Marks Grauman (1 results)

Fine collection of candid images of New Orleans jazz musicians taken by Grauman Marks (1903-84), whose work can be found in several important jazz collections, including Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive. Marks was born in Louisville, graduating from the University of Kentucky and, in 1926, receiving a law degree from Harvard. The following year he moved to Cincinnati where he served first as the Hamilton County Assistant Prosecutor and then entered private practice. Marks was also an amateur photographer, an aficionado of New Orleans jazz and a frequent visitor to the Big Easy. All but four of the images here have Marks's studio wet-stamp verso, together with pencil or pen identifications of the subjects. Sometimes the date and location or event are noted, such as a funeral parade, presumably for the great clarinettist George Lewis (1900-1968), and the 1964 Heart Fund concert. Among those pictured in the collection are Lewis, Cornbread Thomas, Jim Robinson, DeDe Pierce, Ray Burke, Punch Miller, and Fats Houston, often in performance and capturing the spirit of jazz in its birthplace. 48 original silver gelatin prints (178 x 126 mm), the majority on textured paper and with Marks's studio stamps verso. Some prints slightly rippled, a couple with minor creases, but overall very good.