Hank O'Neal, Esther Bubley and the Lost Negatives

On June 17, 1952, Clef/Norgran Records owner and producer Norman Granz was in the control room of Radio Recorders at 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard. He had assembled the very best musicians in jazz at the time for one of his jam sessions—a record date that would include songs that ran up to 17 minutes each, uninterrupted. [Photo above, from left, of Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Johnny Hodges and Flip Phillips by Esther Bubley, 1952, courtesy of CTSImages]

Songs of that length were rare at the time, since the new 10-inch record typically held 17 minutes per side—with the time divided among four songs per side. Granz (above), for his jam-session recordings, favored a single track lasting an entire side because it allowed all of the great musicians to take solos.

Assembled for this session in Hollywood was Charlie Shavers (tp); Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter and Charlie Parker (as); Flip Phillips and Ben Webster (ts); Oscar Peterson (p); Barney Kessel (g); Ray Brown (b) and J.C. Heard (d). I know, hard to believe. [Photo above, clockwise from top left, Benny Carter, Flip Phillips, Ray Brown, J.C. Heard, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Charlie Shavers and Barney Kessel in 1952 by Esther Bubley, courtesy of CTSImages]

The songs recorded that day were...

Jam Blues
What Is This Thing Called Love
A ballad medley featuring individual artists soloing in parentheses: All the Things You Are (Barney Kessel), Dearly Beloved (Charlie Parker), The Nearness of You (Ben Webster), I'll Get By (Johnny Hodges), Everything Happens to Me (Oscar Peterson), The Man I Love (Ray Brown), What's New? (Flip Phillips), Someone to Watch Over Me (Charlie Shavers) and Isn't It Romantic (Benny Carter)
Funky Blues

That gives you the background for what Hank O'Neal—founder of Chiaroscuro Records, prolific author, fine-art photographer, jazz authority and all-around great guy—is going to tell you momentarily. [Photo above of Hank O'Neal, courtesy of CTSImages]

But first, the context. Last week, Hank sent me an email following my post on the Oscar Peterson Duo. He had some insights into the photo of Oscar Peterson on the back of the Clef Collates album (below):

Hi Marc. Here is a funny piece of trivia. That picture on the back of "Collates" was taken in 1952 at one of the Norman Granz Jam Sessions, the one I call the "Funky Blues Date." It is on page 89 of my book of the same title. Norman wrote the intro.

The photographer was Esther Bubley. She took about 350 pictures that day. It was the only jazz session she ever photographed. We did the book together in the early 1990s and it only came out in France and in French. OP actually wrote some of the captions for the pix, as did, Benny, Flip, Ray and Barney. Crazy fun project. —Hank [Photo above of Esther Bubley]

Like you, I had a hundred questions. Hank and I go back to the start of JazzWax and kindly filled in all the blanks in a followup email. And with that, I'm going to turn JazzWax over to Hank...

Marc, in June 1952, Esther Bubley, was a 30-year-old, highly respected documentary-oriented photojournalist in the midst of a busy career. Forty years later, in 1992 I was a 52-year-old guy involved with music and photography. Sometime that year, I returned to New York from an out-of-town production and found an auction catalog in the mail.

I skimmed the catalog and noticed a wonderful photograph of Charlie Parker. I had seen it and others from the same recording session before, but I never had any idea who had taken it because photographs on Clef/Norgran/Verve LPs were usually not credited. But now, the picture I saw had the photographer's name in the auction catalog—Esther Bubley. [Photo above of Charlie Parker in 1952 by Esther Bubley, courtesy of CTSImages]

I decided on the spot that I wanted a copy of the Charlie Parker photo and, since I don’t buy at auction, I decided to track down Esther. Google in 1992 was the New York City telephone directory.

I found Esther on Broadway in the 50s living in a four- or five-story walk-up next to what was then called the David Letterman Theater. I called her and said I was interested in buying one of her pictures. She said to come on up. My guess was that her telephone was ringing less in 1992 than it had 40 years earlier.

This is when the adventure began that led to the 1995 publication of my book "Charlie Parker: The Funky Blues Date." I made my way to Esther’s building, climbed the stairs to the third floor and was greeted warmly. We talked for a few minutes and I showed her the Parker picture in the auction catalog.

She told me she didn’t have that one for sale but had one that was very similar. I told her I didn’t need a vintage print from 1952, that it was the image I liked, and I’d be happy with one she could make at her convenience. She said she wasn’t able to make prints of the image. Not because she was incapable but because she didn’t have the negative. This puzzled me.

I asked her “Why not?” This is the story she told me:

In June 1952, Esther was in Los Angeles on assignment for Ladies Home Journal magazine. She had done photo essays for them since the 1940s and would continue to do so until 1960. At the time, she was staying at a downtown hotel and ran into an old friend in the lobby, the artist, David Stone Martin.

They caught up with a "Why are you in L.A.?" kind of exchange. At the conclusion, Martin asked Esther if she’d be willing to take pictures at a recording session later that week. He said she might find it interesting and might even enjoy the music. Martin added that he could use the pictures to help him create drawings for the album cover (above) he was commissioned to deliver to Norman Granz.

Esther wasn’t busy on the day the recording was scheduled and she agreed to document her first and only recording session. [Photo composite above created to mirror the Esther Bubley images that David Stone Martin used for the original cover, courtesy of the Esther Bubley site]

But if you were going to get only one session to record in your lifetime, you should be so lucky as to have this particular date produced by Norman. It featured Charlie Shavers, Charlie Parker, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Flip Phillips, Ben Webster, Oscar Peterson, Barney Kessel, Ray Brown and J.C.Heard—all in one room at the same time making marvelous music.

Esther was not a “jazz” photographer. She was simply an extremely accomplished photographer, one with an artist’s eye. She was not aware of what a good “jazz” photograph looked like. She just knew what would make a good photograph, and she made a few hundred of them that day in Los Angeles. She never documented a recording session again in a long and fruitful career.

So why couldn't she print a picture of the Parker image I liked? She told me she had given prints to David Stone Martin and he used them to create drawings that were used for the album jacket. Then, at some point, she was contacted by Clef.

They said they would like to use some of her pictures on album jackets and could she please send them all the negatives and contact sheets so they could make a selection. Foolishly, she agreed to do this.

The photo editors at Clef/Norgran (there was no Verve yet) made prints of Esther's images they liked and felt they might use someday. But in the process, they cut up the negatives, clipping out and keeping every negative in which Charlie Parker appeared. They returned the clipped negative and contact sheets to Esther sometime in the 1950s. Later, when Clef/Norgran/Verve was sold to MGM, the Parker negatives had been lost and never seen again.

Esther’s negatives and contact sheets were used by the labels to create prints that were used for liner photographs but never credited to her. It would appear that the prints made from the original negatives were also lost because the reproduction of these pictures that appeared on 12” Verve releases as "Jam Session #1" (MG V-8049) and "Jam Session #2 (MG V-8050)" that I purchased in the 1960s seem to have been bad copies of copies. Since Esther was never credited as the photographer, no one knew she had taken them or that she even existed. Then I showed up and “discovered” them.

When I first looked at the negatives at Esther's place, I discovered a strip featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz that were taken by Phil Stern. I printed one and faxed it to Phil, asking if he remembered the picture. He replied in a nanosecond that the negatives had been lost since the mid-1950s since they’d been mixed in with Esther’s.

I knew immediately there was a book that could be made from the existing negatives, Esther’s vintage prints and by using scans from the contact sheets. Esther was in complete agreement and happy that I was interested. It was a long and complicated process, but finally everything came together and "Charlie Parker: The Funky Blues Date" was published by Flilpacchi in 1995.

Norman wrote a wonderful preface, and captions for many of the photographs were written by Benny Carter, Oscar Peterson, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel, Ray Brown and J.C. Heard. Nicholas Huegnet, the editor and his team at Flilpacchi, created a beautiful layout and walked the book through production.

I was able to print all of the non-Charlie Parker pictures from original negatives. Every picture in the book that pictured Parker was taken from a vintage print in Esther’s collection or from a scan made from a contact sheet. All of these contact sheets were reproduced in the book.

Why Flilpacchi? They made the best offer for an advance and I wanted to get as much as I could for Esther. I still don’t regret the decision. This was back in the days when publishers still offered an advance for a book featuring jazz photographs.

Later, Filipacchi tried to recoup some of their productions costs, but their asking price for a license from a U.S. publisher was rejected. That decision eliminated the possibility of a U.S. edition. Maybe someday this can be overcome, as was the case for my other Filipacchi book, "The Ghost of Harlem" (above). But that’s another story.