San Francisco (1957)

Market Street, October 1957, photographer unknown

This 1957 photo is just one of many wonderful found images that will be on display today through Tuesday, January 6, 2015 at Glass Key Photo, 442 Haight Street, San Francisco. The owners are avid collectors of vintage slides and this exhibit just represents the tip of their proverbial iceberg. They were kind enough to engage me to partner in this year's selection of the images under my Vintage San Francisco guise. There is also a book available of all of the images (and more) available here via Blurb.

What sets this exhibit apart? Well San Francisco Found is about exactly that, found images shot by amateurs with varying degrees of interest and skill. At times one feels like they are a voyeur, sneaking glimpses of other people's lives. At other times, it is as if you have stumbled upon a long lost Lee Friedlander or Weegee photo. 

If you are in San Francisco this evening. Please join us for the opening. 

Reid Miles (1956)

Patterns in Jazz by Gil Melle, Blue Note 12" LP 1517, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

I know. I can hear it now. The last thing the internet needs is another blog post singing the praises of Reid Miles and his 12-year stint (1955 through 1967) as the principle LP artwork designer for Blue Note Records! Right? Well, of course one cannot laud Miles enough: his work for the New York jazz label was a masterful high-water mark of mid-century modernist design. But there was certainly more to  this well-known figure whose full story has remained remarkably illusive.

Mobley's Message by Hank Mobley, Prestige 12" LP 7061, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Born in Chicago on the 4th of July in 1927, Miles actually grew up on the West Coast of California. After the stock market crash of '29, his family moved out west as so many other families did during the Great Depression and ended up in Long Beach. A marital split left Miles in the care of his mother who supported he and his younger sister by working in a cannery in San Pedro. Most of his youth is undocumented, although it is known that Miles joined the U.S. Navy near the end of the Second World War, serving as a chauffeur. Upon his discharge he returned to Los Angeles and, according to Wayne Adams who would later assist Miles in the 1980s, chased after a girl and wound up enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute. Chouinard was then located in MacArthur Park and would merge with the LA Conservatory of Music to form CalArts in 1961. Other Chouinard alumni, whose names will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, include graphic designer S. Neil Fujita and pop artist Ed Ruscha. Rushca and Miles almost certainly never crossed paths that the school as the former did not enroll until the mid-1950s. However, it is very likely that Fujita and Miles met at Chouinard as both attended the school around the same time - a very interesting idea considering how Fujita would later find him on the East Coast designing LP covers for Columbia Records a few years after studying in LA.

Herbie Nichols Trio by Herbie Nichols, Blue Note 12" LP 1519, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

The person at Chouinard with whom Miles most definitely came into contact was the eventual head of the basic design program, Bill Moore. Moore is something of a West Coast design/art/animation legend who influenced generations of students over the course of nearly 40 years at Chouinard and CalArts. He is the thread the ties together such disparate names as Reid Miles, Ed Ruscha, Tim Burton, and Brad Bird - all of whom studied with Moore. Miles apparently had very little influences in his design life, but Moore was one of them and an early one at that.

Olio by Thad Jones, Prestige 12" LP 7084, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Leaving Chouinard before completing the courses required for graduation, Reid Miles made a bee line for New York City, scoring a job with designer John Hermansader. The timing was certainly right as Hermansader, through his friend and fellow designer Paul Bacon, began working with Blue Note Records in 1953 not too long after Miles arrived on the scene. Here is where the story gets a little hazy. While it is known that Miles worked on the Blue Note account, it is not known how much of the early (1953-1955) work was done by Hermansader, how much was done by Miles, and how much was a collaboration. May we indulge in some speculation? Based on the collective body of work Hermansader provided for Blue Note, he quite feasibly could have been another big influence on Miles.
Blue Note historians tend to downplay Hermansader's contributions, but his other surviving examples of visual art clearly indicate a notable talent. The raw materials are there in the work which Miles would develop into an art by the end of the decade, but the question remains just how much input Miles had into the Blue Note designs early on. Unfortunately, neither man is alive today to discuss and the period is poorly documented. At any rate, Miles - who would develop a history of transience - left Hermansader in 1955 for a job with Esquire magazine doing the layout and paste-up work. However, whatever his contributions were to Hermansader's Blue Note account, they were significant enough to catch the attention of the label's owners Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff who asked him to take a lead role in the design of 12-inch Long Playing records, the format that by mid-decade had emerged as the preferred format of most jazz releases industry-wide. Esquire was apparently well-aware of this arrangement and allowed Miles to moonlight - which usually meant working on 3 or so Blue Note LP covers on his Saturday off from the magazine, being paid $50 a job/cover. Later interviews would reveal Miles to be would could be termed a workaholic, in that to him his work was his life and the absence of former made the latter unbearable at times.

J.R. Monterose, Blue Note 12" LP 1536, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Contributing to an even more hazy story is the fact that a year after this transition and for a time space of nearly 2 years, Miles was also contributing 12" LP jacket designs to Blue Note's de facto, if not friendly rival Prestige Records. From 1956 until 1957, his name graced the jackets of nearly a dozen discs. Interestingly, this work is seldom cited by design aficionados, although there are some excellent covers that easily rival his contemporaneous work for Blue Note. There are definitely some similarities between the covers and one can see his style developing which each subsequent release. So here is one artist, simultaneously providing the visuals for some of the important modern jazz music recorded of its time (or any time for that matter). And, of course, Miles was famously not a fan of jazz, preferring classical. But this period is interesting, mainly as it is of such high quality and yet overlooked by most design fans.

Quadrama by the Gil Melle Quartet, Prestige 12" LP 7097, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

A third influence should be mentioned at this time. After Moore and possibly Hermansader, Miles other major influence of the time was known to be Saul Bass. Bass needs no significant introduction to readers of this weblog, but it is perhaps helpful to put him into historical perspective. At the time that Miles was accepting a job with Esquire and getting down to business in earnest with Blue Note and Prestige, Bass was gaining widespread notoriety first for his work on the posters and titles for Carmen Jones (1954) and even more so for The Man With The Golden Arm (1955). His greatest innovation was perhaps the liberation of type from the galley, finding new ways to communicate the written word that flew (sometimes, literally) in the face of convention. Of course, in the design world Bass is a true legend and this history books have been kind to the legacy he has left behind.

6 Pieces of Silver by the Horace Silver Quintet, Blue Note 12" LP 1539, 1956, cover design by Reid Miles

Reid Miles perhaps enjoyed his most lucrative years well after his run with Blue Note. Some time in the early-1960s he started focusing on photography. By mid-decade it was his main focus. Miles returned to Los Angeles in 1971 and within a few years established a style and clientele that made him quite successful by anyone's terms - although he retained a drive and passion for his work which lasted until his death in 1993. Miles occasionally returned to album covers during the second act of his career, but his style by then had changed so significantly that few people made the connection. Fortunately, his mid-'50s experiments are well documented and, hopefully, well preserved for the ages.

New York City (2014)

 All images, copyright 2014 by Nick Rossi

Portrait of a Spanish Poet (1959)

Portrait of a Spanish Poet by John Altoon, completed 1959

Los Angeles born artist John Altoon, spent nearly 5 years working on the painting he titled Portrait of a Spanish Poet. Often subtitled (Lorca), the piece is ostensibly a portrait of Spanish writer Federico García Lorca. It was completed in 1959 (the same year Altoon married B movie and television actress Fay Spain) and was included in Altoon's second solo show at the Ferus Gallery in 1961. By the time of that show Ferus had moved to its second location at 723 North La Cienega in West Los Angeles and had been under the direction of Irvin Blum for 3 years. Altoon's relationship with the gallery was firmly established by the late-'50s, being represented by Ferus. The painter had yet to fully transition to the more figurative approach he adopted in the 1960s, with the work being very much a product of his exposure to Abstract Expressionism due to his time spent in New York City as well as the Bay Area  School with exerted a strong influence on the LA art scene during the 1950s. 

John Altoon, Tony Lanreau, and Maggie Ryan, Venice, California, photo by William Claxton, 1959

The painting and Altoon made a cameo appearance on the dust jacket of the original 1959 edition of Laurence Lipton's The Holy Barbarians, the writer's survey of Beat Culture at the turn of the decade. Many (most?) had no idea that that giddy, shirtless beatnik in William Claxton's photo had painted the work of art hanging on the wall behind him, much less that he was the heart and soul of the burgeoning Ferus Gallery scene in West Los Angeles and Venice Beach. The connection was likely more due to Claxton, rather than Altoon laying any Beat Generation claims as the modern art circles on both Coasts tended to distance themselves from the Beat poets in spite of any lifestyle similarities.

Jazz Guitar: Jim Hall, Pacific Jazz 1227 12" LP, 1957, cover photo by William Claxton featuring John Altoon

Clax also played a role in Altoon's slightly earlier entree to mainstream exposure. As the staff photographer and cover art director for Dick Bock's Pacific Jazz Records, Claxton played a major role in the label's West Coast Artist Series that was begun some time in early 1956 as this excellent, highly recommended article outlines in detail. By the time it came to release guitarist Jim Hall's debut LP on the label, Bock and Claxton took a slightly different approach to the series by not only featuring the work or an emerging West Coast artist, but also by including a photo of the artist at work. The artist in question was John Altoon who was featured in the shot (albeit with his back to the camera). The device had already been used once the previously year for a Chico Hamilton Quintet release (also featuring Hall), but the Jim Hall/John Altoon/William Claxton image seems to capture the zeitgeist with slightly more authenticity. 

 Dick Bock, Jim Hall, John Altoon, and William Claxton, 1957

Altoon's career - and life - was short. He battled what some called true demons throughout his lifetime - but, in spite of his concerted efforts to manage his struggles, he died of a heart attack at the age of 44 in 1969. 

For more information about Altoon and the Ferus Gallery scene, I highly recommend Morgan Neville's 2008 documentary film The Cool School. 

If you live in or are going to be in the Los Angeles area before September 14, 2014, I strongly encourage you to visit the first major John Altoon retrospective, currently on exhibit at LACMA.

Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan (1959)

Released in France in October of 1959, Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan was director Jean-Pierre Melville's fifth feature film. A life-long Americanophile, the movie was one of only two that Melville shot in the United States. 

Cinema scholars and historians don't usually place Melville alongside the directors of what is now known as the French New Wave. Stylistically and thematically he was never entirely in sync with Godard, et. al. and he was several years older than many of the marquee names of that generation. That said, he was a mentor and inspiration to many of those film-makers. He also shared their love of American films, although he unashamedly loved big name productions rather than the more obscure favorites of the youngsters he inspired.

Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan treads some interesting ground between the "crime story" films that Melville would spend much of the remainder of his career pursuing and American film noir. The notion of film noir, of course, was something of a French construct in first place, it's moniker having been coined by French film critic Nino Frank in the mid-1940s. Melville's film comes at the end of the noir era and perhaps can be viewed as something of an homage to some of his inspirations that loosely fit stylistically into that genre.

There are also elements of what many consider French New Wave in the film: the film's pace and its moral ambiguity come immediately to mind. Interestingly enough, the location shots show this side of the film most explicitly, perhaps due to budget constraints and Melville's preferences when the camera was actually in his hand. New York is beautifully filmed and mostly done so at night, something very few American directors had done successfully up until that point. That said, the film sits very comfortably alongside - if not in between - Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and John Cassavetes Shadows (1957-1959). I mention the former for its shared DNA of probing the somewhat sordid layer that exists just beneath the surface of Gotham society. The latter has the same feel of guerrilla film-making at times, although Melville's work shows no signs of improvisation.

All 3 films also share a driving jazz soundtrack, which by 1959 had become a signifier of sorts and almost requisite if one wanted to make a gritty film about big city living. In the case of Melville's film the bulk of the "jazz score" was provided by pianist Martial Solal making his debut as a film composer. Solal went on to compose the score to Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking À bout de souffle (aka Breathless) the year after this film, something he is perhaps best known for in spite of a career spent on the bandstand with some of the top names in French and American jazz. Incidentally, thanks to all of the interiors being shot by Melville in Paris, Solal may be seen briefly in a cameo as the pianist in the Pike Slip Inn scene.

As Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan went unreleased Stateside in 1959, it has been relegated to rep houses and film festivals for years, taking on an almost mythic quality due to its content, subject matter, and place in Melville's own film-making history. It was a box office flop, which seemingly did have some influence on Melville's subsequent career direction. It is a welcome surprise to see it now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Cohen Media Group (no relation to the contemporary American fraternal film-makers). Fans of noir, new wave, or just the crime jazz zeitgeist of the late-1950s will no doubt appreciate it at least one time around, while dyed-in-the-wool Melville fans (such as yours truly) look forward to being view another one of his films repeatedly with a critical eye.

Walk, Don't Run! (1954)

In a Sentimental Mood, Johnny Smith, Roost LP 424, 1954, photo/design by Burt Goldblatt

A few days shy of his 91st birthday, master guitarist Johnny Smith died on June 12, 2013 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1922 and made his fame (if not his fortune) in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. In spite of well-publicized endorsements of namesake guitars made by both Gibson and Guild, he died something of an obscure figure as far as the general public is concerned. But he was a true musician's musician and remains an absolute legend among guitarists. Not surprisingly, nearly every online obituary gives prominence to Smith's biggest claim to popular fame: Walk, Don't Run! Written and recorded by Smith in 1954, the song was taken to number 2 in the pop charts in 1960 by The Ventures from Tacoma, Washington giving them their first hit and launching their long career. But as one might expect, there is a little more to the story.

The New Moon at The Imperial Theater, New York, advertising postcard, 1929

Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein wrote the music and words (respectively) to the 1929 operetta New Moon. Two of the songs written were later to become jazz standards: Lover, Come Back to Me and Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise. The former was immediately the more popular tune with 3 recordings charting in 1929 alone. The latter had to wait a full decade before seeing any success, thanks to Artie Shaw's 1938 revival of the song. On the jazz scene, the tune really got legs in the 1950s - for example the Modern Jazz Quartet featured it as a regular part of their repertoire as early as 1952. Arguably, Sonny Rollins recorded the definitive version of the song in 1957 at the Village Vanguard for Blue Note Records during the peak of the song's popularity among modern jazz musicians. But, as usual, I digress.

Johnny Smith Quintet featuring Stan Getz, Royal Roost 78 1152, 1952

Johnny Smith was well aware of the song in the early 1950s. By day he earning a living as a staff musician at NBC in New York City and by night he was often leading his own combos in jazz clubs such as Birdland. Smith was to later claim that he came to appreciate songs such as Softly... due to his day job, were he was often called upon to back light-opera and pop singers. A few items from these singers repertoire worked themselves into Johnny's own massive library of songs and due to an association with Teddy Reig's Roost Records that began in 1952 and lasted until 1960, thanks in no part to his initial hit record of Moonlight in Vermont featuring Stan Getz.

Johnny Smith, circa 1954, photo by William "PoPsie" Randolf

Smith had over half a dozen sessions for Roost under his belt by the time he entered the recording studio in late September 1954. The additional musicians on the session consisted of guitarist Perry Lopez, who had backed Smith before and whose other most well known sessions were conducted earlier in the month with Julius Watkins for Blue Note Records and the following March with Benny Goodman at Basin Street; bassist Arnold Fishkind, who was in between his long association with Lennie Tristano and his second act as a studio musician; and Don Lamond, most famous at that time for his drumming with Woody Herman's orchestra. All had recorded with Smith previously and Lopez in particular had a certainly level of musical empathy that only comes from playing together. One of the songs the bandleader brought to the session was a contrafact he had written over the chord changes of Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise. In jazz-speak, a contrafact is new melody line played over a standard set of chords, although these are often re-harmonized. This practice was particularly popular during the 1940s and 1950s as modern jazz was pushing the boundaries of tradition. A fringe benefit for record label owners is that they did not need to pay publishing royalties on the source material. Smith's line on Softly... was transposed up a whole step from the original and titled Opus by the composer. The title didn't stick as producer and label boss renamed it Walk, Don't Run! by the time it was released on Roost's 10-inch LP disc, In a Sentimental Mood, later that same year.

Walk, Don't Run!, Johnny Smith, 1954

Unlike Moonlight in Vermont, Walk, Don't Run! was neither a critical nor popular success for Johnny. But as mentioned, Smith was a musician's musician and his 1950s releases were ardently admired by guitarists everywhere. One avowed fan was the ultimate Tennessee guitar picker: Chet Atkins. Atkins own recording career for RCA Victor was well underway by the time he got his hands on Smith's '54 Roost release. And due to his A&R position with his record label, by the mid-1950s he was making regular business trips to New York City where he check out Johnny Smith if he was gigging. One such night Atkins approached Smith at the bar at Birdland and asked Johnny's permission to record one his tunes. The story goes that Chet insisted on playing his arrangement for Johnny on the spot and if there was ever a fly-on-the-wall moment of choice for guitar geeks, this certainly has to be a top contender.

Walk, Don't Run, Chet Atkins, 1957

The Chet Atkins recording of Walk, Don't Run (note the dropped exclamation point) was released in October 1957 on RCA Victor LP Hi-Fi in Focus. How this release fits within the context of Chet's full discography is not for this entry to tackle, but it is interesting to take note of the LP sleeve. Although very much a countrypolitan recording that the record buying public had come to expect from Atkins, RCA Victor obviously aimed this particular disc at the burgeoning HiFi market. The music (and recording artist for that matter) is given only a paragraph's worth of ink on back cover, while the remainder of the 12-inches is given to the details of the RCA Victor/Canon Camera album contest. The winning image by A.M Baunach of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is a great exercise in modernist photography, predating a the strikingly similar John Whitney/Saul Bass collaboration on the title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo by nearly 9 months. From where did Baunach draw his inspiration? I fear this is lost to the ages, for Baunach (later known as Barney and who had a long career as a corporate photographer for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation) passed away in 1991 and this will most likely remain a footnote.

Hi-Fi in Focus, Chet Atkins, RCA Victor LPM-1577, 1957, cover photo by A.M. Baunach

What is known, is that guitarist Bob Bogle was hip to the Atkins disc and the song entered the repertoire of the nascent Ventures, who began plying their instrumental trade throughout the Pacific Northwest in 1958. As guitarist, writer, and fellow guitar geek Deke Dickerson explained to the Washington Post's Matt Schudel in this interview, the success of Walk-Don't Run and The Ventures signaled a very significant shift in popular music prefiguring the California surf music, Pacific-Northwest frat rock, and British beat group phenomenas of the 1960s. But theirs is a story that has been much better tackled elsewhere than here on these pages.

Walk-Don't Run, The Ventures, Blue Horizon 45 101-1, 1959

By the time The Ventures were hitting the charts with his song, Johnny Smith had left New York for Colorado to raise his daughter after the death of his wife. He occasionally returned to the East Coast for recording sessions and live appearances, but increasingly he spent more time focused on his family, his music store, and mentoring a younger generation of guitarists. When the royalty checks started appearing for Walk, Don't Run! he was unaware of The Ventures and their success. But it turned out to be a fortunate turn of events that would help Johnny through some of the leaner times in his life. The few words on this page only begin to hint at how important Smith was to 20th Century American guitar playing. He has been called everything from the "greatest plectrum guitarist" to "America's own Django". His humility was almost as legendary as his technical facility on the fretboard. His strong, but articulate opinions on everything from guitar-making to amplifier electronics both challenged and inspired some of the greatest musical instrument companies in the United States. He will be missed, not only by those who were fortunate to know him during his lifetime, but by those like myself who have simply known him through his music. May he rest in peace.

Further reading: I highly recommend this excellent interview that fellow jazz guitarist Bart Stringham conducted with Smith on the topic. Many of the details of this saga were drawn from this particular interview. The more musicianly-minded (and you gearheads) are well advised to check out Chip Stern's  in-depth homage here.

Bill Hughes (1954)

Tal Farlow Quartet, Blue Note 5042, 1954, photo by Francis Wolff, design by Bill Hughes

In previous entries on this weblog, I have detailed the early contributions of both John Hermansader and Gil Mellé to the design canon of Blue Note Records. Both preceded the deservedly legendary Reid Miles and were featured prominently during the 10-inch long playing record era. Our subject today is another name from that same time period, one that crops up only on a very rare few discs and one whose story remains open-ended. The name Hughes first caught my eye as a credit on Tal Farlow's stylistically striking debut disc sleeve from 1954. Contrasting a Francis Wolff session photo of one of the most remarkable bop electric guitarist to emerge from that era, is a pair of geometric images not to far off from the Bass/Whitney opening sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (although that was to come a few more years down the road). 

Julius Watkins Sextet, Blue Note 5053, 1954

The The Farlow sleeve is the first of only 3 Blue Note LPs whose design credit is given to Hughes...Bill Hughes to be correct. All 3 are 10-inchers and share a certainly level of minimalism that provide a contrast to the other design ideas utilized by Alfred Lion during his label's adolescence. The discs in question were all released within the same calendar year, which of course begs more questions. Unfortunately in this case, there are not a lot of answers.

The Gil Mellé Quartet featuring Lou Mecca, Blue Note 5054, 1954

Another clue lies in the third disc design credited to Hughes. Thanks to the subsequent anothology of Mellé's Blue Note output, we have learned that Hughes was also (or perhaps primarily?) a photographer and that he was responsible for taking the photo that graces BN 5054's sleeve. Shot in the same year of 1954 at a Town Hall concert, it remains one of the few photos of Mellé much more so one of few photos of him performing live. 

Miles Davis, Vol. 3, Blue Note 5040, 1954

But I propose that perhaps Hughes contributions to the label did not end there. There are a few releases around this time that lack contemporaneous credits of any sort. The first example is third 10-inch volume by Miles Davis, cut and released near the beginning of his first "rebirth" of sorts. Only 2 releases earlier than the Farlow disc, it bears some notable similarities to the latter - particularly with the Wolff session photo contrasted to a geometric-based background. I suspect (and this is pure speculation, of course) that Hughes was responsible for the design in this case as well.

 Elmo Hope quintet with Frank Foster and Freeman Lee, Blue Note 5044, 1954

Another Hughes-design candidate comes a couple issues after the Farlow disc in the catalog. New York-born pianist Elmo Hope's second Blue Note LP features another stark, minimalistic design not too far off from Hughes second and third credited contributions to the label. It's a further stretch than the Davis disc, but should at least be a suspect in this case. Regardless, Blue Note Records was clearly a growing enterprise at this stage. Not only were they experimenting with their roster of musicians and where the music was recorded, but they were working from an impressive pool of graphic designers. All of this contributed to an exciting flash in time. While perhaps less stylistically unified as the "classic" late-'50 through mid-'60s time span that many (if not most) think of when they hear the phrase Blue Note, this time period showed a high degree of experimentation both aurally and visually.

Jumpin' at the Woodside, A Buck Clayton Jam Session, CL 701, 1955, photo by Bill Hughes

But the Hughes story ends there for the most part. Unfortunately, in this overly-informed age the Hughes story seems to have slipped through the cracks...for now, at least. His name does crop back up a year later on a sleeve photo credit for Columbia Records, but there is very little evidence elsewhere that gives much plot to the Bill Hughes graphic designer and  photographer story. It is my sincere hope that today's entry changes that and I look forward to reader contributions that pick up this thread.

Garry Winogrand (2013)

Garry Winogrand, New York, 1957, photo by Lee Friedlander 

El Morocco Club, New York, 1955

Los Angeles, 1964

New York, 1968

Those of you keeping score at home may have noticed that I have been on something of a New York kick recently. Well, a good visit to the Big City can do that to a guy! Obviously, someone has been paying attention for not too long after I returned home to San Francisco, the SFMOMA launched its Garry Winogrand photography exhibition. This is the first retrospective of its kind and is segmented into 3 sections: New York 1950-1971, Everywhere else during the same time period, and LA from 1971 until Winogrand's death in 1984. I was fortunate enough to get a preview last week and was knocked out. Frankly, I knew next to nothing about Winogrand walking into the museum that night but was captivated by his work. The photographer is widely being touted for showing both the promise of and disillusionment with the American Dream of post-war Middle Class Society. Who am I to argue? There is a gritty reality to many of his photos that rivals that of his friend and contemporary Lee Friedlander. New York is a city that always looks great in monochrome regardless of the era. It has a depth and texture that is well-served by the lack of color. Winogrand shot almost exclusively in black and white and with a solid third of this exhibit dedicated to New York and its environs over the span of twenty years...well, I think you get my drift. I highly recommend this exhibit if you are going to be in or around San Francisco now through June 2, 2013.

For more information on Winogrand the photographer, Eric Kim's post from last year is positively epic.

For more information on the SFMOMA exhibit, click here.

The Andover Shop (2013)

During my very first visit to Boston, Massachusetts last week, I finally had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the legendary Andover Shop across the river in Cambridge. What's the fuss, you ask? Well, The Andover Shop is the spot that directly links post-war modern jazz with Ivy League style. It has here that Roy Haynes had his suits custom made: the "slickest sh*t out"in his own words. It was here that a cleaned-up Miles Davis chose the threads that were to be part of his mid-1950s "comeback" image. And it was here that proprietor and acknowledged jazz-fan Charlie Davidson forged life-long friendships with customers such as Chet Baker.

The building itself is a simple unassuming modernist building located on a quaint (yes, I said quaint) New England side-street: 22 Holyoke to be specific. I have to admit, that I was taken a little a back upon arrival...and pleasantly surprised. I expected something along the lines of what Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue is trying to be: more old club, old world. It is clear here that form followed function. The Cambridge shop is Charlie's second location, he opened the first on Main Street in Andover, Mass. back in 1949 after he left the employ of J. Press. But it was this place, the Cambridge address, which became the place.

I was greeted at the shop by Zach DeLuca who runs the excellent Newton Street Vintage shop on Etsy as well as The Suit Room weblog/Tumblr. Both are highly recommended if you are not familiar with them. I introduced myself formally (we had only met via the 'net) and set about exploring the store with Zach as my guide. I will admit to being slightly overwhelmed as I really wanted to soak it in. It is a dispensary in the best sense of the word: quite organized and well-stocked. The staff, who totaled four on this particular Monday morning, moved through the narrow aisles with knowing ease. 

Gerry Mulligan at The Andover Shop, photo by William Claxton (obscured), 1956

Meeting Charlie was exactly what I had hoped it would be. After some small talk about Roy Haynes and the Newport Jazz Festival, Charlie inquired if I was a musician. When I replied yes and that I played guitar, he responded with the jab, "That's not a real musician!" I expected nothing less. Ice broken, he proceeded to tell me some of his favorite six-stringers and I was very pleased to hear that Barney Kessel was near the top of his list - particularly since the neighboring Berklee School of Music seems to have it out for ol' Barney. Apart from some enjoyable jazz talk, I did pick up some basic, but essential clothier wisdom that the customer should be happy with the garment in the shop. It matters not what the clothier thinks, nor what the tailor may be able to do. This echoed a similar piece of advice that I picked up from Alden years ago (your shoes should feel good when you walk out of the shop...a "break-in" period is something of a myth). As I was paying for my American-made Hickey Freeman Hertling high-rise grey flannel trousers and saying my goodbyes, Charlie held out his hand and said, "I'm really glad you came into the shop today." Thank you Charlie. I am really glad that came into the shop too!

New York City (2013)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright (1959)

821 Sixth Avenue

Fifth Avenue Building Street Clock

Rudy's Barbershop, 29th Street at Broadway

The Empire State Building

White Forms by Franz Kline, 1955, MOMA

Oyster Bar, Seventh Avenue and 54th Street