Jazz

jazz

THE

ICONIC IMAGES OF TED WILLIAMS

ENERGY IS ETERNAL DELIGHT: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF TED WILLIAMS JAMES CLARKE

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With a tangible sense of pride, Ted Williams once declared that “I just have a deep love for the music, the people and photography.”

His feeling for, and knowledge of, the jazz world ran deep and lifelong, and this passion suffused his photographs of the jazz scene with sensitivity and energy. Jazz and Ted Williams formed something approximating a duet; dovetailing near perfectly across four decades.

Most of Ted Williams’ archive, comprising both original negatives and photographs, has never been seen before – until now. This book celebrates Williams’ jazz photography, one of the richest unseen archives from the jazz era. It’s an archive that charts the sweep of jazz and the creative souls who brought the art form to life during the heart of the twentieth century.

During the final years of his life, Williams edited the photographs and began providing captions that detailed where and when an image had been taken. It was a work in progress that he was unable to see through to completion. Williams’ jazz photography has been widely celebrated for the way in which it takes viewers on a heartfelt journey into both the on- and off-stage lives of touring, hardworking – and often legendary – jazz musicians.

Born in 1925 to an African-American father and a Mexican mother, Williams, and his brother Bobby, grew up in a close-knit family. His widow, Adrienne, later recalled: “When I met him, he was kind of introverted.” She has made the point, however, that although shy, Ted “loved life.”

It’s maybe not too much a leap of the imagination, then, to say that Williams’ love of life was the heartbeat in the work for which he would be rightly celebrated.

After World War Two, during which he served in the US Coast Guard, Williams studied saxophone and clarinet before shifting creative gear and attending the Institute of Design at Illinois

Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. At that time, the city was the epicenter of American jazz, with Maxwell Street – Williams’ territory – at its heart. He became one of the first African-American students to study at IIT, where he pursued photography under the teaching of three key innovators in the tradition of American photography: Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and Art Siegel. He was also taught by visionary designer, Buckminster Fuller.

Between the 1940s and the 1970s, Williams’ images were published in the iconic American magazines, The Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, Time, Playboy and Ebony. Not only did he craft pictures that captured the spirit of a jazz performer and the spontaneity of their performance but, beyond the world of music, he also photographed a number of iconic moments in America’s Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

Williams’ images of the jazz scene captured the playful and the impassioned, the intense and the intimate, and were featured in the essential music magazines, DownBeat and Metronome. It was DownBeat that commissioned his first major piece: a 21-page feature documenting the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. This spread included now-classic and enduring Williams images of such artists as Lester Young, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong.

Williams’ photographs also made the cover of DownBeat on a number of occasions, enshrining Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in the pop-culture pantheon.

Williams’ talents were also later engaged for album cover images for record labels Vee-Jay and Mercury.

Typically working only with available light, Williams’ images emanated an intimacy and spontaneity towards his subjects, and it’s in that dynamic where the honesty and truth of his photos is to be found. His longer-term ambition had been that the general public would get to view his images in exhibition settings. In this

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billie holiday

For a while in the late 40s-early 50s when Billie was playing Chicago, she must have stayed with friends near 58th and Indiana or Calumet.

It was not unusual to see her eating breakfast (a late one to be sure) at the drug store restaurant near the El station at 50th St. And once even buying records in Morries Record Shop across the station. I saw her once with a very small dog inside her coat. Next time she had two Great Danes.

Ted Williams

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“I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter� Count Basie

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“I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music” Ahmet Ertegun

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ira sullivan

“Ira Sullivan is a rare musician, a true multi-instrumentalist, capable of improvising memorable statements of great worth on all his instruments�

Chicago Jazz Magazine

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Opposite: Duke Ellington Orchestra recording session. This page: Johnny Hodges

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“The bottom line of any country is, what did we contribute to the world?

We contributed Louis Armstrong�

Tony Bennett

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aretha franklin

“She’s all alone in her greatness” Rolling Stone Magazine

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wynton marsalis

“Jazz music is America’s past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come.

It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art�

Wynton Marsalis

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THE ICONIC IMAGES OF TED WILLIAMS

Lester Young Jimmy Smith Dinah Washington Oscar Brown jr Benny Goodman Tony Bennett Yusef Lateef Lionel Hampton Dave Brubeck Maynard Ferguson Lambert, Hendricks & Ross Quincy Jones Ramsey Lewis Stan Kenton Harry James Odetta Sonny Rollins Aretha Franklin Oscar Peterson Gerry Mulligan Bob Brookmeyer Jimmy Rushing Joe Williams Muddy Waters Nancy Wilson Louie Bellson Toshiko Akiyoshi Johnny Hodges Pat Moran Trio Pee Wee Russell Bud Freeman Jimmy Yancey Hank Jones Jo Jones Jerry Butler Harry Carney Les McCann Charlie Byrd Anita O’Day Thelonious Monk Mahalia Jackson Charles Mingus Benny Golson Miles Davis Coleman Hawkins Sarah Vaughan Julian “Cannonball” Adderley Woody Herman Freddie Hubbard John Coltrane Wes Montgomery Ira Sullivan Gene Krupa Paul Gonsalves The Jazz Crusaders Ella Fitzgerald Duke Ellington Louis Armstrong June Christy Wynton Marsalis Dizzy Gillespie Della Reese Johnny Griffin George Shearing Horace Silver Barbara Dane Paul Desmond Carmen McRae Lil Hardin Armstrong Billie Holiday Ben Webster Charlie Parker Ray Charles Jimmy Cobb Count Basie Ray Brown Eubie Blake Nat Adderley Buddy Rich Max Roach Billy Taylor Shelly Manne Art Blakey Benny Carter Art Farmer Billy Eckstine and more

“The best jazz photographer in the world” J U L I A N “ C A N N O N B A L L” A D D E R L E Y

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