Jazz People Of New Orleans - Hardcover

Lee Friedlander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224030515 ISBN 13: 9780224030519

Publisher: Pantheon, 1992

Synopsis

Lee Friedlander's reputation is founded upon an enormous diversity of work: his photographs range from landscapes to portraits, from street scenes to nudes, from industrial sites to flowers. This new book reflects another of his passionate interests - music - especially the musicians of New Orleans whom he has been photographing since 1957.
New Orleans, birthplace of jazz, was once home to such legends as Louis Armstrong and King Joe Oliver. Friedlander has photographed most of them, musicians like Manuel "Fess" Manetta, who was playing with bands before World War I and who once tried to teach Louis Armstrong to play with two trumpets at once. Here are Johnny St. Cyr, George "Kid Sheik" Cola, Sweet Emma Barrett, Isidore Barbarin and Roosevelt Sykes, blues singers and guitarists Robert Pete Williams and Snooks Eaglin. From the portraits we move out into the streets, to the marching bands like Young Tuxedo and Eureka, following Friedlander's eye to the edge of funerals until, finally, we are immersed in the rhythm of the city itself.
Many of Friedlander's subjects are encountered in an afterword by Whitney Balliett, America's foremost writer on jazz, who describes a visit he made to the city in the mid-sixties. The Jazz People of New Orleans is a remarkable testament, by a virtuoso photographer, to a city whose musical tradition is at the heart of American culture.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Noted photographer Friedlander ( Nudes ) exquisitely preserves jazz history in 94 photographs, taken between 1957 and 1974, of New Orleans clubs and bands, and of the city's fabled performers. His portraits and street scenes include subjects such as Johnny St. Cyr with his arms resting on his guitar, Robert Pete Williams playing for his wife, and Manuel "Fess" Manetta playing two horns at the same time. Friedlander took many of these pictures while accompanying jazz scholars Richard Allen and William Russell as they conducted interviews for Tulane University's Archive of New Orleans Jazz. New Yorker critic Balliett's recollections of a 1966 trip to New Orleans provide a vibrant context for Friedlander's work. He retells stories about Buddy Bolden, Bunk Johnson and Buddy Petit, while trumpeter Red Allen eloquently describes what funeral and parade brass bands looked and sounded like 50 years ago.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0224030515
• ISBN 13: 9780224030519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120