One morning in August 1958 fifty-seven of the greatest jazz musicians gathered together on the steps of a Harlem brownstone to sit for one of the most celebrated ensemble jazz portraits ever taken. Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture for the magazine's 50th anniversary issue.
Jean Bach, a radio producer of New York, recounted the story behind it in her 1994 documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. The film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.
Forty years after the historic shoot Life magazine hired photographer Gordon Parks to recreate Kane's picture, and invited the surviving musicians to gather once again on the same brownstone steps on 126th Street. Just eleven musicians had survived: Gerry Mulligan, Marian McPartland, Milt Hinton, Horace Silver, Art Farmer, Hank Jones, Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson, Chubby Jackson, Eddie Locke and Johnny Griffin—as well as Taft Jordan Jr., the small child who had sat beside Count Basie on the curb nearly forty years previously. All but Sonny Rollins turned up.
All About Jazz collected the memories of some of the surviving subjects of the shoot.
These are the artists who appeared in the original photo:
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| "We were told to stand where we had stood in the original picture. I was so sad because I had to stand alone. The people who stood on either side of me had died. It was very sad to have just the eleven of us." — pianist Marian McPartland |
All About Jazz collected the memories of some of the surviving subjects of the shoot.
These are the artists who appeared in the original photo:
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