W. Eugene Smith
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W. EUGENE SMITH Denizens of the Jazz Loft (from left): unknown man in vest, Robert Northern, Pepper Adams, Phil Woods, Eddie Bert, Thelonious Monk, Hall Overton, Art Taylor 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, Zoot Sims, 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, Teddy Charles, 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 in the world 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.