William P. Gottlieb -- and All That Jazz!

 

Recipient of the Jazz Photographer of the Year Award at the acclaimed Bell Atlantic New York Jazz Festival of 1999, Winner of the 1997 Down Beat Lifetime Achievement Award, the first ever bestowed upon a photographer, Bill Gottlieb's powerful and riveting work has now been acknowledged as history.

In 1998, The Library of Congress purchased 1600 of Bill's jazz photographs "for posterity" and has honored him with a formidable website devoted exclusively to his work. The American panorama of jazz in the golden age, the late thirties and 1940's -- the era of swing, bop and the birth of the modern --now belongs to the generations.

It must be noted, for the record, that Bill's passionate immersion in the world of jazz ceased in 1948 when he quit the beat cold turkey and his chronicle of jazz ended! He went on to other fine endeavors but his love of jazz was unending.

He had fallen in love with jazz as a student at Lehigh University when he was stricken with an illness one long hot summer. It was a fortuitous piano player friend who effected the cure with the magic of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. The "jazz nut" was born.

Upon graduation, Bill signed on with the Washington Post in advertising but wrote a weekly jazz column. Determined to have photographs accompany his stories, Bill bought himself a Speed Graphic camera and began to take his own pictures. He also initiated a weekly jazz program on a local NBC station interviewing jazz luminaries and simultaneously ran a three times a week disc jockey show on another outlet.

By age 22 he had become Washington's Mr. Jazz!

Bill Gottlieb's work will be featured in the upcoming documentary film "Jazz", Ken Burn's powerful 12-part, 19 hour exploration of this nation's most indigenous art form. The program will debut on PBS in January.

His magnificent book, "The Golden Age of Jazz", published in 1979 by Simon & Schuster and now reprinted by Pomegranate Artbooks, is in its 12th printing. The book received the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Book Award.

The greats of jazz -- he has seen them all, photographed them all -- the legendary figures, the self-destructive geniuses with the wild riffs and the pain, the poignant and ecstatic cry of the music.

A toast to the great Bill Gottlieb -- and all that jazz!

 

Eve Berliner, Editor

 

Table of Contents

ORDERS: PHOTOGRAPHS/BOOK