The JLP exhibition opens next week at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.  There is a members opening on Friday May 18 and Sam Stephenson will give a public gallery talk on Saturday May 19.  For more information, click HERE.

Early arrivals for the 5pm event.

The Booker T. Theater on the Douglas Block, the black business district of Rocky Mount during segregation.

Monk family members gathering for a photo.

Pamela Monk Kelley, middle front, Edith Monk Pue, second from right.

Pamela being interviewed by local TV.

-Sam Stephenson

This Friday May 4 in Rocky Mount, NC I’m proud to take part in a couple of ceremonies to unveil a North Carolina Historical Highway Marker in honor of Thelonious Monk’s birthplace and childhood home.  HERE is a piece about the events from Rocky Mount’s Chamber of Commerce and HERE is a piece from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

Also, HERE is my 2007 piece in Oxford American about Monk’s return to North Carolina late in his career.

-Sam Stephenson

Gene Smith's Olympus Pen-W. Photo by Jim Hughes.

I’ve noted on this blog in the past the role of Jim Hughes’ 1989 biography of Smith in my ongoing saga following Smith’s footsteps.  Jim has been supportive of me in person over the years, as well.  I like to say that I’m standing on his shoulders; the big, strong body an essential base.

In response to my post earlier this week, “Flurb,” Jim chimed in with this excellent note from the home he shares with his wife Evelyn in Maine:

As part of the Bull City Soul Revival, an exhibition called “Soul Souvenirs: Durham’s Musical Memories from the 1960’s and 1970’s” opens tonight, April 19, at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, NC. Follow those links to read more about tonight’s opening event, featuring several veterans of Durham’s soul scene and next Friday’s concert with a similarly powerful lineup (April 27).

Simultaneously, at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, there’s another remarkable exhibition opening: “Full Color Depression: First Kodachrome’s From America’s Heartland.” It’s curated by Bruce Jackson and he’ll be in house to give a talk and sign his new book In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America (co-authored by Diane Christian and published by the University of North Carolina Press and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies).

(And those are only the events with two miles of each other pertaining to tonight at 7pm. Looking forwards and backwards through this month, there’s more. A reminder for this similarly nearby exhibition opening showed up while I cobbled this entry. Fortunately, it starts at 4pm. )

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival happened here in Durham last weekend. The Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award went to an extraordinary film called Special Flight. This documentary focuses on a Swiss detention center in Frambois, where a group of immigrants live in purgatory after they’ve been denied requests for asylum while they await a (forcible) “Special Flight” away from a country that had become their true home. It shows another sort of “timeless time” or placeless place.

Full Frame also featured a new documentary with a direct tangent to the Jazz Loft Project. Radio Unnameable covered the career of late night NYC DJ Bob Fass, whose shows W. Eugene Smith often recorded. I talked with Fass on the telephone about a year ago and he alluded to a friendship with Smith. It’s not surprise that Smith would gravitate to a kindred-spirited night owl. On Smith’s tapes, there’s one night when Smith was listening to Fass’s radio show, Radio Unnameable. Smith left the recorder running and made his way to the station, onto the airwaves, and back onto his own tape that was being recorded in his loft. Smith went to the radio station for a number of reasons that night. He wanted to bring Fass a Peter LaFarge record that couldn’t be found at WBAI. The record was one of thousands in Smith’s collection and he wanted to support  folk singer Peter LaFarge, who was Fass’s guest that night. And it’s clear on the tape that LaFarge is struggling with whether or not he will sing again,k among other things. Smith had met LaFarge during the singer’s childhood while visiting New Mexico on another project. Fass interviews Smith, who facilitates a live performance by LaFarge, and they all wind up on Smith’s reel-to-reel tape in the Jazz Loft Project collection. I touched on it here.

Where can you find a similar collection of visual arts, spoken word, and musicians these days? Next week, in Durham: The Center for Documentary Studies and The Hinge will launch Professor Diablo’s True Review at the Casbah club on Tuesday, April 24. Then you’ll be able to check out the Bull City Soul Revival on Friday the 27th. This week you’ll have to choose between some great events. Next week you can go to both. There’s a lot more happening in Durham this month. If you can’t attend the events, there is plenty to take in by exploring the website links above. To quote Smith, “I’m saying it very badly.” But the word is out.  So many worthy projects may seem like a rambling list in this blog entry. These events, exhibitions, and books can’t be contained summarily in a blog’s box. They need to be experienced in depth, in real time where they might truly live and breathe.

-Dan Partridge

(At last weekend’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, there was also a documentary about letterpress printing called Kiss the Paper. Head down to Durham’s own letterpress studio,  Horse & Buggy Press for Maji Moto: Dispatches from a Drought to see their shop, new book, beautifully pressed broadsides, and exhibit).

Bull City Party!

W. Eugene Smith's loft telephone, circa early 1960s. Photo by Sonia Katchian.

The photograph above, by Sonia Katchian, was published in the JLP book.  Long a mystery was the word “FLURB” on the bottom right of the phone, and “FRILD” (if that’s what it is) on bottom left.  For some reason I never thought to Google those words.  I did that today, after a Facebook exchange about the phone with Smith’s daughter, Shana Rasmus.  According to the Urban Dictionary the definition of “flurb” is this:

Noun. n. (Flerb) Any person, male or female, living or dead, that is either immensely disillusioned, or is so enamored with the concept of role play, that they will dress and make accessible to themselves all of the following; A) Clothing in excess of five pieces of garb, weighing more than a legal twenty five lbs., B) Stage make-up that completely hides their face and identity, C) Backgrounds and stories, preferably histories, about how their chosen alter-ego came into being, D) Weapons that have no practical application on any battlefield, anywhere, and E) Names that include any of the following: An animal, a color, a plant, a mineral, a creature of world mythology, names from cultures that never existed, names from cultures that existed a long time ago, or names from cultures yet to exist, example: Sir Archduke Grand General, Priest of the Lemonade Stand of Gruesome Demise, Mr. Artimestriastidonicles Storm-death-doom-wolf-shark-black-white-red-dragon-sword-thorn-silver-hallibut, the Fifth, Esquire.

That is just about perfect.

Still working on “frild” (or whatever).

-Sam Stephenson

JLP radio series producer Sara Fishko alerted me to a new 35mm restoration of Shirley Clarke’s film “The Connection” that will premier at the IFC Theater on 6th Avenue on May 4.  There are many overlaps of “The Connection” and the goings on at 821 Sixth Avenue.  Here’s what I wrote in the JLP book:

Jazz musicians spend a lot of time waiting.  Waiting to get called for gigs, then waiting for the gigs; waiting for a pianist or drummer to show up; waiting for a turn to solo; waiting to get paid by a club or label owner.  Bassist Bill Crow said, “There was a lot of idle time in the afternoons.  We learned which museums and galleries were free and we’d go look at art in the afternoons, when we weren’t practicing.”

The drug users also spent time waiting for a fix.  In 1959 Jack Gelber’s play, The Connection, dramatized this particular brand of waiting at the Living Theater on Sixth Avenue and 14^th Street, just fourteen blocks from 821 Sixth Avenue.  The loft could have served as the play’s stage set and Gelber sought to achieve a realism that broke down the boundaries between the stage and an audience.  The “connection” was a dealer named Cowboy and jazz musicians – Freddie Redd and Jackie McLean, among others – were languishing in the theater space, playing tunes to pass time and escape boredom.  Gelber attempted to break down boundaries between the stage and the audience in a manner not unlike Smith’s fly-on-the-wall loft recordings.  Loft musicians Ronnie Free and Frank Hewitt were stand-ins for The Connection and Redd remembers the opening night party for the play’s cast and crew being held at 821.

In December 1959, Smith recorded Symphony Sid’s radio show on WEVD and he caught this mention of The Connection:

Ladies and gentlemen, have you seen The Connection? This is a play written by Jack Gelber. And a play with jazz featuring the Freddie Redd Quartet with Jackie McLean on alto. It’s called ‘a play with jazz,’ the Village Voice explains because there’s a quartet onstage which provides lots of good jazz and lots of good acting. Of course, there are fourteen other people in the play. And this is the first production of any sort, not just theater, in which modern jazz is used dynamically to enhance dramatic action rather than merely decorate or sabotage it, with music written by Freddie Redd.  The Villager says, ‘It’s jazz of an exceptionally superior sort, almost alone worth the price of admission.’ And all the musicians are making their acting debuts. The Connection is now playing at The Living Theatre, 14^th Street and Sixth Avenue. And you can call for a ticket reservation at Chelsea 3, 4569. Weekdays, The Connection starts at 8:30. Saturday shows are at 7 and 10:30. And there’s a Sunday show at 8:30 PM. The New York Post said, “Fascinating, a real gone slice of life that you won’t find unless you know the right path.”

The Living Theater revived The Connection in 2009.

Bernard’s introduction, “Time and the Archive,” an essay on the metaphysical values of saving things – objects and memories, in this case the “lost” play of a Nobel prize winner, stunned me.  It’s one of the best pieces I’ve read concerning the enigma of archival research, with many ramifications for JLP and my work on Gene Smith’s Sink.  Here are Bernard’s first two paragraphs:

There is much to be said for the relationship between Time and the Archive, each term capitalized here as befitting its symbolic function.  Time – that ineffable thing which signifies the broad sweep of history – is at once deep and long and granular, an (in)finite string of fleeting moments that constitute something like duration.  Although human endeavor appears to follow a teleological thrust, chronology is equally tied to happenstance and hence to the host of disjointed patterns that refuse easy coherence.  Even as we break down time into digestible parts (days, years, centuries, or broad, expansive eras), such arbitrary units necessarily rub up against their opposite: the intangible stream of human consciousness as a fluid movement of thought, or elusive recollection.  Thus, when we speak of time, we also speak, inevitably, of memory, of piecing together the import of events large and small, which brings us, by association, to the figure of the archive itself.

The archive, as the careful assemblage and ordering of documents into discrete bodies of information that capture and record the various workings of the public sphere, provides much fodder for the ever-subjective production of history.  Yet, while the archive’s origins are bureaucratic in nature, the idea of the archive as it related to creativity acquires added resonance when we consider not only the aesthetic lure of the archive as a mode of artistic practice (the playful use of archival accoutrements – filing cabinet, typewriter, index card – in the work, for instance, of the Surrealists) but the way in which the paper trail itself presents an object lesson in the machinations of biography – the interplay of presence and absence that undergirds the telling of an individual’s life story.

- From Louise Bernard’s introduction to Exorcism: A Play in One Act, by Eugene O’Neill.  Yale University Press.  2012.

-Sam Stephenson

(It wasn’t lost on us that a Eugene Smith-based event in North Carolina was competing with a basketball game featuring a school from his home state of Kansas.  Of course, another legendary Smith, retired UNC coach Dean E. Smith was also from Kansas).

I’ve enjoyed the opportunity of collaborating with the remarkable Ron Free on a number of JLP events.  His trio isn’t always this precise configuration, but I think yesterday’s set was the best I’ve heard from his band.  The Owens Theater at Sandhills was beautiful visually and the acoustics were above normal.  The Trio’s setlist offered an intriguing sequence:

1. When Lights are Low – Benny Carter

2. Off the Top – Jimmy Smith

3. Ceora – Lee Morgan

4. Bob’s Blues – a blues improv based on a composition by bassist Bob Bowen

5. Dolphin Dance – Herbie Hancock

6. An abstract collective improv introduced by Ron Free this way:  ”You’ve never heard this before, and neither have we, and you’ll never hear it again.”  It was the pinnacle of the set.

7. Lucky Southern - Keith Jarrett.

This trio should be recorded.  There is a fresh, open nature to their sound that reflects Ron’s connection to the so-called golden age of jazz along with his relentless desire to find new patterns – in life and music, which makes his younger bandmates natural partners.

Ron is recorded on over 100 reels of Eugene Smith’s loft tapes, around 300 hours of sound.  He’s the most ubiquitous presence on the tapes.  As has been oft-reported in the book, the JLP public radio series, and more, his drum work is the secret to many of the loft’s jam sessions.  Unlike many jam session participants, Ron wasn’t in it just for himself.

You can hear the same sensitive inventiveness in Ron’s work today.  Bob Bowen and Court Stewart have internalized the music from the loft era, as indicated by several tunes in their setlist, but they add their own fingerprints to the music.  The trio’s improvs revealed a trust and intimacy these musicians have won and shared over time.  They’ve played together in Virginia, off and on, for several years.  Their music yesterday sounded better than most of the ad hoc loft jam sessions.

Finally, many kudos and thanks to Denise Drum Baker for organizing this event.  As I mentioned in my remarks, the rewards for this kind of work are the people you meet along the way.  Denise is a new example.

Here is a photograph Denise sent me today from yesterday’s soundcheck.  More photos to come soon.

Court Stewart, piano. Bob Bowen, bass. Ron Free, drums.

-Sam Stephenson