What started out as “sort of a graduation photo or class picture of all the jazz musicians,” as Kane once put it, became perhaps the most emblemat

58 Jazz Luminaries Assembled for This Photo. Only One Remains.

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2024-12-12 18:00:03

What started out as “sort of a graduation photo or class picture of all the jazz musicians,” as Kane once put it, became perhaps the most emblematic and enduring image from the genre’s golden age.

Only one of its subjects is still alive: the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, 94, who spoke in a phone interview about the image’s power at a time of pervasive segregation and racism.

“It just seemed like we weren’t appreciated,” he said from his home in Woodstock, N.Y.,“mainly because jazz was a Black art.”

Today the photo titled “Harlem 1958” is better known as “A Great Day in Harlem,” after an Oscar-nominated 1994 documentary on its creation.

Kane and an assistant directed the group as best they could, with the photographer addressing them using a rolled-up New York Times as what he later called “a sort of megaphone.”

In the mid-40s, Gillespie — along with his frequent collaborator Charlie Parker — emerged as a leading exponent of the speedy, virtuosic small-group style known as bebop.