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Claxton Jazz Life - New Edition Coming


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Hi everyone,

although I couldn't find all that much about it, TASCHEN will supposedly launch a reprint of William Claxton's Jazz Life around April/May of this year.

On the TASCHEN site itself, it seems that this title isn't listed (but once was), so I don't know if they cancelled it or moved it, but several online mail-order sites have sparse info.

This is what I could gather from those sites.

3822830666.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

a) Limited Edition: It seems as if there might be a limited edition for EURO 150,- which includes a CD on which you can find excellent reproductions of the photos (whatever one needs that for).

b) There will probably be at least one regular edition, maybe two (hardcover, softcover later).

Cheers!

P.S.: I have an old copy of this book. Stellar stuff. One in good condition just went for over $500 on a photography site (too much money, IMHO). I've regularly seen somewhat yellowed copies (normal for a book of that age) for between EURO 50 and EURO 100.

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Jazz Life is very different.

Don't have time to write about that right now.

Check the Internet. Lots of info there.

Cheers!

This is a different book than Jazz (twelvetree press) or Jazz Seen. It about 275 pages or so. Claxton signed a copy of Jazz and Jazz Seen for me some time ago; priceless!!! Well, maybe not priceless but I wouldn't part with them!

Mark

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  • 9 months later...

Thanks Cayetano for the advisory. Would probably have been unaware ot the event if you had not posted this.

'Jazz Life' has got to be a huge book, 696 pages! Will have a look at it first before I envision to part with €150 ($200) on this.

I hope to make it at the Taschen Paris store and catch Steve Potts too!

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Small mystery about a famous Claxton photo solved. The photo has been published in numerous books (it's a double page spread - pages 56-57 - of the previous Claxton opus from Taschen 'Jazz Seen'.

The one of the young tenorsax player being hugged by a black girl on Times Square.

Always thought the musician looked a lot like Ben Caruthers, the actor in the John Cassavettes film' Shadows' but could not find anywhere hwas ever a musician. Turns out it was indeed Caruthers. Claxton tells the story in the introduction to his new book:

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/excerpts/p.../show/7/132.htm

Again we visited New York City (the "Apple"). Gerry Mulligan showed me the spot in Central Park where he had rehearsed his big band when he could not afford a rehearsal studio. Up in Harlem we visited with Mary Lou Williams, who had just opened her used clothing shop for the Bel Canto Foundation, an organization formed to aid needy musicians and their families. I met a young actor named Ben Caruthers at a party, Ben had just appeared in the John Cassavetes film Shadows, which co-starred my friend dancer Lelia Goldoni. Ben was now trying to learn to play tenor saxophone. Ben looked so much like a real and handsome jazzman holding the instrument that I wanted to photograph him. I took him and his girlfriend downtown to Times Square and shot him as a street musician. Before we were through, I was approached by three different policemen, all of whom said that if I didn't have a photo permit, I would "have to get out of there" or hand over a ten or twenty dollar bill. Luckily I had a few dollars in my pocket.

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Claxton's european signing tour, today here at FNAC Madrid:

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/excerpts/p.../show/1/143.htm

I caught Claxton a few hours ago completely by chance :blush: at Foyles in London's Charing Cross Road.

The book is bigger and heavier than Jazz Seen (the box even has a handle!)

F

Edited by Fer Urbina
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The Taschen site has lots of details, including that the release is in November.

Sample pages. Excerpts from the book.

Photos from Claxton's current tour in Europe on the home page.

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/...facts/00305.htm

Taschen has several books with two editions, a normal one and a very expensive "Artists Edition" that includes prints, etc.

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