Yesterday we learned that the Archivist Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, Inc. has awarded the Jazz Loft Project with its annual award for Innovative Use of Archives.  There will be a reception and ceremony at Columbia University on October 20.  We’re told that previous winners of the award include the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Ric Burns’ documentary on Coney Island, and Columbia University’s Mapping the African-American Past.  That’s good company.

This pleases us.  Archivists are a difficult lot to impress.  They naturally think in terms of decades or centuries.  Contemporary time means almost nothing to them.  JLP continues to receive a pulse of current publicity (click on the “news” section of our site) and we appreciate that, but this recognition by pros in the archival world is significant to us.

Without recapitulating my long JLP book acknowledgments, I want to stress that any innovative use of the JLP archives required long, complex collaborations and I should outline some of it here.  First and foremost, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University was a perfect home for this project. During the course of JLP, while dealing with the mind-boggling variety of material emanating from our oral history interviews, Smith’s photos, and especially Smith’s tapes, I could be heard saying, “We are one degree away from anything.”  So is CDS. Director Tom Rankin and associate directors Greg Britz and Lynn McKnight are to be lauded.  I don’t think JLP could have happened like it did anywhere else.  I can’t mention everybody who helped at CDS; so many played a role.

JLP Research Associate Dan Partridge is a centerpiece of it all.  Since 2003 he reported to work, donned headphones, and listened to Smith’s tapes daily.  He’s still doing it, he’s got about 7-800 hours he hasn’t heard, yet.  I’m confident that when human history ends Dan will be the only one to have heard everything.  Even Smith didn’t hear it all.  Sometimes Smith left the room, or the building, with the recorder running.  Unless somebody comes along with the time and resources and impetus to hear 5089 compact discs of sound, nobody will ever again hear what Dan has heard and cataloged.  He ought to get an honorary MA or doctorate from Duke as far as I’m concerned.

Kudos also to Lauren Hart, JLP Coordinator.  She joined the project two years ago just out of Hampshire College at a time of increasing chaos as we were organizing outcomes (the “innovative uses” we’re honored for here) and she shepherded everything, made sure it all happened, with the JLP website being her particular handiwork from conception to what you see now.

CDS Exhibitions director Courtney Reid-Eaton executed the JLP exhibition perfectly.  We had nearly 1000 people attend the opening at NYPL for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and CRE oversaw that installation for two weeks, as well as the installation in Chicago.  The staff at NYPLPA – Jackie Davis, Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, and Sara Velez in particular and David Ferriero at the mid-town library, too – was essential, too.  NYPLPA’s public program during the exhibition, Hall Overton: Out of the Shadows was a highlight of the whole JLP for me (I can’t forget Sarah Ziebell and Cheryl Raymond for their roles at the library).  Many thanks also to Kim Rorschach and her staff at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art for their support and contributions.  We are excited about the JLP show being at their great venue next spring, a “home stand” for JLP, so to speak, after living on the road.

Aaron Greenwald at Duke Performances initiated a collaboration with JLP in 2006, plotting 18-shows in the fall 2007, Following Monk, commemorating the 90^th anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s birth in nearby Rocky Mount.  Cornerstones of that series were Jason Moran’s seminal In My Mind, an adventurous homage to Monk’s original Town Hall show using Smith’s documentation of Monk’s Town Hall rehearsals in 821 Sixth Avenue, and Charles Tolliver’s re-performance of Monk’s original show.  Then, in February 2009, with support from Duke’s President Dick Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange, Duke Performances and CDS presented these two shows in Town Hall on the fiftieth anniversary.

CDS filmmakers Gary Hawkins and Emily Ladue worked with seven CDS students to document Moran’s Town Hall concert and make an inspired film of In My Mind. A few months ago I wrote a long blog entry about that terrific piece of work.

Our colleagues at WNYC: New York Public Radio became valued friends and they made a monumental impact on all of JLP.  The producer of the JLP series, Sara Fishko, did beautiful work, and Exec. VP and director of programming, Dean Cappello, was supportive on countless levels.  In addition to their wonderful radio series and sundry associated publicity and programming on behalf of JLP, WNYC also broadcasted Charles Tolliver’s February 2009 Town Hall show live and they publicized and recorded Jason Moran’s In My Mind.   Hawkins and Ladue made use of WNYC’s sound for their In My Mind film.  Countless other staff members at WNYC contributed to all this.  Four parts of their series were broadcasted on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition over consecutive weeks last winter.  We are deeply thankful for WNYC’s role in the whole project.  For the past five years Sara also was a full-time brainstormer, a sounding board, for me and Dan Partridge, as we trudged through the material and content together, and her husband Bob Gill added a few poignant and timely pieces of advice, too.

Critically and centrally, there was my editor Victoria Wilson at Alfred A. Knopf, and book designer Peter Anderson, and editorial assistant Carmen Johnson, and publicists Kathy Zuckerman, Lena Khidritskaya, and Nora Brennan, and many more.  In the New York Times Dwight Garner called the book “chaotic,” “soulful,” and “elegiac,” and “a singularly weird, vital, and thrumming American document.”  I was fortunate to work with a publisher that appreciated the strangeness of this story and allowed it to be at the fore, while still producing something classy and beautiful.  Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, and Edward Orloff of the Wylie Agency were integral from the start as well.

The website was designed and built by the Splinter Group of Carrboro, N.C.  Steve Balcom and Lane Wurster went beyond the call of duty.  Their work was honored by Communication Arts magazine as a “Web Pick” last December.  New viewers continue to find our site every day.  Steve and Lane also helped us throw a great launch party in Durham last December.

There are countless other key roles, many lauded on this site before, such as the Reva and David Logan Foundation, who tracked me down and called me at home after my 1999 DoubleTake magazine piece was published, the first JLP salvo.  The Logans became the primary benefactors of the project, as I described in more detail in a previous blog entry.  There was also Ben Ratliff’s March 2005 New York Times piece that in many ways “broke” the story of Smith’s tapes and provided great momentum.  John G. Morris, founding executive of Magnum Photos and Smith’s original estate executor, had visited us in October 2004 and tipped the Times on the story.

So, to say the least, a sketch of the “innovative use of archives” for JLP would look like roots, a trunk, and branches of a tree, plus leaves and fruit (and some dead leaves and dead fruit, some broken limbs perhaps, some bark chewed off by a goat).

This brings me to the home ground of Smith’s materials, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, our partner on JLP from Day 1.  We are grateful to them.  More than three decades ago they received two 18-wheel trucks of Smith’s materials shipped from New York City.  The shipment filled a high school gymnasium.  Among the debris were 1740 reels of tape.  CCP undertook the tedious task of making sense of that gymnasium, sorting and cataloging the materials and maintaining them in climate controlled conditions.  If they had not done what they did, the materials wouldn’t be available to us or anybody else.  Leslie Calmes and Amy Rule have done stellar work in that archive for many years.  Denise Gose and Dianne Nilsen in Rights and Reproductions have always been there for us, too.  I made my first visit to CCP in April 1997.  At the time I was naive, innocent, and had no idea what the next fourteen years would entail.

I’m leaving out many people.  The point is, it took a web of good people to pull off the “innovative use of archives” in this project.

Finally, Gene Smith was the one who created the materials.  Lo and behold we shouldn’t forget him.  Our “innovative use” was with his things.  He’s the real innovator here.  His family and estate, The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith, were essential to everything.

To be honest, there were times JLP felt impossible.  There were times when a less ambitious approach seemed smarter.  But we made it.  A group of archivists in New York think so, anyway.

-Sam Stephenson

JLP Project Director Sam Stephenson will be at the Chicago Cultural Center to give a gallery talk about the JLP on Thursday August 26 at 12:15pm.

More information can be found HERE.

By Dan Partridge

Although the Jazz Loft Project book, radio series, and exhibition are all out there for viewing and listening, we continue to catalog W. Eugene Smith’s audio archive. If you are able to check out the Chicago Cultural Center version of our exhibition, you can hear the handiwork of Greg Lunceford (associate curator at Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs) who integrated several fascinating selections of loft recordings into the current show. Some of these selections are being heard for the first time, as they were pulled from new material we’ve recently discovered. In the following months, we plan to regularly present some installments on this blog that survey other interesting tapes and recent finds from Smith’s recordings. The following pieces represent selections I selected for a presentation as a kind of swan song to some of the more lyrical types of content that resonated with each other and Smith’s comments about a moon over Pittsburgh, with a nod to New Orleans.

Back in May, at the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) 44^th annual conference in New Orleans, I was lucky to give a presentation on the Jazz Loft Project along  with Christopher Lacinak, the founder and president of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions (AVPS). Along with Kevin O’Neill and Matt Thompson (when they all worked for Vidipax), Christopher and this team consulted with us and engineered the digitization of the first 300 reels of audio tape from W. Eugene Smith’s archive, in partnership with the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. It was an honor to represent the Jazz Loft Project at this conference, especially along with Christopher, whose ongoing involvement as a friend of and adviser to the project is invaluable. Treat yourself to a look at the AVPS blog and twitter feed, if you get the chance.

In his part of the presentation, Christopher Lacinak showcased an image of a plank from the floor of 821 Sixth Avenue. Footsteps on these boards are often audible on the tapes Smith made in the loft building. Smith would sometimes drill holes in the floor to make way for microphone housing and cables. Lacinak explained the way that Smith would experiment with different speeds and techniques of recording, often on the same reel of tape. Since Christopher was generous enough to frame the project and explain much of the technical procedure, our work, and how that interfaced with engineering the audio; I was able to present a  of rhapsody  of recordings from the Jazz Loft Project audio archive.  As we were at  the ARSC convention, and celebrating this work, the selections I chose were mainly musical.

New Orleans born Danny Barker, who shows up at the loft at a New Year’s Eve party to usher in 1960 with a banjo melody that lulls, then accelerates in stages, to quadruple time. This song includes one of the few moments from this party when the revelers quiet down to listen to the music.

Roland Kirk playing a solo on multiple horns where he utilizes circular breathing to maintain one long note. On this recording, Paul Bley shows up and joins in on a song that started off with Kirk counting out the rhythm to fellow saxophonist Jay Cameron. You can hear a Roland Kirk tune on our Chaos Manor playlist but this was the first time this one had been heard in public.

Similarly, I excerpted a piece that extends beyond track 9 on playlist Chaos Manor that features Sonny Rollins and Hall Overton in conversation at the New School for Social Research, in New York on June 29, 1963. On tenor sax, Rollins demonstrates a harmonic series of eleven double tones, framing them in an imitation of American Indian chants. In addition to this demonstration, he discusses his use of different extended techniques with Overton. You can hear the beginning of this on the playlist.

A fragment of a wild tenor sax solo from multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart. Smith made what may be the only record of Listengart’s musical genius since he was likely never recorded anywhere besides the loft. It was probably not long, within a year or two after this recording was made, that Listengart was institutionalized and he never returned to the jazz world.

Sonny Clark, playing My Funny Valentine from the ashes of a group jam session, at the end of a tape. This session was most likely late summer, 1961. Clark overdosed and was revived in the loft by means of amateur CPR. If he hadn’t survived this overdose, he wouldn’t have made the sessions that he played on over the next year and a half before his untimely death in January of 1963, including the November ‘61 session for his last album, Leapin’ and Lopin’. What emerges is an example of how  theses late night jam sessions could produce moments of unexpected beauty that rewarded Smith for his obsessive recording and the depth of understanding he brought to the process.

And on that note, we feature Smith’s explanation of one page from his photographic and textual essay on Pittsburgh in the 1959 Photography Annual. Smith references a photograph of a dancing couple holding hands that he placed, stamp-like, in the upper right hand corner of this page titled “Of cathedrals, inclines and a sight of the moon.” Beneath it, he placed the photograph of a majestic nighttime Pittsburgh cityscape skyline featuring a full moon in the return address corner of the image. This photograph is juxtaposed with one of steelworker housing (presumably) with the shot-from-above picture offering no skyline. And steep stairs (“mighty climbs to workers homes are thoroughly characteristic”) that extend skyward, disappearing into the shadows of some trees, and likewise into that return address corner of the frame. Regarding this, here is my transcription of what Smith had to say to an as of yet unidentified interviewer:

Conflicts, contradictions, suggestions. On the next page the Love turned into a touch of a man in a woman at a dance, just holding hands. Which again, I just wanted, not as “a great photograph,” “a great statement..” I don’t care whether they saw the photograph or not up there in the corner. I just wanted them to kind of feel it. As we talk more about the city, and reportorially I wanted to say: Look the skies are clear, you can now see a moon occasionally in Pittsburgh without it being a depressing thing. And here, I think it’s where it’s kind of important a time to uh, to know enough about the background, say, to know that at one time: Can you imagine someone who has always been romantically involved with the moon? You know, and just loved it, rather on a farm or a city. Would they ever realize or take into their artistic consideration that a moon over Pittsburgh could have at one time meant real hardship, etcetera­, because a moon over Pittsburgh meant that work was not happening at the plants and therefore you saw the moon. You were immediately depressed because you knew it meant hunger, and hardship. And the whole, and the moon takes on a different connotation. But you’ve got to know that before you can utilize it in a layout, and before you can think about it. And so, the whole thing started developing from those first three pictures, you see. And so, Love kept developing, the other things kept developing in that way, and um, and so Thompson said the layout was a mishmash.

If you’re interested in seeing these W. Eugene Smith Pittsburgh photographs, check out the book Sam Stephenson edited Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project. In many ways, this work explains where Smith was coming from as he segued into his life in the loft at 821 Sixth Avenue.

-Dan Partridge

It started Thursday night with a dinner at the Four Seasons in honor of the Reva and David Logan Foundation (whose critical contributions to JLP are described here) hosted by CDS Director Tom Rankin and Associate Director Greg Britz.  92 year old David Logan was the honoree, as were his sons Dan Logan and Jon Logan of Alexandria, VA and Berkeley, CA respectively.  Dan’s daughter Liz, an editor and culinary authority in Chicago, was also there.  Lanny Silverman and Greg Lunceford from there from the Chicago Cultural Center (CCC).

As Courtney indicated in her previous blog post, the exhibition at CCC is different from NYPL, but very effective.  Lanny and Greg deserve kudos for their efforts on JLP’s behalf at CCC from the first day they expressed interest in this project.  I miss many aspects of Courtney’s NYPL installation -  for one, the more prominent tape box banners with period color and design and Smith’s manic handwriting – that left you more worn out and awed by Smith’s achievement.  But photography purists might enjoy the extra breathing room given to Smith’s original prints more at CCC.  Also, CCC’s creative use of audio is what we’ve longed to do and didn’t fully achieve in the space at NYPL (Lunceford deserves a lot of credit at CCC), and the room itself it a wonderful spectacle at CCC.  In both shows optimal use was made of the space and resources.  If you saw the show in NYC, it’s a terrific, new experience here.  When the show comes to our home town of Durham, N.C. (Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art) next spring it’ll be another new experience.

At the opening reception in Chicago Dan Logan introduced me to Bill Michel, the inaugural director of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Creative and Peforming Arts at the University of Chicago, which broke ground in May with a $35 million contribution from the Logans.  They plan to open the center for the ‘12-’13 school year and we had an initial brainstorm session about how JLP might be a presence there.

Of special notice, Hall Overton’s niece Joyce Overton and her husband Randy Madonna attended the opening.  Joyce works in development at North Park University in Chicago and Randy is a former minister and longtime social worker at Cook County Hospital.  I’ve known Joyce’s father Harvey Overton for years.  He is a poet and retired humanities professor who lives in Chicago but was unable to make it downtown for the reception.  By all indications the Overton family shares the exceptional, warm, generous traits exemplified by Hall.  Later this week we will post a video of Harvey reading the poem he wrote about his late brother.

Finally, on Friday I learned from Indianapolis photographer Mark Sheldon that the free brochures available at the JLP show at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts from February to May are now being sold for $12 on Ebay.  That leaves me at a loss for words.

-Sam Stephenson

Exhibitions are about many things: art, objects, stories, and SPACE.

We sometimes bring shows to CDS that were organized elsewhere, and I get a great deal of satisfaction out of making them work in our galleries. Presenting work in our space adds our voice to the story the work is telling.

Sequence tells a story. Placement of objects adds emphasis, magnifies, or softens.

Dense text, no text, didactic, descriptive, narrative, lyric…sound.

The idea is to move the viewer through your interpretation of the story, without them noticing how (or that) they are being led. The installation, while an integral part of the viewing experience, shouldn’t draw attention away from the subject at hand; the work, the story.

I was fortunate to spend two weeks in New York, working with Barbara Cohen-Stratyner and wonderful staff at the NYPL for the Performing Arts, on the debut of the Jazz Loft project exhibition. It was fantastic; I was folded in as part of the crew. I helped uncrate the works, laid out the sequence, moved and cleaned display cases, set the ephemera, put up captions, helped solve problems. I was invited to have my hands in the installation as if I were working in my own space.

Last week I arrived at the Chicago Cultural Center to find the works all laid out and the crew from NFA SPACE (Contemporary Art + Exhibit Services, Inc.  http://www.nfaspace.com), drilling, leveling, and hanging the show. I got to weigh in on a few things, but Greg Lunceford, CCC exhibitions designer, had everything moving forward without me.

The room here seems huge, not as intimate as NY, and the ceilings are high. In this interpretation, the banners (of the tape boxes) are not as important, but they look great filling the space above the walls, drawing your gaze up to the amazing ceiling. The walls are freestanding, so it’s not possible to have the very linear presentation that was so effective in NY; but there’s a separate room where folks can comfortably spend time with the audio tracks on computer monitors.

Greg invested in the show in a way that has made it his – well, the CCC’s. I felt at a loss with not as much input, but also excited at his interpretation of the materials. I miss the banners being right down in the space, but the CCC equipment and the location of the gallery, enables the use of ambient sound in a way we’d imagined (dreamed of, hoped for), but were not able to execute in the NY show.

So, an exhibition that travels is new in every space. If you loved the Jazz Loft project in New York, check it out in Chicago. If you didn’t love the Jazz Loft project in New York, see it differently in Chicago. It opened to the public on July 17 and there’s a public reception Friday evening, July 23. I’ll be there celebrating with Sam, Lauren, Dan, AND Greg; and then I’ll start thinking about what might be possible at the next venue, knowing that there are some things I can’t even imagine.

View photos from the installation in Chicago on our Facebook page.

Saturday night we had a wonderful JLP event at Tom Guralnick’s superb Outpost venue in Albuquerque as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival.  It may have been the best JLP event I’ve done in terms of curiosity and engagement from the audience, roughly fifty people.  After my 70 minute presentation the Q&A lasted more than an hour and it felt like it could have gone longer.

Then today we had standing room only at the Verve Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, eighty people or so, also part of Tom’s festival.  Q&A lasted an hour again.  Making it more special, early during my talk the door opened and former Smith assistant Leslie Teicholz walked in with her husband Bob.  I didn’t know they had a place out here.  They spend most of their time in the Berkshires which is where I’ve interviewed Leslie in the past.  She originally met Smith at the Woodstock festival and she is also a good friend of Smith’s second wife Aileen Mioko Smith.  In the JLP exhibition there is 16mm film footage shot in the loft by David X. Young in which both Leslie and Aileen are seen working with Smith on the 1971 Jewish Museum exhibition.  It was a tremendous surprise to see her.

After the event Leslie and I had a long, thoughtful chat about my challenge with the Smith biography.  I don’t want it to be a sordid, depressing tale.  I want to tell an interesting story, to find some elements of redemption, without it being inaccurate.  It’s easy to make JLP entertaining because there are so many intriguing elements outside of Smith, which might be what makes it his greatest documentary achievement.  It’ll be harder focusing on the man for 150,000 words or so.

I left Verve Gallery and walked a few blocks over to Evangelo’s Bar, owned by Nikos Klonis, who is apparently the son of the WWII soldier, Angelo S. Klonis, pictured in one of Smith’s most famous combat photos from Saipan.  See below.  I made this photo in the bar with my iPhone.  According to Nikos there is some controversy related to this image that I want to explore in more depth.  I’ll write more about this in the future.  What interests me about this controversy is not that this man isn’t Nikos’ father – I think he is.  I just want to make sure these negatives are Smith’s.  Despite his fever, he wasn’t a meticulous cataloger of his work.  In jazz, there are mix-ups like this quite often, sometimes the mix-up is innocent, sometimes not.  Did Sonny Clark write that tune or did he hear Monk play a premature version in private at the Baroness’s apartment?  Did he “steal” it or did he and Monk play it together so often – morphing it back and forth – that Sonny came to believe it was his?

Back to Santa Fe, I finished the day by heading to the 1931 theater, The Lensic, and checking out Bitches Brew Revisited, an interesting ensemble led by Graham Haynes and featuring rock-jazz musicians Vernon Reid and Cindy Blackman and DJ Logic.  I thought two or three of the tunes they played really took off.

It’s been a great trip.  It’s clear that Tom Guralnick has had something special going on here for many years.  You can tell it from him, his staff, and from his large cadre of loyal and eager volunteers.  Everything they do speaks to how much they care about the content and their guests.  Absolutely first rate.  I wish I could attend the rest of the festival this week.  They’ve got A.B. Spellman, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Miguel Zenon here.

-Sam Stephenson

This is a meaningful eve.  The Chicago Cultural Center opens the show.  First of all, it’s Chicago, an historic jazz and arts town, a remarkable city in general.  But it’s also Chicago, home of the Reva and David Logan Foundation.  I’ve told this story often, but it is important to tell it again on the eve of the Chicago opening:

In fall of 1999 I published my first story on the Jazz Loft Project in DoubleTake magazine, formerly published at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.  It was my second piece on W. Eugene Smith in DoubleTake and my third piece in the magazine overall.  Alex Harris and Robert Coles deserve much credit for supporting my early work on Smith.

The DoubleTake article drew some attention – Susan Stamberg did a piece on NPR’s Morning Edition, Randall Pinkston on CBS Sunday Morning, and Jeff Greenfield on CNN.  At his home a half block off of Lake Short Drive in Chicago, on the same block as the Drake Hotel, David Logan, then 82 years old (now 93), caught a couple of those pieces and he sought out the magazine.

One night soon thereafter, I was sitting in the Pittsboro, N.C. home that I share with my wife Laurie – at the same desk where I’m sitting now – wondering how (and if) I’d be able to continue this work.  At the time I was working on my first Smith book, Dream Street (2001), and curating the accompanying exhibition as a consultant for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (also 2001).  But I wasn’t making a living wage and I knew the Jazz Loft Project would be immensely expensive because Smith’s tapes needed preservation.

The phone rang and it was David Logan:  “Mr. Stephenson, I heard about your DoubleTake magazine piece on Gene Smith and the jazz loft and I found the magazine.  I run a family foundation in Chicago and I want to know if there’s anything we can do to help you.  I knew Gene Smith personally and my whole family are jazz and music fanatics.  Is there anything we can do to help you?”

One part of this anecdote I love is how David found me.  He had no idea who I was.  The first person he called was Vicky Goldberg, the brilliant, longtime photography critic of the New York Times.  That’s how achieving people like David Logan think:  wanting information, you go straight to the top.  Of course Vicky had no idea who I was, either.   But she knew that Smith’s archive was at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona so she figured they’d know how to find me out there.  And they did.

A few months later the Logan Foundation provided a seed grant of $65K to the Center for Documentary Studies, who generously supported me as a fiscal agent in the early years under leadership of Tom Rankin, Greg Britz, and Lynn McKnight.  The initial Logan grant bought time to write more grant proposals to NEH (the first two proposals to NEH failed), NHPRC, and Grammy Foundation, and we eventually raised about $1.2 million, with the Logan Foundation matching the other grants at roughly 200% and providing more than half of the total.

For the rest of my career I’ll acknowledge the Reva and David Logan Foundation with vigor.  Without them I’m not sure what I would have done.  To that stage in my life I’d worked in corporate banking for First Union in Charlotte, then I worked on Capital Hill in Washington, D.C. for three years – the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Rep Jim Moody (D-WI).  Then I pursued graduate degrees in Economics and Religious Studies, all the while working at Raleigh’s indy book store, Quail Ridge Books (the best university) where I met my wife.  If David Logan hadn’t called me I’m pretty sure I would have ventured into different writing projects, ones that didn’t require hundreds of thousands of dollars like JLP.  Who knows?  Maybe I’d be a more famous writer by now.  But, I feel lucky.  Certainly, there’s no way I’d be so versed in this incredible post-War, pre-suburban NYC content that I can mine for the rest of my life.

Another poignant Chicago connection I should mention is that loft principle Hall Overton, who was from Bangor, Michigan, attended music school in Chicago, where he met sculptor and Chicago native Calvin Albert, Overton’s best friend in NYC.   Before Overton died in 1972, of cirrhosis, Albert made a sculpture bust of Overton’s head.  One day soon we’ll post images of that work of art.

The official opening reception in Chicago is next Friday, July 23, 6-8pm.  We are very grateful for the work of Lanny Silverman and Greg Lunceford to launch this installation at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Also, exhibitions director at the Center for Documentary Studies, Courtney Reid-Eaton, deserves enormous credit again, as she did for the New York opening in Febuary.  Of course, nothing would have happened without my Jazz Loft colleagues Dan Partridge and Lauren Hart, as well.  We’ll all be there next Friday.

Also, there will be some photos of the Chicago installation soon.

Tomorrow/Saturday, I head to Albuquerque and Santa Fe for two JLP events put together by the visionary Tom Guralnick.  Reports coming Sunday or Monday.

-Sam Stephenson

p.s. this year I’ve contributed an essay about Jim Karales for a book authored by Vicky Goldberg to be published soon.  It’s very meaningful to have these circles closed.

CHAOS MANOR, the outdoor JLP event scheduled for tomorrow (July 7) in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, has been postponed until September due to the record-breaking heat wave in NYC.  It was the right decision.

We’ll reconstitute the event in September, specific date to be named later.  CHAOS MANOR was shaping up to be unique.  Now we’ll have more time to hone it.  The innovative A Public Space founder and editor, Brigid Hughes, had come up with an idea to perform various pieces from the JLP book, with me reading my narrative segments and amateur actors reading the transcriptions from loft tapes and our oral history interviews.  The centerpiece of the drama would be the piece from my book on which this event was named, Chaos Manor, in which musicians Sonny Clark and Lin Halliday and Halliday’s girlfriend Gin McEwan were documented in the hallway of the loft overnight in September 1961.  Interspersed would be clips of Smith’s audio, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay reading her poetry and actress Julie Harris reading Emily Dickinson (which Smith taped from his Caedmon vinyl record collection), and CBS radio’s morning news of Fidel Castro protests in Central Park.  A live jazz quartet was set to perform a series of tunes throughout the program.

The closest we ever came to something like this was the Duke theater department’s 2007 performance, “Misterioso,” which was part of “Following Monk,” a series produced by Duke Performances’ Aaron Greenwald to commemorate Thelonious Monk’s 90th birthday.  “Misterioso” was an improvised student play, directed by Jay O’Berski, borrowing elements from Caryl Churchill’s play, “Hotel,” in which the audience had access to action in various rooms in the loft at once.

Recently a writer, David Keymer, compared the JLP book to Dylan Thomas’ radio play, Under Milk Wood, which concerns one day in the life of a Welsh coastal town, representing myriad voices of townspeople, dreams and ghosts.  I ordered the book when I saw Keymer’s review.  It turns out that in 1952 Caedmon Records recorded a live performance of Under Milk Wood which included Thomas (who died in 1953).  Eugene Smith owned most of the Caedmon collection, so he probably had Under Milk Wood. Was Thomas’ play an influence on his insane tape recording?  Maybe.

-Sam Stephenson

The Jazz Loft Project was down in Charleston last week to take part in the 2010 Piccolo Spoleto Festival JAC Jazz Series. On Thursday June 10, Ron Free made an in store appearance at Blue Bicycle Books alongside copies of The Jazz Loft Project signed by Sam Stephenson and hand delivered by me. It was nice to spend a couple of hours in this amazing bookstore. Owned by Jonathan and Lauren Sanchez, the store has a great staff and book selection (that includes some of Jonathan’s writing and an extensive selection of low country history). They also lead a cool looking young writer’s camp in the summertime.

Blue Bicycle Books also joined us the following night at McCrady’s Upstairs for the JAC Jazz Series closing show, billed as the Charleston All-Stars featuring Ron Free. Ron played 2 sets, with this ensemble and a few guests, and signed books during the intermission. This event was hosted most ably by writer and MC extraordinaire  Jack McCray, who spoke wonderfully about the Jazz Loft Project and the musicians before I said a few words to the sold out house. The thing I concentrated on in my brief talk was the community and spirit of these Charleston musicians, festival staff, and concert goers and how that makes the music so joyful to experience. What does that mean? Please allow me to backtrack.

On Thursday, after a fine afternoon at Blue Bicycle Books, where I got to meet Ron Free’s nephew, Ron took me on a brief tour of Charleston. As a native son and one time tour guide of the city, it was a treat to get a sense of what a Ron Free Charleston tour might have been like back in the day. I even got to hear some of the Charleston brogue and accurate Gullah accent  he used to enrich the historical tours. After dinner, we headed over to Charleston Grill to catch the Quentin Baxter Ensemble. Hear them there Monday-Saturday. Shortly after their first set, Quentin insisted on letting Ron sit in with his band mates, Tommy Gill on piano and Jake Holwegner on bass. Ron sounded great and got a chance to synch up with Tommy, who would join him in the Charleston All-Stars on Friday. The generous way Ron was received was touching. The energy in the music benefitted both from Ron’s addition to the band and Quentin’s subsequent playing, which had sounded really good from the start. As Ron sat down to play, Quentin made a humble remark about how he was about to get a lesson from Ron. I learned a lot by listening to both of them play and talk about jazz.

After rehearsal on Friday, I met up with Ron and fellow all-star Tommy Gill.  You can read about how he studied with Jaki Byard and played with 821 Sixth Avenue loft veteran Jimmy Knepper, and like Quentin, he was a great guy whose appreciation for the music was clear. It was a pleasure to hang out with him before the show and hear some of his stories and insights. Then it was on to the venue, Upstairs at McCrady’s.

The space above McCrady’s was similar to the loft space with the deep room, wooden floors, and high ceilings. It was a lot more pleasant to be there than the time Ron and I met with a BBC crew at 821 Sixth Avenue several summers ago to film Ron’s interview for the Paul Bernays and Svetlana Palmer Mose Allison documentary Ever Since I Stole the Blues. McCrady’s upstairs was about 40 degrees cooler, with an impressively efficient service staff and some nice tables. We were lucky to have the presence of Ron’s nephew, nieces, their partners, and especially Ron’s sister Joan who told me how much it meant to her to see him play. It was great to meet them and to smile and laugh along with them as they appreciated Ron and the great scene there.

Shortly after arriving, I was also able to spend a few minutes talking with bassist Kevin Hamilton. Jack McCray wrote an article about him and he wrote about Kevin better than I do below. Read it here. In this article, Jack really got at the heart of what I was feeling in the presence of these musicians and throughout the trip.

The band sounded great onstage, too: Ron Free, drums; Tommy Gill, piano; Kevin Hamilton, bass; John Odin, guitar; and Robert Lewis; alto sax.  The first set included a Monk tune,  a couple of Tommy Gill originals and Ron Free recited his poem “The Parade” to his own drum accompaniment. It was fantastic to them taking risks onstage, improvising new material and challenging themselves as Ron did by recalling this poem from memory while accompanying his narration for the first time ever before an audience. And there was a free form improvisation that gave Kevin Hamilton some room to stretch out on the bass, with great technique and style on his solos. Like the other musicians I was fortunate to talk with, he was modest offstage and generous with his playing, but also created impressive and imaginative solos. There were several solos and fours that Ron took that really blew me away, as well. He has an uncanny ability to play the drums harmonically melodic, with masterful simultaneous restraint and power, using the whole kit and a variety of techniques.

Ron signed some books sold by Blue Bicycle during the break. It was fun to hear the stories of people from different times in his life who remember Ron and his music favorably. I got to talk more with Jack McCray about how wonderful the festival had been. Then there was a whole set of music, jam session style. At one point someone requested “On Green Dolphin Street” and Tommy quickly led the musicians into that tune. As a frequently occurring 821 Sixth Avenue standard, it was amazing to hear Ron Free, 50 years later, jamming to that tune and sounding as good as ever, if not better.

We’re hoping to get some photographs from the event. When we do we’ll post them in a subsequent blog entry and identify all of the musicians who played. I can’t say enough about the energy and dedication of the Jazz Artists of Charleston staff and volunteers. Everything ran smoothly and it felt like a family, this community. The sound was incredible in that room, well produced. And after the show, everyone mobilized to break things down with alacrity. It  felt like a celebration and a well deserved one after such a great series and final event.  So if any of y’all are reading this, thanks very much! For everyone else, I highly recommend checking out the music scene down in Charleston and going to the festival next year. The crowd seemed to have a great time and engaged the music with warmth and appreciation for the gift of this music. Hear it live for yourself and seek out recordings from these fine people and great musicians,  and drop in to Blue Bicycle Books if you ever get the chance.

-Dan Partridge