W. Eugene Smith Jazz Loft Project

[MartyJazz]

Fascinating article about the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith who evidently amassed over 40,000 photos and 3,000 hours of taped conversations with various jazz figures in the great years of 1957-65. There's also a link within the article to a site devoted to the Jazz Loft Project:

NY Times article (free subscription required)

[brownie]

This is the New York Times story on the W. Eugene Smith documentation for people who would shy away from subscribing (yes, it's free!)

March 10, 2005

Tape Machine as a Fly on the Wall of Jazz

By BEN RATLIFF

W. Eugene Smith was one of America's great photojournalists, a Life magazine staff member during the 1940's and 50's whose work yielded archetypal American images. He photographed American and Japanese soldiers at war, a country doctor in Colorado, a midwife in rural South Carolina. He became famous for his work ethic, as well as for the empathy of his pictures.

In the late 1950's, a few years after a nervous breakdown, he cut loose from a Time-Life salary and a family in Westchester and became an obsessive documenter of a Manhattan loft full of jazz musicians, on Sixth Avenue near 28th Street. Living there, he shared building space with the painter David X. Young, the trumpeter Dick Cary and the composer and pianist Hall Overton.

This time, Smith used not only cameras, but the latest portable tape recorders as well.

He was in several kinds of pain. He had been wounded in the head and arms in the war, and had become an alcoholic and an amphetamine addict. But his true drug was work: musicians say the loft walls and stairwell were covered with drying photo prints. And though he paid $40 a month in rent, he may have spent more than that on recording tape alone.

"The loft was open every night until about 11," recalled the pianist Paul Bley, who remembers dropping by about once a week. "You climbed the stairs and Smith would open the door, with a camera held waist-high. He was charming, hipper than most musicians. He'd chat you up for quite some time with the camera going click-click-click as fast as it could go."

Smith's jazz-loft project, if you can call it that, lasted from 1957 to about 1965, through what were arguably jazz's best years, when most of the music's early masters were still alive, and the players of a new generation were challenging its foundations.

The project had no proper dimensions, and never attained anything resembling publishable form; it ended when the building's resident musicians moved on and the scene dissipated. When Smith died in 1978, evidence of that period lay deep within his 22 tons of pack-rat archives.

Sam Stephenson, a writer, instructor and research associate at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, and an expert on Smith, has spent the last four years discovering what, exactly, is on the nearly 3,000 hours of tape in the archives. With an associate, Dan Partridge, he has constructed an oral history of the jazz loft, speaking to 177 people who spent time there.

So far, the tapes indicate a lovely and finite discovery - a few great sessions from jazz's greatest period - inside a grander and more mysterious one. Until I took a trip to Durham, N.C., last week, nobody had heard the Smith tapes since their rediscovery, except some of the musicians on them and Robin D. G. Kelley, a Columbia University professor who is writing a biography of Thelonious Monk. (Some other recordings from the loft, made by David X. Young, were released on CD five years ago.)

I heard hours of loft rehearsals by Monk's big band, prior to its Town Hall concert in 1959; by Paul Bley's magnificent trio in 1961 and 1964; by Zoot Sims with a just-drifting-through cast, including the pianist Dave McKenna and drummer Roy Haynes; of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Chick Corea, Warne Marsh and others.

Some of these recordings will be useful to jazz scholarship, including many conversations with the elusive, sometimes taciturn, Monk. Some of the sessions are strong enough to be released on CD. But I also heard many hours of tepid jamming on standards by musicians who never made it, because of lack of talent, psychological instability or drugs. They are part of jazz history, too, though usually never documented.

And there are honest, elucidating moments between bursts of music. At a jam session in January 1964, Rahsaan Roland Kirk (then just Roland Kirk) is thinking out loud about asserting greater control over his art. He wants to open a small Manhattan performance space without a liquor license, entirely about music and not bar profits.

"Jazz cats don't have no faith," Kirk gripes to three other musicians there. "But I have faith in myself. If I were playing in a place, people would come and I could make a living. I don't need no million dollars."

"When I get to 50 years old, I don't want to be working for nobody else but myself," he says.

"I might not do it in the next five years," he goes on, "but I'm going to do it before I pass away." Kirk was 27 at the time; he died in 1977, at 42.

And there is the deep end of Smith's documentary mania. He miked three floors of the building, as well as the stairway. There are reels of Sixth Avenue street noise, Smith's chats with the local beat cop, telephone calls to editors and acquaintances (including one to Charlie Chaplin), taped television and radio programs, and endless conversation about money: evidence of the daily grind among the musicians, artists and quasi-bums at 821 Sixth Avenue.

On one tape, Smith is talking to a pianist from Detroit in her mid-20's, Alice McLeod; a few years later she married John Coltrane. The topic is the ethics of documenting musicians in the loft. It seems that Ms. McLeod herself did not know that even this conversation was being recorded.

Mr. Bley, who has heard the tapes, said: "I wasn't aware that he was recording me. But I'm glad that he did."

There are many more hours of Smith's tapes, sitting with the rest of his archive in the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It is costly to find out what they hold. Grants, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, have allowed Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Partridge to make high-quality digital transfers of the first 300 tapes (or more than 900 hours) out of the full cache of 1,790, and to construct their oral history of the period. There may be a book of photographs and some CD's out of all this at the end, but nothing can happen until the other tapes are heard.

Many of the remaining tapes are unmarked. But to judge by the photographs Smith made in the loft, as well as the testimony of the scene's survivors, the tapes might include Jimmy Giuffre's late-50's trio with Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall; Bill Evans; Vic Dickenson; Pee Wee Russell; Cecil Taylor; Kenny Dorham; John Coltrane; and possibly even Bob Dylan.

But then again, they might not. The markings on 86 tapes indicate that they contain the sounds of cats in heat and meowing; 113 more are recordings of Long John Nebel's late-night radio show on WOR, to which Smith would compulsively send listener-response telegrams. What they will show, for sure, is life as it happened around Smith, an anthropology of a fascinating time and place.

"This is postwar, midcentury, urban fieldwork," Mr. Stephenson said. "Even if there was no music, it'd be important. Even it was people sitting around shooting pool."

Several of the Loft photos that W. Eugene Smith took at the time were displayed at a Smith retrospective in Paris a few years ago. Incredible stuff!

Some people (I'm one of them) consider Smith one of the very best - if not THE best - photographer ever.

I have been an admirer of his work ever since I became interested in photography.

Smith was present when Albert Ayler recorded the 'Spirits Rejoice' album for ESP in 1965. None of the photos he took that day has showed up yet!

I was there too, a very novice amateur photographer. Went up to him to tell him how much I admired his work. Something I rarely do. Smith could not be more welcoming and helpful.

[MartyJazz]

Thanks Brownie. And here's the link within the article to the Jazz Loft Project site:

http://cds.aas.duke.edu/jazzloft/index.html

[Peter Johnson]

And if you wish not to subscribe:

DON'T!

[AllenLowe]

it would be great to see and hear all of that, though I will say that the one CD that was issued of lotf performances was a disappointment - the music wasn't bad, but nothing special and not especially worthy of release -

[MartyJazz]

it would be great to see and hear all of that, though I will say that the one CD that was issued of lotf performances was a disappointment - the music wasn't bad, but nothing special and not especially worthy of release -

At this point in time having amassed so many recordings over the years, both commercial and private, by all the musicians mentioned in the article and by those who quite likely visited Mr. Smith from time to time, I am far more interested in what would constitute oral history, i.e., the conversations, diatribes, interviews, etc., captured on tape.

[AllenLowe]

absolutely - I am especially interested in Hall Overton, who is supposedly on some of the material -

[Michael Fitzgerald]

"Until I took a trip to Durham, N.C., last week, nobody had heard the Smith tapes since their rediscovery, except some of the musicians on them and Robin D. G. Kelley"

I guess I don't count - I went down to Duke two years ago and spent several days listening to this stuff. I have heard quite a few of the Smith tapes and there are some real gems in there - better stuff than the David X. Young material that was issued.

Mike

[bertrand]

Mike,

Is Sam Stephenson (or someone working with him) cataloging all the contents of the tapes? It would be a herculean task, to say the least. Will there be some sort of on-line catalog? I know we discussed it two years ago, but I was wondering if there were any new developments.

Thanks,

Bertrand.

[Brownian Motion]

It's exciting to read that Robin D.G. Kelley is writing a biography of Monk. He's a brilliant academic.

[Chuck Nessa]

"Until I took a trip to Durham, N.C., last week, nobody had heard the Smith tapes since their rediscovery, except some of the musicians on them and Robin D. G. Kelley"

I guess I don't count - I went down to Duke two years ago and spent several days listening to this stuff. I have heard quite a few of the Smith tapes and there are some real gems in there - better stuff than the David X. Young material that was issued.

Mike

And I have a bit of it on cdr.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I last talked with Sam in depth when he was in NYC over the summer - yes, a catalogue is planned. Not sure how that is progressing - when I was down there it existed only as a notebook using the exact words from the tape boxes (quite interesting reading even just that!). At that time there were still hundreds of reels of tapes that had not been transferred (grant money is supporting all this work) - the cataloguing is not the main priority, I'd imagine. Getting to the musicians for interviews and getting the stuff transferred and preserved seems to be the first step - but of course, to get the money, the grant writing gets priority over all that.

Mike

[AllenLowe]

Mike - I'm glad to hear that there's better things than what was issued, which was quite ordinary, I thought; about Robin Kelley - well, I don't really think he's very impressive, just an academic who doesn't really know much about the music, and I say this from having heard him speak and having read some of the silly stuff he's written for the Times -

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I was quite impressed with Kelley in terms of the depth of his research when I saw him give a presentation on Monk. I have not read much by him, though.

Mike

[Larry Kart]

I assume that this Robin Kelly piece about Miles Davis and the pimp aesthetic

http://www.racematters.org/milesdavisgeniushustler.htm

is among those Kelly NY Times effusions that gave Allen Lowe pause.

[Dan Gould]

If he was the guy who wrote that pimp aesthetic piece, its gonna take quite a bit to make me want to read a Monk biography.

[AllenLowe]

that's the one, guys - I don't know if Larry and Mike recall, but I got Kelley a bit steamed up on the jazz research line when I referred to that article as being about Miles the Pimp. Mike - if you've heard him speak about his Monk research and find it comprehensive, than I trust that it is - I heard him talk early on about Monk (at a conference a few years back at Newport) and it was weak, but I know he's done a lot of work since then. He also, however, wrote a piece about jazz wives in the Times last year or the year before in which he spoke about how great certain women were in their support of certain musicians -and I knew from personal experience that at least two of the women he was writing about had helped slow their husbands's careers signficantly. What I worry about in the Monk research is how close he is becoming to the Monk family. I just think that if you're going to do a bio it should show everything about a musician, warts and all. My other worry about him, from that initial Monk talk I heard, is that he seems to know very little about the actual music - but I'm open to change -

Edited March 11, 2005 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

let me just add that recently someone (and it may have been larry kart) posted something about the difference between someone who has to write and just writes because he must get it all out, and someone who wants to write, has nothing compelling to really write about, and than struggles to INVENT something to write about or (to be academic about it) contextualize. Kelley strikes me as of that category of academic who decided jazz was a good career opportunity. Now, to be clear and honest, a lot of this is my own resentment of academia, which has never really allowed me access; I just get a little crazy sitting back watching these kinds of academics whose background and credentials permit them a pseudo-sociological entree into these kinds of things with articles like the Miles the Pimp/NY Times piece - on the other hand, if he does a good Monk bio more power to him, as I certainly don't have the time and inclination (and tenure) to do that kind of work -

Edited March 11, 2005 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

Allen -- I'd forgotten about the musicians wives piece. Put that together with the Miles piece, and you definitely get the feeling of someone who wants to claim territory by mobilizing a currently fashionable political/cultural agenda. I recall, too, that he was a fervent advocate of Sherri Tucker's highly dubious book "Swing Shift."

[AllenLowe]

AHHHHHH! Sherry Tucker's book - that's the one that tells us Billie Holiday was embarrased by her blackness because she liked the accompaniment of the Whiteman band -

[Chuck Nessa]

Couw, you are out of your element here unless you have read all the stuff mentioned. Mr Lowe is "on the money" for this thread.

If you know the works, cut me up.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I had forgotten about those two NYT pieces - but they were, like so much of the NYT jazz writing, forgettable: I view them as intended for a more general interest audience as opposed to serious fans and I was happy to ignore them rather than get worked up over them. I am not much interested in the jazz-as-sociopolitics side of things, though if that's someone's cup of tea - great for them. I have attended enough of those lectures that when I hear the phrase "the African-American tradition of signifying" I break out in a rash.

Based only on the 2 hour roundtable I attended at Rutgers IJS, I take his Monk work a bit more seriously. However, I can see the concern - although I don't recall much if anything that evening being in that "Columbia U" bag, the final product might indeed end up in such a wrapping.

Or I could have been temporarily blinded by the rare recordings. I wish Rutgers would get their act together and have those roundtables online in streaming audio like they've been talking for years now. As for the Kelley Monk book (sounds like a used car price guide), I think at worst we will get a huge quantity of previously unknown information published - perhaps not the "warts and all" but we'll have a much better idea about Monk from a particular perspective. Being close with the family is probably both a blessing and a curse. I am just hoping that the blessings will win out. It's a book I am looking forward to reading.

Mike

[brownie]

I talked recently with photo editor legend John G. Morris (he is one of the trustees of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund) and the subject of the Jazz Loft Project was mentioned. Morris said that the project was going well and the music documents would soon be made available. No details yet but I'll pass them on when I'll know more.

Jazz Loft

[sheldonm]

I talked recently with photo editor legend John G. Morris (he is one of the trustees of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund) and the subject of the Jazz Loft Project was mentioned. Morris said that the project was going well and the music documents would soon be made available. No details yet but I'll pass them on when I'll know more.

Jazz Loft

I long for the day I can get my mits on a huge book of Smith's photographs from this period!!!

m~

[Lazaro Vega]

Did you see the corrections to the article?

Correction Appended

DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Article on archive of sound recordings and photographs made by American photojournalist W Eugene Smith for his jazz-loft project, dating from 1957 to about 1965, in which he obsessively documented a Manhattan loft full of jazz musicians on Sixth Avenue near 28th Street; archive is housed at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies

Correction: March 21, 2005, Monday An article in The Arts on March 10 about recordings of jazz jam sessions at a New York loft made by the photographer W. Eugene Smith in the late 1950's and the 1960's misstated the number of people who have heard the tapes since their rediscovery. In addition to the participating musicians and a biographer of Thelonious Monk, they have been heard by consultants on a project to preserve and catalog them and by two jazz researchers. (Fragments of the tapes have also been played at lectures.) The reporter was not the first person other than the musicians and the Monk biographer to hear them.

The article also quoted incorrectly from the jazz pianist Paul Bley, who played in some sessions. He said that the loft would open every night about 11 -- not that it was open every night until about 11.