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Home , Eddie Bert, Pepper Adams, Town Hall Concert

W. EUGENE SMITH

Denizens of the Loft (from left): unknown man in vest, Robert Northern, Pepper Adams, , Eddie Bert, , Hall Overton,

66 october 2009 by Gene Santoro

A half century ago, a photographer set down stakes in a rundown loft building on Sixth Avenue, recording Thelonious Monk, , Dick Katz and the greats of the Beat era in conversations and jam sessions. Now an intrepid team of Duke University archivists is sifting through nearly 1,000 hours of W. Eugene Smith’s tapes—and providing a glimpse of a lost world. W. EUGENE SMITH and theJAZZ

LOFT67 W. Eugene Smith: a self-portrait leaked noise and grit and hot or cold air. The flip side: no one in any authority cared much what happened in them. Thus blossomed a community of outsiders, some of whom reshaped American culture as they filtered into the neighborhood. Among them: now-famed jazz musicians like Zoot Sims, Dick Katz, , Don Cherry, Chick Corea, even Thelonious Monk. Their loft jam sessions were a staple of that era’s informal, frequently mean- alking along dering, yet often rigorous training. In Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue in the West Monk’s case, a few lofts on West 28th 20s in recent years, you’re increasingly Street and Sixth Avenue shaped his pivotal Wdwarfed by glass-sheathed luxury high- 1959 Town Hall concert. rises that sport stylish shops at street level. That outlines the history excavated by But tucked among them, like decaying the Jazz Loft Project, a decade-long effort teeth, are prewar walkup buildings and to sift through one of the most compre- a block of surviving wholesalers, whose hensive yet fragmentary records of the trade gave this pocket of the city its name: era—some 3,000 hours of audio tape and the Flower District. 40,000 photos. This mass was compiled— 821 Sixth Avenue, circa 1957 For decades—from the postwar era until in a manner of speaking—by renowned the boom that recently went bust rolled ex-Life photographer W. Eugene Smith, over it like an upscaling tsunami—this who lived in one of these Flower District Stephenson, “One myth is that there were all neighborhood housed bohemian artists of lofts from 1957 to 1965. Steered by Sam these great musicians nobody’s ever heard all sorts. The old industrial lofts they perched Stephenson, culled by researcher Dan of. But once you research them, there’s in, abandoned as industries slipped out of Partridge, packaged for a fall radio series usually a reason they weren’t well known. New York for less costly, non-union climes, by WNYC’s Sara Fishko, and including a Drug addiction, some self-esteem problem, were big spaces with cheap rents. Back then, touring exhibition and Stephenson’s stage fright—the whole gamut. Or, like lofts weren’t exactly high-end dwellings. accompanying book, the Project—an un- [classical pianist-composer] Hall Overton, Most were pretty raw. Unless the residents paralleled look behind the curtain at this they just didn’t seem to care about self- fixed them up, they often didn’t have small but fabled scene—strips away en- promotion. Some of the music is just electricity, heat, or hot water. The floors crusted myth, rumor, and speculation. plain bad. Some is mediocre. There were a were scarred with holes where machinery Some jazz mavens, however, may be lot of drug-induced jams and bad musicians once was fastened, and huge old windows disappointed. Says self-described jazz fanatic who couldn’t get gigs.” But Stephenson is researching history, not heroes: “We almost don’t care whether it’s good or not. In some ways, the bad stuff The view from Smith’s window is almost more interesting. History isn’t just spectacular moments; like James Baldwin wrote, it’s millions of anonymous moments, too. That’s what we’re interested in: the human story, the texture of these lives.” That’s precisely what Smith was inter- ested in when he moved into a rundown building at 821 Sixth Avenue, and into the middle of an underground scene about to erupt aboveground. For cool cats like Jack Kerouac, who in three 1951 weeks wrote On The Road on teletype paper in another Flower District loft, this section of New York was a place

69 where below-the-radar creative types with American Marines across the Pacific. Pittsburgh. He said it would take him wrestled with how they related to each His heart-stopping shots rivaled Robert three weeks. Three years and tens of thou- other, their art, society. Their rejection of Capa’s for intensity and insight. Then, sands of shots later, it was still unfinished, McCarthy-era norms and their sense of along with 50,000 Marines and army and he was jobless again. isolation led them to hold an ironic mirror troops on Okinawa, Smith was wound- Stephenson suggests, “The contradictions up to the culture. They flaunted their ed—in his case severely, by mortar fire. he saw were reflected in him- sexuality, including “deviant” homosexu- His recovery took two years, and left him, self. He was so popular at Life, and the ality. They used drugs both to escape and like many veterans, with lifelong pain and affirmation he got for those Life essays was flip the “straight” world the bird. And drug dependencies. “The war,” Stephenson important to him, but he was riddled by they proclaimed themselves artists to each opines, “had a pivotal effect on his life.” the tensions between popular appeal and other and nurtured outsider dreams. From 1947, when he returned to work the deeper, darker corners of his work— In 1957, these little nodules edged into (although his health was never again better which wouldn’t have been so popular, which America’s awareness. Kerouac’s Beat-jazz than fragile) until 1954, Smith’s remark- might have resembled something an Old novel, finally published, drew acclaim and able, affecting photo essays for Life helped Testament prophet might tell. He never hisses. Detractors said it was a freakish, create that genre and justly anchor his fame reconciled that. And that’s why he had so shapeless mess, regurgitated by a drug- as one of the period’s premier camera- much trouble with self-destructive patterns addled mind. In some ways, it was. But men. But the more Life squeezed him— in his life.” the energy it rode was palpable, engag- and his work—into its narrow range, the After Pittsburgh came a brief move back ing—even, if you were young and curious, higher his social awareness and rebellious- to Croton, New York, the lovely suburb irresistible. It self-consciously but exuber- ness ratcheted. During the 1950 British where he’d planted his wife and children. antly mimicked the wild rush of jazz general election, for example, he shot tell- Soon he abandoned them for what improvisation, which Kerouac embraced ing portraits of working-class Brits, such Stephenson calls the “dive” or “rat hole” in as both a fan at clubs and lofts and as an as Welsh miners, in the style of WPA the Flower District. artist, transposing it into prose and dub- Depression documentary photographers Jam sessions and artists’ gatherings had bing it bop prosody. The Beat Era, inter- Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, but been going on in these lofts for years, ever twined with jazz, Abstract Expressionism, with his own emphasis on chiaroscuro. since David Cary had moved onto the photography and film, was on. Life, whose right-wing owner, Henry Luce, third floor and Overton onto the fourth. Soon fame—aka the media—found disliked the winning Labor Party, used But Smith upped the scene’s ante. He Kerouac and his peers. CBS News reporter few of them. recast his own fourth-floor loft—and as Mike Wallace questioned him admiringly. That dynamic ultimately cost Smith his time went by, most of the building—as a Steve Allen traded fours with him on TV. job. His portrait of his two children walk- multilevel experimental arts space. Like a San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb ing hand in hand became the iconic closing KGB spy or crazed encyclopedist, he Caen sneeringly dubbed his sort “beatniks.” image for Edward Steichen’s breakthrough, taped anything and everything. The Life ran a snide photo-essay, “The Bored, wildly popular 1955 Family of Man exhi- Pittsburgh project motivated him to make The Bearded, and The Beat.” bition at the Museum of Modern Art. his life and experiences the basis for his As it happens, 1957 was when Smith Life, among countless other media outlets, work—the Beat aesthetic. His new home was himself joined New York’s outsider scene. heralded the show. But in 1954, after where he gathered material. His goal: an It might have seemed like an odd choice going to Africa to photograph Albert epic multimedia portrait of this cultural for a 40-year-old, but in some ways it Schweitzer, he flew into a rage about how niche. If, as with his Pittsburgh project, he epitomized the movement’s rejection of the magazine abused his photos: They were seems a bit like a blind man trying to the mainstream. Born in Wichita, Kansas, his work, so he would create the prints, describe an elephant, he also grasped Smith began as an ur-middle American. write captions, oversee layouts, and so on. pieces of real time, unmediated. He worked for local papers right after This ran counter to the corporate style of Sara Fishko explains, “He’s not only high school, but New York called. His Luce’s magazine empire. When Smith, taping jam sessions with Monk and Sims first job at Newsweek forecast how others inevitably, was rebuffed, he quit. and Overton; he’s got the whole building would end: a perfectionist with an uncom- Increasingly restless, upping his amphet- wired, from the ground floor to the fifth promising ego, he was fired for refusing to amine doses for the long, workaholic floor. You can hear people opening the use medium-format cameras. In 1939, he stretches he craved, never fully recovered door, walking up the steps, talking in one joined Life. Though this initial stint barely from his wounds, Smith settled briefly at room, playing in another, party scenes. lasted a year, World War II brought him the prestigious Magnum photo agency. He’s recording his own television and back to photojournalism and cemented his There he launched his first impossible-to- radio, way before this was common. There growing reputation, as he island-hopped complete epic art work: documenting are extraordinary panel discussions between

70 october 2009 Zoot Sims Hall Overton in a pensive moment. Smith’s tape recorder is in the foreground. Drugs. Careers, even—Roland Kirk talk- “ his is a moment where things ing about wanting to own his own club someday. Jazz players trying to create their are changing. It was rebellious. own destinies. It re-imagines the scene. It had a gritty underside. But This is a community at work. Many are stellar players, many were never heard of they were striving for something again, and many are in between. Take drummer Ron Freed, who spent two years new. We want to recapture playing in the loft and sleeping on Gene Smith’s reclining chair: his life went very what we can of their world.” badly wrong, he left the loft and New York, and until these tapes surfaced he Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, free more with Smith than the fourth floor: wasn’t sure exactly what had happened.” Tconcerts at the New School garden with both had served in World War II. Overton Drugs coursed through the loft, as they Monk and others, dopey TV commercials, was a stretcher bearer, notably at Normandy. did throughout the scene. “But,” Fishko late-night radio with Long John Nebel, Stephenson notes, “Carrying stretchers and reminds us, “their use varied widely. There UFOs. It’s really a time capsule documenting taking pictures are two unparalleled ways were family men who left at eleven p.m. the loft in every conceivable way, while to see the brutality of war most vividly.” and went home. There were guys who he’s doing commercial assignments and Between these conflicted, alienated, talented never left and did what they did. There traveling and everything else. men developed a rich complicity. Overton were tragedies and successes. This genera- “But the loft was a kind of bunker for helped train jazz musicians to balance his tion was decimated by drugs. So this isn’t him, too. He was obsessive but very fragile. uptown life, egging them on to discover just about jam sessions. It’s a look inside a He was holed up in this place, making a their voices. Smith taped and shot while community.” life to which others came—a host’s life. they wrestled with the music and their At its center: Overton, an underrated He could be with people and not—which is demons in improvisational flights. character who wrote an opera about Huck partly what the photography and recording As Fishko explains, “Listening to the Finn, tutored Carman Moore and Steve was for him. People describe him as gregari- tapes undercuts the common notion that Reich, as well as Katz, Sims, Charles, and ous but somehow in the background. One jazz sorta just happens. Here we have hundreds of obscure musicians who, person calls him the stealth photographer. thousands of hours of people working Stephenson says, “were influenced by him People would be talking and playing and really hard to figure out how to make it so deeply it still brings them to tears, even suddenly hear a drill bit: Smith was setting happen, figuring each other out—like if they’re playing gigs in Sausalito.” He up another mike in the floor.” The building Zoot Sims and , who later played worked with them, played with them, still has holes where his mikes were. together all the time. A high-energy jam listened to them—took them seriously at For twenty years after Smith’s 1978 session with Dave McKenna and Sims says a time when few other classical musicians death, the tapes and photos he amassed something about what you can do in a loft did more than patronize or ignore them. rested untouched in his archives at the that you couldn’t do anywhere else. They (“They called us ‘dance musicians,’” University of Arizona. Since they were could play undisturbed: it was late at night, Charles recalls wryly.) Overton made a off-limits until duplicated for preservation, an industrial neighborhood, and so it was huge impact: explaining the harmonies in what was on them was largely a matter of sublimely uninterrupted. It was not a Bartók to players like Katz and Charles conjecture. How much “lost” history did rehearsal, not for an audience. It was not with not a hint of condescension, know- they hold? Were there ear-dazzling jams directed at any other outcome; it was its ing from listening to them that they by undersung geniuses? How far did Monk own outcome. This was how music was already had those harmonies under their and Hall Overton actually collaborate on made and thought about in that period. fingers. He explicated a larger theoretical the eccentric jazzman’s 1959 Town Hall It should be a revelation to a generation framework for what they already learned concert? Did producer Jules Colomby, where everything is for consumption. from on-the-bandstand jazz training. brother of Monk’s manager Harry Colomby, This only turned into that because Gene Thanks to Overton, jazz and classical a one-time New School student of Smith had his mikes on.” music met in ways less forced than in the Overton’s, and a jazz trumpeter, give his Smith was interested in more than just Third Stream movement. And one of classically trained teacher Monk’s music music: “What these people had to say to those manifestations is Thelonious Monk to arrange for tentet—the first time each other, which, when you can hear it, at Town Hall, because over a period of Monk’s tunes were so cast? can tell you a lot about how people were years in these lofts, Monk and Overton Overton, a Juilliard professor, shared thinking then. Psychoanalysis was big. grew to know each other before they 73 ing of minds. They cracked each other up, a lost movie, the tapes yielded meanings inspired each other, brainstormed.” to Stephenson’s assistant, Dan Partridge. So easy was their relationship that in “His primary job is to put on headphones 1960, Smith taped Overton interviewing and listen to as much as he can possibly the prickly Monk at the New School. So stand. Dan has listened to about three deep was it that in fall 1972 Monk, begin- thousand CDs and I’ve listened to half of ning his final New Jersey seclusion, went those, but we still have about 2,000 we to Bradley’s, a club reminiscent of the old haven’t heard. Where we are now is a lot scene, to hear his old friend play jazz. of reels completely un-labeled. We have Overton died just weeks later. interns listening first just to find out what These are kernels of what the Jazz Loft it is. Street noise? Music? Cats meowing? Project has, over a dozen years, extracted They ID what’s on the reel, then Dan, from Smith’s massive, disordered legacy. who now can recognize hundreds of voices, This last part of the story starts with listens, then I listen, if Dan passes it. Stephenson, a former grad student in eco- Listening to music is the easiest thing, of nomics and religious studies, getting course. What’s harder, but also so rich, are hooked on Smith’s Pittsburgh project. the conversations, with references to restau- He says, “Smith was trying to create a rants and bars and clubs, New York lore.” masterwork that revealed the paradoxes And that, not just the music, is the of human life and progress using Project’s point: “Partly it’s about the Pittsburgh. My wife is from there, and power of documentary work. If something Hall Overton when I first went, all the giant mills were goes unrecorded, it didn’t happen. Sure, abandoned, but still there. The churches, there are all these big names. But this is a the natural resources, the vistas—all this chance to tell a bigger story about the 597 worked together. The new data undoes seemed to speak of the human condition people we’ve documented being in the some decades-old speculation. very dramatically. When I saw Smith’s loft. We’re trying to figure out who all of Stephenson declares, “It’s a lot bigger photographs, he was so dialed into those them are. We’ve reached most of them. than ‘Jules Colomby got Overton to do key elements: the contradictions of prog- There were teenagers finding their way to those charts and Overton took Monk’s ress and human desire. That’s what he this loft, which was a door that opened music off and did that.’ Much more com- heard in music too, especially late into a new world. This is a moment when plicated and deeper.” David Cary’s diary Beethoven, where there’s beauty in disso- things are changing. It was rebellious. It notes Monk hanging out at Overton’s loft nance, and his jazz favorites like Monk had a gritty underside. The drugs. The in 1955, implying he was a regular four and Lennie Tristano.” escapism. Women weren’t treated well. years before anyone knew he’d been there. Thus began his quest: “There were just But they were striving for something new, Then there are the tapes: “You hear Monk piles of disorganized materials, no IDs. In even if it’s a very mixed bag. We want to telling Overton, I want the trombone 1998, I picked thru all 1,740 reels and recapture what we can of their world.” coming through here, things like that. numbered them, and noted 29 names of You hear Overton ask him, What sort of jazz musicians I recognized on the labels. instrumental color do you want on the From 1998 to 2002, I couldn’t hear any Gene Santoro, Chamber Music’s jazz columnist, bridge? There’s a real dynamic, and it’s of the material; policy was the tapes had to is the author of several books on American profound. You can hear how they com- be properly preserved [on CD] first. The music, including Myself When I Am Real, municate, talking and playing and work- rep of those tapes was bad. People viewed a biography of (Oxford ing out the music. There’s a deep trust Smith as having gone over the edge when University Press, 2001), and Highway 61 and friendship, lots of jokes and laughter, he moved into the loft. We didn’t know Revisited (Oxford, 2004), which examines but also a relentless dedication.” what they would sound like, but the the complex roots of American music. Fishko agrees: “Overton was dedicated names alone made it really tantalizing.” to the idea of honoring Monk’s style and Both the National Endowment for the sensibility. It’s fascinating to hear: the Humanities and the National Archives patience with which he extracts this stuff agreed, and gave Stephenson grants to from Monk, who was not the most bril- transfer 300 reels, each containing up to liant communicator always, but here does three hours of stuff. communicate brilliantly. It’s a real meet- Painfully slowly, like a series of stills from

74 october 2009