his quixotic Pittsburgh opus, Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists. He turned his documentary impulses away from Pittsburgh and toward his offbeat new surroundings.
From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at his loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets of the flower district, as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a surreptitious recording studio and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Paul Bley. He recorded, as well, legends such as pianists Eddie Costa, and Sonny Clark, drummers Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Halliday, bassist Henry Grimes, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart.
Also dropping in on the nighttime scene were the likes of Doris Duke, Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Salvador Dalí, as well as pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, photography students, local cops, building inspectors, marijuana dealers, and others.
Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text interwoven throughout.
W. Eugene Smith’s Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of The Jazz Loft Project, no one had seen Smith’s extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tale(s) . . .
821 Sixth Avenue was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them—and countless fascinating, underground characters. As his ambitions broke down for his quixotic Pittsburgh opus, Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists. He turned his documentary impulses away from Pittsburgh and toward his offbeat new surroundings.
From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at his loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets of the flower district, as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a surreptitious recording studio and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Paul Bley. He recorded, as well, legends such as pianists Eddie Costa, and Sonny Clark, drummers Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Halliday, bassist Henry Grimes, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart.
Also dropping in on the nighttime scene were the likes of Doris Duke, Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Salvador Dalí, as well as pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, photography students, local cops, building inspectors, marijuana dealers, and others.
Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text interwoven throughout.
W. Eugene Smith’s Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of The Jazz Loft Project, no one had seen Smith’s extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tale(s) . . .
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"Life" magazine photographer Smith documented the comings and goings and happenings at his NY loft in late 1950s/early 1960s. So many of these photos - particularly those with Monk - are both memorable and natural. I recommend to all who are interested in NY jazz in the period, both well-known and less celebrated, plenty here to delight the eye. Even more intriguing are the tape boxes that are also pictured - Smith recorded street noise, TV/radio shows, conversations, and most crucially, hours and hours of the musicians playing 'after hours' in jam sessions, and notably Monk & arranger Hall Overton in rehearsal for the Town hall concert of 1957. Also Mingus, Jimmy Giuffre, Zoot Sims, Bob Brookmeyer, Paul Bley and the wonderful pianist Sonny Clark [and many many more]. I only hope that some of the music -particularly Sonny Clark! - eventually surfaces on CD or is otherwise made available somehow. A fascinating and worthwhile document would thus be enhanced.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Both photos and choosen texts pull you into the incredible atmosphere of this loft and the madness of Smith's project.
A great book !
A great book !
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
19 reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
A Walk In the Garden
3 Dec 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Beautiful and truly spiritual book. Like great jazz itself. Life affirming and what all art should be; truly democratic.
The photographs are stunning. The writing and transcriptions get all the right juices flowing. I would love to hear some of the tapes Smith recorded.
Get this book as a gift for yourself or someone close to your heart.
Like the old Medicine Show man said "Good for what ails you and gives you what you ain't got".
The photographs are stunning. The writing and transcriptions get all the right juices flowing. I would love to hear some of the tapes Smith recorded.
Get this book as a gift for yourself or someone close to your heart.
Like the old Medicine Show man said "Good for what ails you and gives you what you ain't got".
30 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Music Lived in The Loft
26 Nov 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you are a musician, you will come alive in Sam Stephenson's awesome collection of the happenings in a loft on Sixth Avenue in New York during the late 1950's and 1960's. Every struggling jazz musician with talent was there. Those of lesser talent never came back.
Tiny clips of conversations, recorded on tape bring back recollections of moments passed with enough spirit, to let you join the clan.
The book will serve as a Rosetta Stone, for those who long ago participated in making jazz the American standard in the world and who want to reconnect with friends to make more music, or to sit back and smile in their memory.
Tiny clips of conversations, recorded on tape bring back recollections of moments passed with enough spirit, to let you join the clan.
The book will serve as a Rosetta Stone, for those who long ago participated in making jazz the American standard in the world and who want to reconnect with friends to make more music, or to sit back and smile in their memory.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The best of the best of the very best!
25 Dec 2009
Format:Hardcover
To start with, I'm an old photography teacher, specializing in black and white. Secondly, one of my best friends is the brother of Hall Overton, a major name in this book. These are the two ground works for what I write.
Hall's brother is so proud of how the author has brought his brother and the people, music and times out so close to reality. Smith has photos beyond expectations and locations.
I know Hall Overton is depicted here as he was ...down to the smallest detail. His brother agrees.
Smith's photos are quite accurate, including moods, emotions, feelings, inspirations.
I am happy to see this material finally covered in such true and accurate detail. It is grand!
Hall's brother is so proud of how the author has brought his brother and the people, music and times out so close to reality. Smith has photos beyond expectations and locations.
I know Hall Overton is depicted here as he was ...down to the smallest detail. His brother agrees.
Smith's photos are quite accurate, including moods, emotions, feelings, inspirations.
I am happy to see this material finally covered in such true and accurate detail. It is grand!
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