{"id":3583,"date":"2012-04-28T00:15:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T07:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=3583"},"modified":"2012-04-29T00:11:08","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T07:11:08","slug":"preserving-ted-williams-photographs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2012\/04\/preserving-ted-williams-photographs\/","title":{"rendered":"Preserving Ted Williams’ Photographs"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you follow jazz even tangentially, you have seen photographs by Ted Williams. Most of us have also seen his shots of major figures in news events of the second half of the twentieth century. This picture of Martin Luther King is one of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Williams died in 2009 at the age of 84, he left tens of thousands of his prints and negatives in shoeboxes and notebooks. Most of them have never been published. They are not cataloged. The father and son team of Lou and Max Modica are spearheading an effort to preserve, organize and display Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work. This paragraph is from the website they have created as part of the fundraising needed to see that the photographs survive and become available to the public.<\/p>\n

Williams (pictured) was one of the first African-American photographers to attend Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Institute of Design, where he heard \"\"<\/a>lectures on photography by such luminaries as Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. He began taking pictures of musicians in the late 1940\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and his body of work consists of more than 90,000 images. His first major magazine article was a 21-page spread for Downbeat<\/em> magazine when he covered the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. He went on to regularly contribute images for many music and national publications and took part in the exhibit \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Images of Music: Classical through Rock\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Soho Triad Fine Arts Gallery.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his early days, Williams photographed many of the musicians who lived in Chicago or appeared there. Lou Modica has provided Rifftides<\/em> with a photograph of one of the visiting artists and Ted Williams’ account of what happened the night he took it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

CHARLIE \u00e2\u20ac\u0153YARDBIRD\u00e2\u20ac\u009d PARKER\u00e2\u20ac\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0192Chicago 1953<\/p>\n

The town buzzed for weeks in anticipation of Bird\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scheduled six days at The Bee Hive. The Hive was essentially a bar \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a narrow room with a bar running the length of one wall. Bird was to be working with a local rhythm section plus, this time, another local musician that doubled on trumpet and tenor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I imagine to cover any absence on Bird\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part. I am not usually a First Nighter. But in Parker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case I make an exception, the first night might be his only night!<\/p>\n

Even with an added cover and minimum, the place was packed\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6leaning room only. Set time comes \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no surprise \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no Bird. Ira Sullivan<\/a> played valiantly but the patrons paid for The Yardbird and they could hear Ira anytime \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no cover, no minimum! <\/p>\n

Rumors that Bird is in the house relieve some of the tension. Next set \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Bird is on the stand, horn in hand. Within minutes he is nodding out, leaning against the piano! Poor Ira is going nuts \u00e2\u20ac\u201d soloing on the trumpet \u00e2\u20ac\u201d soloing on the tenor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the grumbling gets louder \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the club owner is on the phone to the musicians union \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Bird sleeps.<\/p>\n

Had it been anyone but Charlie Parker, the place would have been vacant \u00e2\u20ac\u201d customers clutching their refunds in hand and long gone. But nobody wanted money back \u00e2\u20ac\u201d we came to hear Bird and if he played one note we would be there to hear it! <\/p>\n

Between sets he begins to show signs of life \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the bartender made him something tall and milky and Charlie was sucking it up through two long red straws. On the stand he calls loudly to the piano man \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The blues in A!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What followed was the most unexpected but absolutely brilliant exhibition of blowing that I have heard from anyone! The whole set was his!! As Duke might have said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbeyond category.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

When he finished the set, Bird called out to the union rep \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you still want my card, m___f___?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

(“\u00a9Ted Williams, used with permission)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The campaign headed by the Modicas includes an opportunity for donors to acquire copies of Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 photographs in return for contributions. If you are interested in the preservation of a valuable trove of pictorial history, visit this website<\/a> and see if you think the effort is worthwhile. The site has more of the photos, a video that includes Williams discussing his work and information about the fundraising organizers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you follow jazz even tangentially, you have seen photographs by Ted Williams. Most of us have also seen his shots of major figures in news events of the second half of the twentieth century. This picture of Martin Luther King is one of them. When Williams died in 2009 at the age of 84, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}