Cheap Nights in Birdland: Jazz Photographs 1954-1960 (Book) (Carole Reiff) Price

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Customer Reviews of Nights in Birdland: Jazz Photographs 1954-1960

From the mid-50's to 1960 Carole Reiff took her Rolleiflex into the studios, Jazz clubs, concert halls, dressing rooms, and all-night jam sessions of the great ones. She captured the artists of this period better than any other photographer. There is nothing posed or formal about most of these these shots- the spontineity leaps out at you. These artists were totally at ease like the camera wasn't even there. There is no distracting text to get in your way either- the pictures say far more than any words could. You just get page after page of legends before, during, and after the act of creating their art. It is incredible how many of the greats she had access to: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday (best shots I've ever seen of Lady Day), Lester Young, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Ornette Coleman, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Bill Evans, Percy Heath, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, and so many others. Put on a record and get this book out. It is like they live again- or like you are at a big jam session in the sky.

Of yes, and the introductory essay by Jack Kerouac, The Beginning of Bop, is exactly right to set the mood. It is one long flowing riff of prose poem by a man who understood the spirit of the age better than any other.