When Raeburn Flerlage was asked to take a picture of Memphis Slim in 1959, he began a career that would produce some of the most fascinating and important photos ever taken of blues musicians. By shooting concert performances, studio sessions, interviews, and club shows, he became a fixture of the Chicago blues scene during the 1960s and early 70s, and captured some of America’s greatest blues artists at the pinnacle of their careers: Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Spann, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, Son House, and many more. Here, for the first time, are Raeburn’s greatest photos, reproduced in a beautiful format. From Howlin’ Wolf performing at legendary Pepper’s lounge to Otis Spann and James Cotton playing in Muddy Waters’ basement, these pictures bring to life one of the most incredible periods in American musical history.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Reviewed with Murray Garret's Hollywood Candid: A Photographer Remembers.
Professional performers are supposed to look good, but none of them scorns a good photographer's help. Flerlage helped blues musicians and Garret, movie stars. In new books, they share some favorite recollections and favorite images.Flerlage's pictures are more famous among blues fans than Garret's are among movie buffs. Why? Simple: they graced the covers of LPs from the foremost blues labels--Chess, Prestige, Testament, Delmark--and appeared in the foremost blues, folk, and jazz magazines. The fans know and love them, which is only right. Flerlage took up photography to shoot the blues, and no one did it better or more comprehensively. He snapped folk bluesmen like Son House and Fred MacDowell, Chicago bluesmen like Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf, big band bluesmen like B. B. King and Bobby Bland, and even soul pioneers like Jackie Wilson and Martha Reeves. He also took pictures of the performers' contexts, onstage and off. He had a terrific eye and terrific luck, such as when he was shooting an interview with John Lee Hooker, who called Muddy Waters to come over, which he did. Flerlage also had the foresight to shoot his interviewing partner, Mike Bloomfield, playing the stars' guitars not long before he became the first white Chicago blues guitar star.Garret, a Hollywood pro from 1946 to 1973, specialized in getting "candid" glimpses of the stars. Culling an archive much bigger than part-timer Flerlage's, Garret fields an album bursting with freshness. Here are Marilyn Monroe, looking ravishingly inadvertent at Grauman's Chinese Theater; Jack Benny in Roman drag, wryly clutching a cigar; Eddie Cantor showing a dance step to 16-year-old Joel Grey; Gary Cooper playing hairdresser for wrestler Gorgeous George; and lots of a Garret favorite, Bob Hope. Like Flerlage, Garret tells a little about the circumstances of certain shoots and what it was like to work with particular stars. Lengthier than Flerlage's comments, Garret's are more pat, too. Since the movies are more popular than the blues, though, Garret's deliberately appealing pictures may catch more eyes than Flerlage's ultimately more valuable volume. \plain\f0\fs17 Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From the Publisher
A stunning collection of photographs from Chicago's foremost blues photographer When Raeburn Flerlage was asked to take a picture of Memphis Slim in 1959, he began a career that would produce some of the most fascinating and important photos ever taken of blues musicians. By shooting concert performances, studio sessions, interviews, and club shows, he became a fixture of the Chicago blues scene during the 1960s and early 70s, and captured some of America's greatest blues artists at the pinnacle of their careers: Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Otis Spann, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, Son House, and many more. Here, for the first time, are Raeburn's greatest photos, reproduced in a beautiful format. From Howlin' Wolf performing at legendary Pepper's lounge to Otis Spann and James Cotton playing in Muddy Waters' basement, these pictures bring to life one of the most incredible periods in American musical history, and will make you feel like you're right there in that smoky bar, listening.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Flerlage Is A Great Guy And Knows His Stuff,
By A Customer
This review is from: Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage (Paperback)
I met Flerlage a few years ago in Chicago when I was doing some research for a now-forgotten project and I went through his collection of fantastic photos with him in his apartment and loved every second of it. The composition and lighting in these pictures is beautiful, and he catches something of the energy of the performances that is pretty amazing. Flerlage isn't one of these precious blues prigs (e.g., Steve Calt) who spends all of his time trying to protect some pet thesis and trashing everyone else's work relentlessly, but is a real dude who lived jazz and blues on the South Side in a way that few other writers or photographers have. The result is what you see -- great photographs, on the ground, in the clubs with the people who made the scene as wild and energetic as it was. If you want to see pictures that give you a real taste of the power of jazz and blues in teh 50s and 60s, get this book and linger over these fantastic photographs. You won't regret it.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Blues in black and white,
By Bonnie J. Scheeland (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage (Paperback)
Someone sent me a copy of this book...what a find. Whether you're into Blues greats of the 50's and 60's, or just into good photography, this is worthwhile. Some of the greatest black and white photographs I have seen. Puts your right in the smokey clubs of South Chicago, and in the artists' face. Sensitively accomplished and carefully assembled after 40 years. Photographer Raeburn Flerlage had a remarkable feel for the soul of the music, and a love of these peformers, and was granted unusual access to their lives. It shows in the photos, both candid and peformance, if there is a difference here. A lovingly crafted collection, and a time capsule of a age fled, a city now changed, that gave us an American art form. Done by a photographer with the soul of a poet. Excellent notes by Flerlage, now in his eighties. For music lovers, a must have. Ditto fans of Chicago.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you love Chicago Blues from the sixties...,
By
This review is from: Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage (Paperback)
Chicago Blues As Seen From the Inside, the Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage is a blues book, a photography book and a history book. Chicago in the 1960s saw the popular emergence of a new kind of music -- urban, electrified blues -- that changed the sound of music throughout the world. No other photographer documented the Chicago blues scene of that period like Raeburn Flerlage, from recording studios and private homes, to small clubs and giant ballrooms, Ray and his camera were there capturing the scene with rare artistry.
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