to move up and down
![Frederator robot head [jpg]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/5413465854_19003e969d_m.jpg)
Portrait of Billie Holiday, Carnegie Hall, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948. Photo by William Gottlieb
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John Coltrane with Dizzy Gillespie, The Olympia, Paris 1961. Photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir.
Gods
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For me, the top photo of Blues from the Apple guitarist Foxy Ann Yancey has been the quintessential image of this recording. So much so, it merited one of my first posts on this blog several years ago. Everything about it —the funky quality of the print, Ann’s evening dress in the middle of a Saturday afternoon recording session in a college studio, her cigarette, and mostly, the attitude I sensed on her face— not only seemed “blues” to me, but sparked my memories of being around the woman 40 years ago. As a suburban raised white kid, I was sightly intimidated and kept my distance, usually communicating with leader Charles Walker.
And then, a few months ago the photographer, my great friend Roy Langbord, stumbled up some of the original negatives from the session (I posted the contact sheets here) and made a discovery. You can click through them and maybe notice the same thing.
Foxy Ann smiled.
And it reminded me how fragile, and suggestible, our memories can be. And like all of us humans, the blues has a lot of simultaneous faces.
Thelonious Monk and his Town Hall band in rehearsal, February 1959 (photo by W. Eugene Smith)
Dexter Gordon during his Go! recording session, Englewood Cliffs NJ, August 27 1962 (photo by Francis Wolff)
Ike Quebec: Frederator Postcards Series 15.8 (by Fred Seibert)
Color photography by Francis Wolff
“Blue Note Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff” The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff
Blue Note Records was formed in 1939 by two German immigrants to the USA, producer Alfred Lion and photographer Francis (Frank) Wolff.
Mosaic Records is the brainchild of Charlie Lourie and producer Michael Cuscuna. Early on they focused on the music of Blue Note Records —Michael literally wrote the discography— though neither of them had ever met the legendary founder Alfred Lion.
A few years after they started the business Alfred, retired down South, started a phone relationship with Mosaic, giving them tips and an occasional session photo. When he died, his wife Ruth called Charlie and Michael and offered them custody of Francis Wolff’s personal Blue Note photo archive, which was stored in her bedroom in a trunk, having never been touched since Frank’s death in 1971.
Every Sunday for months, Michael, Charlie and yours truly would painstakingly go through the negatives and contact sheets to archive the stuff. We launched Mosiac Editions to distribute the best work, and eventually Mosiac lublished the two books of Frank’s work referenced above.
Ike Quebec during his Heavy Soul session, Englewood Cliffs NJ, November 26 1961 (photo by Francis Wolff)
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