A Great Day in Harlem
A Great Day in Harlem is a group portrait of 57 jazz musicians photographed outside a building on 126th Street in Harlem , New York City .
Art Kane (1925–1995), who worked as a freelance photographer for the Esquire , took the black and white picture in the summer of 1958. The occasion was a planned issue of the magazine on the golden age of jazz and Kane had previously spread among jazz musicians in New York that the recording would take place at 10 a.m. To his surprise, a relatively large number of well-known jazz musicians turned up at what was for them an unusually early hour.
The Esquire published the photo in its issue of January 1959. Jean Bach tells the story behind it in her documentary A Great Day in Harlem in 1994. The film was in 1995 for an Oscar in the category Best Documentary nomination.
Two of the musicians shown in the photo are still alive today (as of May 6, 2019): Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins .
(The original picture cannot be shown here for copyright reasons. It can, however, be viewed in the English article )
Pictured musicians
- Red Allen
- Buster Bailey
- Count Basie
- Emmett Berry
- Kind of Blakey
- Lawrence Brown
- Scoville Browne
- Buck Clayton
- Bill Crump
- Vic Dickenson
- Roy Eldridge
- Kind farmer
- Bud Freeman
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Tyree Glenn
- Benny Golson
- Sonny Greer
- Johnny Griffin
- Gigi Gryce
- Coleman Hawkins
- JC Heard
- JC Higginbotham
- Milt Hinton
- Chubby Jackson
- Hilton Jefferson
- Osie Johnson
- Hank Jones
- Jo Jones
- Jimmy Jones
- Taffeta jordan
- Max Kaminsky
- Gene Krupa
- Eddie Locke
- Marian McPartland
- Charles Mingus
- Miff Mole
- Thelonious Monk
- Gerry Mulligan
- Oscar Pettiford
- Rudy Powell
- Luckey Roberts
- Sonny Rollins
- Jimmy Rushing
- Pee Wee Russell
- Sahib Shihab
- Horace Silver
- Zutty Singleton
- Stuff Smith
- Rex Stewart
- Maxine Sullivan
- Joe Thomas
- Wilbur goods
- Dickie Wells
- George Wettling
- Ernie Wilkins
- Mary Lou Williams
- Lester Young
Trivia
The photo also became an important object in Steven Spielberg's Film Terminal (2004).
In the photo, twelve children from the neighborhood are also sitting next to Count Basie. Originally Willie The Lion Smith was also present, but he took too long to stand while preparing the photo. He sat down on the next doorstep and didn't get into the picture. Count Basie, on the other hand, who was also getting tired from standing, sat down with the children in front of the group and got into the picture.
Web links
- The photo on harlem.org
- A Great Day in Harlem in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Website with information about the documentary
- Report on the film In Good Time: The Piano Jazz of Marian McPartland
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 40 ° 48 ′ 24.5 " N , 73 ° 56 ′ 27.4" W.