In this nostalgic book, writer-photogrpaher William Gottleib presents a fond look back at the "Golden Age of Jazz," the years from the late 1930s through the 1940s when, despite the Great Depression and World War II, enormous strides were made in musical achievement.
During the first half of the era, big band jazz, mostly known as swing, reached its peak. During the second half, bop and other modern jazz forms developed. And throughout, pioneeers of jazz — already legenday in their own time — continued to play the odler styles.
A a writer for the Washington Post, DownBeat and other periodicals, Gottleib interviewed almost all the outstanding instrumentalists and singers of the time. He learned from The Post photographers (who didn't want to cover his late-night music stories on their own time) how to take his own pictures. Obviously an able student, Gottleib created masterful images with a distinctive storytelling touch, capturing a very human side of these larger-than-life musical personalitites.
Over two hundred of his memorable photographs are included here. All the greats — Leadbelly and Willie "The Lion" Smith, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and COunt Basie, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, among others — many talented but lesser known musicians are pictured onstage and off, accompanied by a generous sprinkling of Gottleib's pithy personal recollections of the people he was photographing.
The result is a remarkable book — a superb retrospective in images and words of the people, the places and the accomplishments that contributed to the "Golden Age of Jazz."
