A little over a hundred years ago they asked “What is jazz”? To which Louis Armstrong made the timeless reply, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know”. But a perhaps more troubling question still is how do you collect jazz? Jazz is definitionally improvisatory, participatory, in the air, of the moment. So how do you capture that ASMR thrill? How to evoke “the moment” in a physical object?
STEREO THE FINEST IN BOOKS SINCE 1969 2022 VOL ONE
Peter Harrington l o n d o n
Peter Harrington l o n d o n Peter Harrington l o n d o n
little over a hundred years ago they asked “What is jazz”? To which Louis Armstrong made the timeless reply, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know”. But a perhaps more troubling question still is how do you collect jazz? Jazz is definitionally improvisatory, participatory, in the air, of the moment. So how do you capture that ASMR thrill? How to evoke “the moment” in a physical object? Original recordings offer the obvious way in. Among the standout pieces included here are several genuinely extraordinary discs, among them an original acetate pressing of Billie’s Holiday’s legendary 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit”. That in itself would be a “thing” of considerable evocative power. But this exemplar possesses a more shimmering aura still, having come from the collection of bandleader Artie Shaw. Lady Day toured with Shaw in the late 1930s and was one of the first Black vocalists to be featured
by James N. Seidelle, an amateur lensman from Cleveland. In 1951 Seidelle’s timing was spot on when Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Roy Eldridge, Zoot Sims, and Johnny Hodges all appeared at Lindsay’s Sky Bar, Cleveland’s hottest jazz spot. Previously unpublished, Seidelle’s images have an immediacy that puts us just where we crave to be, right there in the room. Also offered here is what must surely be the most famous group portrait in jazz, Art Kane’s “A Great Day in Harlem”, in the form of an impressive exhibition-sized print signed by the photographer. In the summer of 1958, Kane captured this extraordinary “class photograph” on the steps of a Harlem brownstone and managed to gather a stellar line-up, including Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and Mary Lou Williams. Ephemera, from impressively sized and beautifully designed concert posters to the most apparently
Ellington cornettist Rex Stewart and Basie altoist Earle Warren, and maintained across a memorable series of insightful and warmly affectionate letters and postcards. Signed and manuscript material is represented here in many guises: recordings, books, and souvenirs. Art Tatum’s signature is a black tulip among jazz autographs and is present here on his eponymously titled 1956 album; Ella Fitzgerald’s autograph may not be such a rarity, but to find it on her Sings the Cole Porter Song Book is really quite special. The signatures of Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Dexter Gordon feature among 30 jazz luminaries who have appended their names to a very unusual souvenir: a silk tie, evidently worn by its owner to a number of gigs for this very purpose – an autograph album around his neck. Among objects offered here – relics might be a better word – are a trio of exceptional pieces. There is John Coltrane’s 1963 Down Beat Award, recognition for his work on soprano sax, an instrument that had
all items from this catalogue are on display at dover street
writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture t. s. monk
with an all-white band. Another eloquently potent survival is a private test pressing made in Kansas City in the autumn of 1943, which catches the electrifying genius of a fledgling Charlie Parker taking flight on Ray Noble’s notoriously difficult “Cherokee”, Bird’s “favourite practice warhorse” and the tune on which he admitted that he “came alive”, externalizing for the first time his extraordinary interior vision. This time- wracked relic carries a remarkable frisson. Photography is a medium often linked with jazz for its capability decisively to capture “the moment”, and it’s an area in which we always aim to maintain a strong profile. Of particular note here is the wonderful group of 40 live images captured
insignificant and tattered job-printed handbill for an obscure club date, can render a powerful evocation. Among posters we have an almost impossible survival: an exceedingly fragile and visually arresting piece documenting the birth of the blues and the inception of the solo career of the genre’s first headline performer, the “Mother of the Blues”, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the original Black diva and a gay icon who took the blues from minstrelsy to authenticity. Jazz club ephemera makes significant appearances among the elements of an emotive and genuinely engrossing archive assembled by musicologist Philip T. “Phip” Young, which charts a young man’s entirely colour-blind love affair with jazz, fostered in particular by his friendship with
not before been employed, pace Sidney Bechet, to such mesmeric effect. An iconic memento of Miles Davis comes in the form of a pair of sunglasses owned by the great trumpeter, typical of the statement shades he affected during the 1980s. And finally, there is a quite heart-stopping survival – a gardenia worn by Billie Holiday, kept and treasured by Billie’s maid and confidante; it is perhaps the only survivor of Lady Day’s trademark flowers, unquestionably among the most powerful emblems in the iconography of jazz. We hope you find something appealing and tempting among this selection of highlights from our extensive jazz holdings.
www.peterharrington.co.uk
mayfair 43 Dover Street London w1s 4ff chelsea
100 Fulham Road London sw3 6hs
glenn @peterharrington.co.uk duncan@peterharrington.co.uk
Front cover image detail of John Coltrane by Chuck Stewart, item 9; rear cover image of Glen Mitchell, senior specialist. Design: Nigel Bents & Abbie Ingleby. Photography: Ruth Segarra. Rear cover photograph: Diandra Galia.
VAT no. gb 701 5578 50 Peter Harrington Limited. Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, 133–137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 7JY. Registered in England and Wales No: 3609982
uk 020 7591 0220 eu 00 44 20 7591 0220 usa 011 44 20 7591 0220
ALL OF OUR PACKAGING
MATERIALS ARE EITHER RE-USED, RECYCLABLE OR BIODEGRADABLE
sunken and haunted image. Even so, his technique was precise, and his playing and singing remained touchingly effective to the end” (Cook & Morton). Original silver gelatin print (234 × 300 mm), verso with Fèvre’s studio wet stamp, identifying note in black marker pen in Fèvre’s hand, initialled by him, and inscribed “Tirage Georges Fèvre”. In excellent condition. ¶ Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , ninth edition, 2008. £1,250 [150381] 3 BASIE, Count. Original poster for Decoration Day Breakfast Dance at Quincy College, Illinois, 1959. Quincy, Illinois: 1959 “in person! count basie and his famous orchestra” Extraordinary survival from a Basie one-nighter at the recently-established Quincy College, the bandleader’s portrait within a starburst framed by his name stenciled onto a background of broad black “brushstrokes”, a very eye-catching piece. Rather less glamorously, but perhaps in keeping with the nature of the gig, reservations were available from Delux Cleaners at 234 N. 10th Street. Basie played a more famous breakfast dance in 1957, for a record convention at the Americana Hotel, Miami. This was taped and released on the Roulette label as Breakfast Dance and Barbecue, which Cook and Morton award three stars, a shade under their top ranking, and describe the band as “having a good time” – it is difficult to imagine the same atmosphere not pertaining at this Illinois gig. Quincy, a bustling transportation hub on the Mississippi, may not have been on the jazz circuit but neither was it a backwater, being for some time the second largest town in the state. The Basie band was riding a new tide of popularity following the release of 1958’s showstopper album The Atomic Mr. Basie. Poster (545 × 337 mm), medium card stock, heading printed in red, Basie’s image and main titling printed in black on a yellow ground. Pin holes at top corners, softening, surface creasing and slight splash marking to top right corner, small puncture through “H” in “His”, timings corrected in pencil, but overall in remarkably bright condition. ¶ Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , ninth edition, 2008. £2,650 [149221]
1
1 ARMSTRONG, Louis. Superb inscribed promotional photograph from Satchmo’s first tour of Europe. London: Ava Studio, 1933 “a unique phenomenon, an electric personality” A debonair and dj-ed Armstrong poses with horn in a Bruno Pollak RP–7 Bauhaus chair. Inscribed “My Best wishes to Sidney H. Matthews from Louis Armstrong 23/3/34”, inked annotation at the top left-hand corner “Taken 1933 – London”. In the summer of 1932, following a marijuana bust in California and ongoing mob-related management problems, Satchmo took himself off to Europe on the SS Majestic. His initial engagement for two weeks at the Palladium with his “New Rhythm Band” – in fact a scratch band thrown together largely from Paris- based Black musicians – met with mixed reactions. On most nights a good proportion of the audience walked out “utterly shocked at the manic display on
2
stage” (Nollen, p. 43), while the jazz proselytising Melody Maker for August 1932 raved “Top F’s bubble about all over the place … he puts enough energy in his half-hour’s performance to last the average man several years. He is, in short, a unique phenomenon, an electric personality – easily the greatest America has sent us so far” (quoted in Collier, p. 255), reports belied by his demure demeanour in the present stylish, restrained and very “modern” image. Original “8 × 10” silver gelatin print (243 × 187 mm), mounted on card. Some oxidation “silvering” in the darker areas, the inscription a little faded but clearly legible, overall good tone and definition, very good. Presented in a black wooden frame with conservation acrylic glazing. ¶ James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius , 1983; Scott Allen Nollen, Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music and Screen Career, 2004. £1,250 [130285] 2 BAKER, Chet – FÈVRE, Bertrand (photo.) “Chet Baker, Ostia, Italie 1987”. Paris: Bertrand Fèvre, 1987
Hauntingly beautiful image of the great trumpeter, captured during a club date just six months before his death. This exemplar, exhibiting a fine depth and gradation of tone, is given added lustre as having been printed by Fèvre’s father Georges (b. 1930), “a master of black and white silver prints” (bertrand- fevre.com), and in this regard is decidedly uncommon and desirable. This superb portrait was captured while Chet was appearing with the Space Jazz Trio at the Corto Maltese club in Ostia, Italy, in November 1987 (a studio album was released in 1988, Chet Baker meets Space Jazz Trio – Little Girl Blue ). Bertrand Fèvre (b. 1957) studied film at the Conservatoire libre du cinéma français in Paris, working initially as assistant on feature films and commercials. He struck up a relationship with the trumpeter in Baker’s last months and his film, Chet’s Romance , won best short at the César Awards in 1988; a book and recorded interview, My Romance with Chet, was published in 2020. Baker was “the archetypal ‘young man with the horn’, brilliant, inward, self-destructive … He developed a sound similar to Miles Davis’s: quiet, restricted in range, and melodic rather than virtuosic … A heroin habit destroyed the film star looks, and replaced them with a
1
3
2
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
3
“jive talk is the lingo all the jitter bugs use today” Final, and fullest, edition of Calloway’s famous little book, which has been described as “the first dictionary authored by a black person” (Calt, p. xxi), and is surely the first jazz-derived lexicon. Although produced in large numbers this has now become most decidedly uncommon, an online search of institutional libraries citing copies at Chicago, Indiana State, and Evergreen State only. “In 1938 he published the first edition of Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary. He explained that he mainly assembled it from language heard on the street, but in some instances he claimed to have coined words, including ‘jitterbug.’ In 1939 he published Professor Cab Calloway’s Swingformation Bureau, teaching how to apply the vocabulary in the dictionary. It went through six editions to 1944, the last as The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive, by which point it had been adopted as the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library. Millions of copies were distributed. At some unknown date New York University gave Calloway the honorary title of ‘Dean of American Jive’” (ANB) . Calloway immortalised his diminutive glossary when he performed “Mr. Hepster’s Dictionary” in the musical-comedy Sensations of 1945 – advertised here on the back wrapper – in which, impeccably attired in white tie and tails, he proceeds to explain that “jive talk is the lingo all the jitter bugs use today”. This is a particularly dapper copy, or, to coin a hepsterism, “a hummer”. Duodecimo, 16 pp. Original sepia photographically illustrated wrappers, wire-stitched as issued. Slight rust stain from single staple, scattered foxing, yet a remarkably well-preserved copy. ¶ Stephen Calt, Barrrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary, 2009. £2,650 [145541] 6 CHAPMAN, Harold. Collection of 7 original exhibition prints of the Mandrake Club and Soho in the 1950s. London: Harold Chapman, 1950s “a crummy cellar dump where jazz musicians would gather after their gigs and hold informal jam sessions” Highly evocative group of superb images that distill something of the essence of 1950s Soho – the cynosure being jazz at the Mandrake Club – and which forms a picturesque pictorial study of London’s
most famous bohemian quarter: “But in Soho, all the things they say happen, do” (MacInnes). Harold Chapman (b. 1927) remains best known for his images of Paris in the mid-50s and early 60s, particularly those captured at what became known as the Beat Hotel, a guesthouse on the Left Bank which saw a remarkable series of artists cross its threshold, among them Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, and Harold Norse. But his first love was jazz. Of the Mandrake Club, Chapman remarked in an interview that it was “a crummy cellar dump where jazz musicians would gather after their gigs and hold informal jam sessions. I particularly liked this venue as the complications of the licencing laws for alcohol in England were particularly bizarre. After 11pm at night, which was the closing time of English pubs then, you could only get a drink if you bought a meal. At the Mandrake they served a huge plate of salad which legally constituted a meal, so every time you wanted to have a drink, say, a pint of beer, you got a plate of salad. Most of the salads sadly never got eaten nor were they intended to be, they were all scrapped at the end of the night’s session and probably ended up as pigswill. So, as the place was always littered after 11 o’clock at night with salads, if one was discreet, one didn’t even have to buy a drink but simply helped oneself to two or three salads and had a large healthy meal!” (website blues.gr). All prints are annotated and signed on the verso, some also with studio wet stamp (further details on request). At the Mandrake Club (on board, 343 × 483 mm) Dancing at the Mandrake Club (on board, 330 × 470 mm) Anne Winston at the Mandrake Club (on board, 483 × 343 mm) Frank Freeman: jam session at the Mandrake Club (on board, 508 × 407 mm) Tony Coe jamming at the Mandrake Club (on board, 457 × 356 mm) Diz Disley, resident guitar at Aux Caves de France (on board, 330 × 483 mm) Ruth, Soho (on board, 457 × 356 mm) As Colin MacInnes, Chapman’s slightly older contemporary, remarked in Absolute Beginners, his novel of youth rebellion set in late 50s London, “in the jazz world, you meet all kinds of cats, on absolutely equal terms, who can clue you up in all kinds of directions – in social directions, in culture directions, in sexual directions, and in racial directions – in fact, almost anywhere, really, you want to go to learn”. 7 original silver gelatin prints, various sizes (detailed above), all on board, 5 presented in window mounts. In excellent condition. ¶ Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959. £5,000 [150203]
4
5
4 BASIE, Count – PANASSIÉ, Hugues. The Real Jazz. Translated by Anne Sorelle Williams. Adapted for American publication by Charles Edward Smith. New York: Smith & Durrell, Inc., 1942 signed by basie, joe williams, and five members of the band First US edition, first printing, the first in English. This copy is attractively provenanced by being autographed across the title page and facing blank by seven members of the Basie band, including the Count himself, vocalist Joe Williams, Wendel Culley, Joe Newman (trumpets), Bill Hughes (trombone), Marshal Royal (alto, clarinet), and Charlie Foulkes (baritone sax, bass clarinet). All were involved on Basie’s 1955 album Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings (Clef MG C–678), Williams’s
debut as featured vocalist, the album described by Allmusic as “one of those landmark moments that even savvy observers don’t fully appreciate when it occurs, then realize years later how momentous an event they witnessed. Williams brought a different presence to the great Basie orchestra than the one Jimmy Rushing provided; he couldn’t shout like Rushing, but he was more effective on romantic and sentimental material, while he was almost as spectacular on surging blues, up-tempo wailers, and stomping standards. Basie’s band maintained an incredible groove behind Williams”. Influential French jazz critic, historian and record producer Hugues Panasié (1912–1974) was co-founder, with Charles Delaunay, of the Hot Club de France, one of the earliest jazz fan clubs. He also established Le Jazz Hot magazine (1935) and was the author of a series of historical, biographical and discographical studies. He was an ardent exponent of what he saw as “true” or “real” jazz, a music strictly rooted in the blues and the work of the New Orleans founding fathers. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in white, front cover with decoration of a drummer in tuxedo. Front free endpaper bearing neat typed ownership slip of “B. J. Randall. I32I843” and pencilled list on front pastedown identifying signees. Spine cocked and creased, slight wear to extremities, a little shaken, some general signs of handling otherwise a good copy. £1,250 [136002] 5 CALLOWAY, Cab. The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive. 1944 Edition. New York: Cab Calloway, Inc., 1944
6
4
6
4
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
5
7 COLEMAN, Ornette. Harmolodics – an autograph musical manuscript. New York: c.1980 ornette outlines harmolodics A remarkable piece; we can trace no other Ornette Coleman musical manuscript ever having appeared on the market. Written in brown felt-tip, the sheet is inscribed lower right in black ink: “To Anthony Thanks For Everything Ornette Coleman”. Harmolodics was the name that Coleman gave to his unique musical philosophy and compositional/ improvisational method, which he enigmatically defined as “the use of the physical and the mental of one’s own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about the musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group”. Applied specifically to music, it means that “harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas” (Coleman, pp. 54–5). It has been suggested that Coleman drew on Boulez’s concept of aleatory music for harmolodics, while early Coleman advocate Gunther Schuller suggested that it is based in the superimposition of the same or similar phrases, thus developing polytonality and heterophony. Coleman was apparently working on an expository text on harmolodics from the 70s, but this has never appeared, and the only extended explanation is contained in the article quoted above. He also used the name “Harmolodic” for his record label. Ornette Coleman (1930–2015) was one of the most powerful and contentious innovators in the history of jazz; his work was publicly dismissed by many of the previous generation of iconoclasts, such as Monk and Miles, but actively promoted by the impeccably restrained John Lewis. Probably the best summation of the paradoxical paradigm that was Ornette Coleman comes from Mingus who said: “Now aside from the fact that I doubt he can even play a C scale in whole notes – tied whole notes, a couple of bars apiece – in tune, the fact remains that his notes and lines are so fresh. So when Symphony Sid played his record, it made everything else he was playing, even my own record that he played, sound terrible” (Mingus). This piece is from the collection of Anthony Murrell. Introduced to Ornette Coleman by Don Cherry, with whom he shared a loft on Christy St in Fremont, California, Murrell assisted Coleman in sorting and archiving materials when he bought the former Public School #4, at 203 Rivington Street at Pitt on the Lower East Side in 1981, and was in the process of moving into a top-floor classroom. Coleman extracted the
8
trane’s down beat award for soprano sax
Provenance: by descent from the family; then through auction, being lot 345 at Guernsey’s landmark Jazz at Lincoln Center sale of 20 February 2005. Medium-stain wooden “shield-shaped” plaque, slot on verso for hanging, similarly shaped brass panel mounted to front and secured with slotted button-head screws, foliate frame in black, the engraving reading: “John Coltrane, Miscellaneous Instrument, Jazz Critics Poll, Down Beat, 1963”. A few light abrasions and minor scratches otherwise very good and bright; together with the relevant issue of Down Beat magazine (18 Jul. 1963). ¶ David N. Baker, The Jazz Style of John Coltrane: A Musical and Historical Perspective, 1980; Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, ninth edition, 2008; Leonard Feather, Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties , 1966. £15,000 [147632]
sheet from the material that they were working through, and inscribed it for Murrell. Folio, single leaf of musical score paper extracted from original comb-bound volume, printed staves, titled and with eight lines of musical notation in brown felt-tip. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. A little browned, some light soiling, “sneaker” print (?) verso, top corners creased and small piece of cellophane tape top right, but overall very good. ¶ Ornette Coleman, “Prime Time for Harmolodics”, Down Beat, Jul. 1983; Charles Mingus, “The Blindfold Test”, Down Beat, 28 Apr. 1960. £10,000 [103666] 8 COLTRANE, John. Down Beat Award for Miscellaneous Instrument, 1963. Chicago: Down Beat, 1963
Wonderful memento from the last years of the great tenorist’s career. Coltrane’s poll win in the inevitably rather prosaic-sounding “Miscellaneous Instrument” category was, in fact, for his pioneering work with the soprano sax, added to his repertoire in 1960. His most famous outing on the straight horn remains that year’s “remarkable, unsettling performance” of “My Favorite Things” (Cook & Morton). David Baker, in his study of Coltrane’s art, remarks, “Coltrane, virtually singlehandedly, brought the soprano sax to unprecedented popularity”. Not since Bechet had the instrument been employed to such potent and startling effect. Leonard Feather described Trane’s sound on soprano as “sinuous and serpentine”, employing a “pinched high pitched near- human cry of anguish that is most effective”.
7
6
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
7
Englewood, New Jersey, a short ride from Stewart’s home in Teaneck. These memorialise the recording of two remarkable sessions, A Love Supreme and the recently-released and highly acclaimed Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (2018). The Love Supreme images include two of Trane with Archie Shepp, who contributed an alternate take of “Acknowledgement”, cut from the version issued. Another shot pictures Pharoah Sanders rehearsing, so this session may date to the recording of either Ascension or Meditations (both 1965). Other outstanding images show Trane lounging on the studio stairs and capture something of his brooding intensity. In addition, there are two excellent publicity shots, one of a smiling Trane and another a particularly fine pensive study of him seated, soprano sax in hand. The three Basie images capture the Count in the studio, two in shirt sleeves and sporting a natty knitted waistcoat, in one of which he is animatedly directing the band, the other a striking profile study seated at the piano, looking quizzical; another strong portrait shows him hatted and sharply dressed. These may have been taken at the Capitol Records studio in 1957. 18 original “10 × 8” (254 × 203 mm) silver gelatin prints; four with studio wet stamp to verso. In excellent condition. £3,000 [137283] 10 THE COTTON CLUB. Smart New York is flocking to the Cotton Club … Truckin’ Contest every Thursday Night … Under the Direction of Ralph Cooper, Harlem’s Renowned Master of Ceremonies. Cash Prizes – You sit as Judge and Jury! All in addition to Ted Koehler’s Cotton Club Parade, 26th Edition. New York: The Cotton Club, 1935 Wonderful piece of previously unrecorded memorabilia for the famous Cotton Club, a window card promoting a dance competition featuring the latest craze, Truckin’, as popularised by the sensational dancer Cora LaRedd, the “Terpsichorean Riot”. Illustrated with a splendid tonal sketch of a dancer strutting his stuff, strongly reminiscent of Miguel Covarrubias’s Harlem sketches. The New Amsterdam News was thrilled with the new edition of the Cotton Club’s long-running revue; “The 26th edition has more talent than you can shake a stick at: Lena Horne a very pleasing ingenue; Butterbeans and Susie, Mantan and Juano Hernandez comedians; Nina Mae McKinney; the soubretting of Cora La Redd;
9
10
9 COLTRANE, John, & Count Basie – STEWART, Chuck (photo.) Collection of 18 original silver gelatin prints. New York: Chuck Stewart, [1957 & 1964–65] coltrane captured during the love supreme session Remarkable group of stunning images captured by Chuck Stewart, described by the long- standing New York-based jazz public radio station WBGO as “one of the most prolific and admired photographers in jazz” and one of the few Black lensmen to achieve recognition. A native of Texas, Stewart (1927–2017) majored in photography at Ohio University, graduating in 1949. While in college his friendship with Herman Leonard helped him to make contacts with record companies in New York, a defining moment in a long and distinguished career that spanned more than 70 years. “Stewart shot countless artists in profile and at work, capturing resonant and unguarded images that also tell the story of the music. By his estimate, he shot the cover images for more than 2,000 albums, including a large portion of the Impulse! catalog. He also contributed photographs to a range of publications, including Esquire and the New York Times. ‘In my portraits and improvisational shots, I’ve tried to unveil the soul of the artists I photographed and communicate the essence of their craft,’ Stewart wrote in his official bio. ‘That’s why they trusted me’” (ibid.). Of the fifteen Coltrane images, two show him in performance (one with Paul Chambers), eleven capture him in the Rudy Van Gelder studios in
the legomania of Cook and Brown; the dancing of the 3 Rhythm Queens”, music was provided by Claude Hopkins and Jimmie Lunceford who had recently replaced Cab Calloway. However, the hit of the show does seem to have been LaRedd’s interpretation of the shuffle-swagger move known as Truckin’. Ed Sullivan raved in his “Broadway” column in the Washington Post , “I like best the ‘Truckin’ Down’ number led by Cora LaRedd. ‘Truckin’, in Harlem, is a description of a peculiar slouchy walk, and the new dance has the same contagion of rhythm that made an instantaneous hit of the Black Bottom when Tom Patricola and Ann Pennington brought it to town. With one shoulder hoisted, the dancers do a spraddle-legged walk that finally gives you a terrific yen to try it yourself”. And evidently many did. It’s a great sadness that just a few minutes of film of LaRedd has survived, performing “Jig Time” in a Noble Sissle Orchestra Vitaphone short That’s the Spirit. Window card (153 × 165 mm), printed in sepia on medium-weight glossy card-stock. Sharp crease to the left-hand edge, not touching the text, small patches of glue residue verso from album mounting, very good. £650 [149287]
9
8
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
9
the tension was caused by a disagreement over pay, so that “when we came out to play, everybody was madder than a motherfucker with each other and so I think that anger created a fire, a tension that got into everybody’s playing, and maybe that’s why everyone played with such intensity.” This is an early pressing dating to 1966, the year of release; the labels include the wording “‘Columbia’ ‘Masterworks’” and the matrix numbers on the runouts are XSM112003–1B and XSM112004–1B. According to the website LondonJazzCollector, the presence of the terminal “1B” indicates a second pressing from the first tape. 12-inch vinyl LP (Columbia Stereo CS 9253), new plain white inner sleeve (original plain inner also preserved), original album cover. A little shelfwear to cover otherwise very good; disc in excellent condition. ¶ Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , ninth edition, 2008; Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography , 1990; Discogs website; LondonJazzCollector website. £2,650 [149099] 12 DAVIS, Miles. Remarkable holograph “letter” from Miles to Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun. [With:] two original telegrams, first from Miles to Cicely Tyson (dated 19 August 1968), second to Miles from “Joe, Terry and Marcia” (dated March 1971). New York: [1968] miles tugs ertegun’s sleeve and champions his new muse Dashed off in pencil across two leaves of a Shaw Agency expense report, this quite extraordinary “letter” reflects Miles’s infatuation with the woman who was to become his short-lived but vitally important muse, the 23-year-old Betty Mabry. Material of this nature from Davis’s hand is genuinely rare. “Ahmet Ertegun – Betty is interested in recording for Atlantic and Miles – write or phone if you have $ or time. We know you steal but it’s okay. If you have any good Talent, Betty has some songs. [Second leaf:] Say hello to your brother Neshui [Nesuhi] who is probably in Israel vacationing. Please give this your immediate attention because the Xmas Holidays are coming and we don’t have any money – ”. This almost certainly dates from late 1968, following Miles’s divorce from Frances Taylor in February of that year. At this time Betty Mabry “seemed to be everywhere in New York in a way that was possible only in the late 1960s. She was quintessentially sixties, all funky chic and an exploding Afro, with talent to burn:
she had studied fashion design; written ‘Uptown’ for the Chambers Brothers on their The Time Has Come album; appeared on the Dating Game TV show and as a model in Ebony, Glamour, Jet, and Seventeen ; was co- owner of the Cellar, a club for teenagers in New York City; and was beginning a singing career. She was yet another talented woman in Miles’ life, but this time a much younger one and wired into a scene that Miles had witnessed only from afar. Betty knew many of the new black rockers like Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, and she introduced Miles to them and a club scene he had never been a part of. She even became his dresser, taking him on shopping trips to flash and funk boutiques in the Village and steering him away from the tailored suits that he so proudly wore” (Szwed). As Miles himself put it: “If Betty were singing today she’d be something like Madonna; something like Prince, only as a woman … She was just ahead of her time … The marriage only lasted about a year, but that year was full of new things and surprises and helped point the way I was to go, both in my music and, in some ways, my lifestyle” (Davis & Troupe , p. 290). In this hurriedly written and terse note Miles seems to be under the impression that the Ertegun brothers, of Turkish and Muslim heritage, were Jewish. Although Miles was never with Atlantic he clearly believed that Mabry’s career would be best served by them. In 1968 she recorded some demo tapes under Teo Macero at Columbia’s 52nd Street Studios but these failed to secure an album deal with either Columbia or Atlantic. Her first album, Betty Davis , was issued on the Just Sunshine label in 1973. Ahmet Ertegun (1923–2006) has been described as “one of the most significant figures in the modern recording industry”, whose record label, Atlantic, “was at the forefront of great independent labels that sprang up in the late Forties, challenging the primacy of the major labels of the time” (Rock & Roll Hall of Fame). A highly unusual document that offers a fascinating glimpse into the restless mind of one of 20th-century music’s most fascinating figures. 2 leaves, quarto (280 × 215 mm), Shaw Artists Corporation “Expense Report” forms. 2 Western Union telegrams (details of which are available on request). Letter with staple holes top left otherwise in excellent condition; second telegram with “coffee cup” stain otherwise both excellent. ¶ Miles Davis & Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography , 1989; John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis , 2002, available online. £6,500 [136378]
11
11 DAVIS, Miles. Miles Davis. ‘Four’ & More: Recorded Live in Concert. New York: Columbia, 1966 “we just blew the top off that place that night. it was a motherfucker the way everybody played” Signed neatly in full by Miles in red marker pen on the back cover. This is a fine live album recorded at New York’s Philharmonic Hall in February 1964; the lineup features the core of the Second Great Quintet – Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams – with George Coleman on tenor. The entire concert was released across two albums, the present one, which showcases the up-tempo numbers, and My Funny Valentine, which features
medium and slow pieces. Davis, in his autobiography, fills in the background to the concert: “I have always thought musicians played better in live situations and so that studio shit had gotten boring to me. Instead I had scheduled a benefit for the civil rights registration drives that were being sponsored by the NAACP and also by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This was the height of the civil rights era, with black consciousness on the rise. The concert was to be held at Philharmonic Hall in February 1964, and Columbia was going to tape the performance. We just blew the top off that place that night. It was a motherfucker the way everybody played – and I mean everybody. A lot of the tunes we played were done up-tempo and the time never did fall, not even once. George Coleman played better that night than I have ever heard him play. There was a lot of creative tension happening that night that the people out front didn’t know about.” According to the trumpeter,
12
requested a ‘zoom in’ – what’s the important bit here?
10
JAZZ
11
15 DOUBEK, Frantisek Bohumil. Female jazz trio. [?Munich: c.1923]
Robert Irving doing their thing on the synthesizer, and me and Kenny Garrett (sometimes Gary Thomas on tenor) weaving our voices through all of that, and Foley, who was my new guitar player, playing that funky blues-rock-funk, almost Jimi Hendrix- like music he plays. They were great and I truly had finally found the guitar player that I had been looking for. Everybody in that band could dialogue with each other from the beginning and that was good. My band was right and my health was good and so was everything else in my life.” Cook and Morton remark memorably that at this time Davis’s “horn sounds as deceptively fragile as ever, but it’s made to dance in front of shifting sonic backdrops”. Poster (835 × 585 mm), printed white on red on rather flimsy paper stock, incorporating half-tone image of Miles. Light lateral crease where once folded, a few other light creases. In excellent, unfaded, condition. ¶ Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , ninth edition, 2008; Miles Davis & Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1990. £1,750 [149200]
the jazz age arrives in the parlours of mitteleuropa
Wonderfully spirited portrayal of an enthusiastic jazz band comprised of three modern young women, bobbed and in flapper dresses, playing the “signature” instruments of the “jass” revolution – drums, sax, and banjo. Frantisek Doubek (1865–1952) was born in Ceské Budejovice, his father a shoemaker and his mother the daughter of a blacksmith. In 1879 he moved to Prague where he began his artistic education, enrolling at the Academy of Fine Art where he became a pupil of the then rector, history painter Antonín Lhota, also studying under the Czech Nazarene painters Frantisek Sequens and Frantisek Cermák, one of the founders of the Umelecká beseda – Artistic Discussion – movement. He left Prague for Munich in 1885, joining the classes of genre painter Otto Seitz, and studying composition with Hungarian history painter and illustrator Sandor Liezen-Mayer. During the Great War, Doubek enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army, remaining in Bavaria for five years after the war ended, only returning to Ceské Budejovice in 1924. There he established himself as a portraitist and genre painter, being commissioned to produce the main altar and Stations of the Cross for St. Nicholas’s cathedral. In 1933 he settled in Prague, where he exhibited his work, and produced numerous illustrations for magazines. He was a member of the JUV – Czech Artists’ Association – and the influential SUV Mánes – Union of Fine Artists Mánes. He died in 1952. Most of Doubek’s work consists of portraiture and genre paintings; a good number of the latter are of a slightly risqué, sub-William Russell Flint nature. The subject matter of the present work is certainly unusual and would seem to derive from his time in Munich. In the early 1920s jazz was just getting started in Germany, more of a fad than a musical movement: the Shimmy and the Two Step had swept the dance floors, and the jazz trio – piano, drums and a Stehgeiger, standing violinist, and variants thereupon – was the most common ensemble. Doubek’s well- painted and attractively composed scene captures the hectic excitement and hope of the Weimar years. Oil on canvas (625 × 500 mm). In attractive gilt wood frame to style. In very good condition. £7,500 [133687]
13
13 DAVIS, Miles. Pair of sunglasses owned by Miles Davis. New York: Optical Affairs, [ c.1984] miles’s shades Iconic memento of Miles, dating to the period of his renaissance in the mid-to-late 1980s. Sunglasses are the one style accessory most closely associated with the great trumpeter – a projection of an ineffable “cool” and a powerful affirmation of his renowned aloofness, which he described in his autobiography as a reaction to other “black musicians … grinning and scratching on stage.” They also reflected his innate shyness: “James Baldwin, who said of Miles that he was the only person he knew who was shyer than he, once compared Miles’ shyness to Floyd Paterson’s reticence, his ‘will to privacy’” (Szwed, p. 192). The trumpeter acquired these wonderfully stylish shades, with their distinctive peak over the bridge and slight wraparound look, from the New York eyewear boutique du jour, Optical Affairs, launched in 1984 by celebrated designers Christian Roth and Eric Domège. Provenance: by descent through the family; then through auction, being lot 171D at Guernsey’s landmark Jazz at Lincoln Center sale of 20 February 2005. Pair of black plastic sunglasses, left inner arm stamped in white “Manufactured in France Pat. No. 011394/9WZ”, right inner arm similarly stamped “Optical Affairs New York”, tinted lenses. Overall in excellent condition. ¶ John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis, 2002. £5,250 [144302]
14 DAVIS, Miles. Original poster for concert in Berlin, 1987: Miles Davis, 3.11.87 Dienstag 20 Uhr, ICC Saal 1. Berlin: 1987 “the band i had in 1987 was a motherfucker, man” Beautifully simple and highly effective poster for Miles’s appearance at Berlin’s Internationales Congress Centrum on 3 November 1987. The portrait shows Miles with left arm raised, apparently indicating “on the one”, a direction given to musicians to play on the downbeat (the first beat of a measure), most famously used by James Brown – and a phrase used by Miles himself in the closing lines of his autobiography. This was the period when Miles laid down covers of Scritti Politti’s “Perfect Way”, Prince’s “Movie Star”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature”. The band for this Berlin gig almost certainly comprised Kenny Garrett (alto and flute), Robert Irving III (synth), Adam Holzman (synth), Joe “Foley” McCreary (guitar), Darryl “The Munch” Jones (electric bass), Ricky Wellman (drums), and Rudy Bird or Mino Cinélu (percussion); elements of this group were present on the albums Tutu (1986) and Amandla (1989). Of this group Miles writes, “The band I had in 1987 was a motherfucker, man. I loved the way they were playing. People all over loved this band. See, all this interweaving stuff was up in what they played, you know, Ricky playing off Mino Cin é lu, and Darryl Jones was up under that shit and giving foundation, and Adam Holzman and
15
14
12
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
13
Ken Vail, in his Duke’s Diary , gives a breakdown of the performance, which included “Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue”, featuring Paul Gonsalves in his fourteenth year reprising the show-stopping performance of the same at Newport in 1956. The show ran from 8:30 pm until 4:00 am, with “Duke until 2:00 am”. The dress code du jour is clearly spelled out: “Gents Wear Collar and Tie. Ladies Wear Your ‘Thing’: Mink – Gowns – Mini or Maxi”. The High Chaparral was “perhaps the city’s most successful black club, and featured more big names than any other” (Pruter, 1991, p. 11). It was run by former Harlem Globetrotter Clarence Ludd, who “strove to maintain a family-oriented atmosphere, even though the place could hold 1,300 patrons” (Cohen, p. 134). The show’s organiser was McKie Fitzhugh, a major player on the Chicago entertainment scene, who, before branching out was, in the 40s, “one of the biggest dance promoters in Chicago”, booking Ellington at the city’s Savoy Ballroom, along with Stan Kenton, Lionel Hampton, and Woody Herman (Pruter, 1996, p. 226). Despite the trumpeting of his appointment by Nixon as a “good will ambassador”, it was under the Kennedy administration that Duke made his first Jazz Ambassador tour, to the Middle East and India, in the summer of 1963. Ellington had turned 70 in April 1969 and was feted at the Nixon White House with a state banquet and the award of the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is an outstanding visual memento from Duke’s final decade. Poster (707 × 555 mm), printed in red and black on white-faced card stock, integral halftone portrait of Duke. Slight loss to top left corner, neat staple holes at corners, sides, and one at centre, top right corner a little creased and softened yet this remains in very good condition, clean and bright. ¶ Aaron Cohen, Move On UP: Chicago Soul and Black Cultural Power , 2019; Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul , 1991; Robert Pruter, Doowop: The Chicago Scene, 1996; Ken Vail, Duke’s Diary Part Two: The Life of Duke Ellington 1950–1974 , 2002. £1,250 [149259] 18 ELLINGTON, Duke – GOTTLIEB, William (photo.) Ellington in his dressing room, Paramount Theater, c. September, 1946 – large vintage silver gelatin print, signed by the photographer. New York: William P. Gottlieb, [c.1978] duke – signed by legendary photographer william gottlieb Superb image of Duke captured in the mirror of his dressing room; inscribed lower left-hand corner,
16
17
16 DOWN BEAT MAGAZINE. Complete set of Down Beat Jazz Record Reviews. Chicago: Down Beat, 1957–64 essential reading – but so very difficult to assemble Very scarce complete set of this indispensable reference work, all in first edition, first printing. A fascinating panorama of shifting tastes in jazz, which might be crudely bookended by Erroll Garner’s Concert by the Sea (1955) and Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963). Dipping-in is irresistible. Brubeck’s Time Out (1959) was a million-seller but receives just 2 stars and a scathing review from Ira Gitler (“if he [Brubeck] wants to experiment, let him begin with trying some real jazz”); Kind of Blue (1959) was a stone-cold classic from day one (“This is the soul of Miles Davis, and it’s a beautiful soul”); Saxophone Colossus (1957) garners five stars from Ralph Gleason and praise for Rollins’s “gentleness, a delicate feeling for beauty in line, and a puckish sense of humor”; Giant Steps (1960)
17 ELLINGTON, Duke. Original poster for performance at the High Chaparral, Chicago, 1970: Chicago Honoring World’s Greatest Pianist, Appointed by Pres. Nixon as Good Will Ambassador for American Music Abroad. Spend An Evening with Duke … McKie Fitzhugh proudly presents In Person! Duke Ellington and His Big Orchestra. Chicago: McKie Fitzhugh, 1970 “duke until 2:00 am – ladies wear your ‘thing’” Terrifically direct, impressively sized and notably scarce “boxing bill-style” poster – packing a potent visual punch – for a one-nighter at South Side Chicago’s “legendary” High Chaparral ( Chicago Tribune ), coming off the back of the final recordings for the Second Sacred Concert album in Toronto, and followed by another one-nighter, this time at the Frontier Supper Club in Elgin, Illinois.
receives the same rating from Gleason, who states that Coltrane “has managed to combine all the swing of Pres with the virility of Hawkins and added to it a highly individual, personal sound as well as a complex and logical, and therefore fascinating, mind”; the reviewer of Ornette Coleman’s debut Something Else! (1959) is in two minds about the altoist’s “passionate, almost inarticulate” playing but extols his compositional ability and concedes that much of the four-star rating “is inspired by [Coleman’s] excellent writing”. The delightfully hip line illustrations in volume one are credited to the Black artist and writer Cecil Brathwaite, who studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and was a founder member of the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios. As Elombe Brath he became a prominent Pan-African activist. 8 volumes, octavo. Vols. I-IV in original wrappers, the remainder in variously coloured cloth. Line drawings and other illustrations throughout. Wrappered issues a little rubbed, lower corner of vol. I chipped away, internally a few neat markings in red ballpoint and review clippings from other sources loosely inserted, the casebound issues in excellent condition. £1,250 [143053]
18
“For Ken, William Gottlieb, ‘78”. This is an imposing double-weight “exhibition” print of one of the finest portraits of Ellington. Bill Gottlieb’s “iconic photos of jazz legends such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong helped to define the image of jazz to music fans worldwide” ( Down Beat obituary). This image was published originally in Down Beat (vol. 13, no. 20, 23 September 1946), as part of a series entitled “Through the Looking Glass”. “Fifth in the series of staff lensman Bill Gottlieb’s intimate dressing room
shots of musical celebrities is Duke Ellington, with the mirror reflecting his always present piano, his conservative ties, his 20 suits, his 15 shirts, his suede shoes and his smiling self”. Oversize, double-weight silver gelatin “exhibition” print (483 × 387 mm), mounted on board at the studio, wet stamp verso. Very slight marginal scuffing, backboard skinned in patches from previous mounting, but overall very good. £2,500 [130899]
14
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
15
19 FITZGERALD, Ella. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. New York: Verve Records, 1956 First pressing, French release, inscribed on the inner fold, “Best wishes Ella Fitzgerald”. One of Fitzgerald’s most popular recordings; “a sentimental favourite of many, in the jazz audience and beyond, and it’s one of the records which typifies the first great era of the long-playing record” (Cook & Morton). A wonderful set to find signed. Recorded early in 1956 shortly after Fitzgerald signed for Norman Granz’s Verve label, this, the first release, “became the commercial rock on which Verve was built. It was so successful that Granz set Ella to work on all the great American songwriters, and her series of songbook albums are an unrivalled sequence of their kind … Fitzgerald herself was at a vocal peak, strong yet flexible, and her position as a lyrical interpreter was perfectly in tune with records dense with lyrical detail; each disc carefully programmes familiar with lesser-known material; the arrangers all work to their strengths, Bregman and May delivering hard-hitting big band sounds” (Cook & Morton). Two 12-inch vinyl discs (Verve-Barclay 80033 and 80034), original inner sleeves and gatefold album cover. Some splits to spine, general toning and light sign of handling, minor abrasions to discs otherwise very good. This set has the French Barclay labels (Barclay had a French market distribution deal with Verve); runouts have the matrix numbers as listed by Discogs. ¶ Cook & Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, 2010 ; four star core collection recording. £685 [148093]
20 GILLESPIE, Dizzy. Original poster for the 1981 Kool Jazz Festival-New York. New York: printed by B. & W. T. Co., 1981 Vibrantly eye-catching poster featuring artwork by LeRoy Nieman and picturing a dj-ed Diz blowing in characteristic “bullfrog chops” mode with signature up- tilted horn. Nieman is perhaps best known for providing the cover art for Frank Sinatra’s Duets albums. This was the final New York iteration of George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival, which had relocated to the Big Apple in 1972 under the banner of Newport Jazz Festival-New York. Although it was Miles Davis who stole the show after five years away from live performing, it was Gillespie’s iconic status as the instantly recognisable “face of jazz” that put him on the poster. Double-sided poster (650 × 457 mm) on medium paper stock, artwork by LeRoy Nieman. A little peripheral creasing, short closed tear at lower left yet remains in very good condition, unfaded and bright. £850 [149188] 21 GILLESPIE, Dizzy; Count Basie; Dexter Gordon, & others. Signed silk tie. Late 1940s multiply signed and immaculately syncopated neckwear Highly unusual jazz souvenir. The owner evidently wore this tie to a number of gigs and assembled an impressive selection of top-line names, around 30 in
all. From the personnel involved it would seem that the owner was based in France. Groups include all of Bill Coleman’s band from European tours of the early 50s, a similar bunch for Mezz Mezzrow, a heavy representation of Ellingtonians, a clutch of Basie- ites including the Count, and a number of Black musicians who chose to make their homes in France after the Second World War. Due to the difficulties of signing on the slick or textured silk surface, a few have blocked out their names rather than signing fluently, and a couple have resisted attempts to decipher. Starry single names include Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Roy Eldridge, Lil Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton; eminent Ellingtonians – Russell Procope, Don Byas, Kay Davis, Jimmy Hamilton, Alva McCain, Ray Nance, Butch Ballard, Nelson Williams, and Harry Carney – as well as Basie and bandmates Wendell Culley and Marshal Royal; Bill Coleman with Zutty Singleton, Buddy Banks, Randy Downes, and Dick Wells; Mezzrow accompanied by Buck Clayton, Red Richards, Claude Sedric, “Taps” Miller, and dancer Della Grayson from his 1953 tour of France. We have seen a good number of discographies and pictorial histories carried from gig to gig for signatures, but this is the first garment. An exotic and highly attractive piece of memorabilia. Pale blue silk tie with textured diagonal stripe. Somewhat worn, quite literally, and with a few small spots, some signatures a touch faded but in the main strong and legible, but overall very good. £3,500 [149258]
21
19
20
16
JAZZ
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
17
Page 1 Page 2-3 Page 4-5 Page 6-7 Page 8-9 Page 10-11 Page 12-13 Page 14-15 Page 16-17 Page 18-19 Page 20-21 Page 22-23 Page 24-25 Page 26-27 Page 28-29 Page 30-31 Page 32-33 Page 34-35 Page 36-37 Page 38-39 Page 40-41 Page 42-43 Page 44-45 Page 46-47 Page 48-49 Page 50-51 Page 52Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online