Product Details
Paperback
272 pages
Distributed Art Publishers
Published 2001
Amazon.com
Of all the great modern photographers, MacArthur "genius grant" winner Lee Friedlander is probably the hippest to music. Inspired by a Charlie Parker record at 16, he left Aberdeen, Washington, and launched his career alongside ambitious friends like Diane Arbus. Arbus had a cold eye, but as this book of photos he took for Atlantic Records from the 1950s to the '70s proves, Friedlander's eye was warmly empathetic, at one with his subjects' emotions. (He has compared himself to the guy in the Joe Turner song who's "like a one-eyed cat peekin' at a seafood store.")
A first-rate visual extravaganza, American Musicians captures the country's virtuosos in some of their most candid moments: Aretha Franklin getting respect in 1968, Mahalia Jackson wailing on her knees, Ella in her heyday, on the road with Count Basie, Miles Davis actually looking the viewer right in the eye the year of Bitches Brew. Friedlander was a great discoverer--he found the discarded 1917 photos of New Orleans' Bellocq (immortalized in the film Pretty Baby), and one of his own early nude models was the unknown Madonna Ciccone. He helps people bare their souls to the camera, and the souls in this book are of historic importance. American Musicians also includes Friedlander's interviews with Ruth Brown and Steve Lacy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The New York Times Book Review, Andy Grundberg
The design, by Katy Homans, puts as many as 10 pictures on the page and forgoes the conventional and pretentious coffee-table look in favor of a practical, lap-size square format. The result conveys a new and exciting understanding of Friedlander, one of our most important contemporary photographers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
In the 1950s Lee Friedlander arrived in New York and began work as a house photographer for Atlantic Records. Over the next two decades, he would create some of their most famous album covers, and his picture style -- including portraits of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ruth Brown, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and countless others -- became forever associated with that golden era of American music. This book is Friedlander's tribute to the great musicians of the post-war years. It includes work from his trips through the Deep South, where he met Delta Blues musicians like Mississippi Fred McDowell, New Orleans marching bands and Nashville performers such as Johnny Cash, the Carter Sisters and Flatt & Scruggs. There are photographs of unknown bluegrass guitarists in Appalachia, photographs from tours with Count Bassie's Orchestra, and images of Jazz geniuses like Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and Yusef Lateef. Interviews by Friedlander with R&B legend Ruth Brown and modern jazz pioneer Steve Lacy are included along with an introduction by music impresario Joel Dorn.
"A more delicious gift for fans of postwar American music--that's all of us, isn't it?--would be hard to imagine." Richard B. Woodward, --"Salon Magazine"
"Friedlander's lush, luminous photographs of gospel, bluegrass, country, R&B and jazz musicians give the strong impression that American musicians have pretty much cornered the market on soul." --"Time Out, New York"
"...a stirring, soulful album of musical greats." --"Entertainment Weekly"
"This informal but vast survey--514 images!--may be the best look yet at a half century of American Music." --Malcolm Jones Jr., "Newsweek"
"I can't imagine fans of jazz or blues being more pleased with any book this year than Lee Friedlander's wonderful American Musicians..." --Charles Taylor, "Newsday"
243 color and 276 duotones.
9.25 x 10 in. |
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