Lee Friedlander: American Musicians [Paperback]

Lee Friedlander (Author), Steve Lacy (Author), Ruth Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

In the 1950s Lee Friedlander arrived in New York and began work as a house photographer for Atlantic Records. Over the next two decades, he would create some of their most famous album covers, and his picture style -- including portraits of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ruth Brown, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and countless others -- became forever associated with that golden era of American music. This book is Friedlander's tribute to the great musicians of the post-war years. It includes work from his trips through the Deep South, where he met Delta Blues musicians like Mississippi Fred McDowell, New Orleans marching bands and Nashville performers such as Johnny Cash, the Carter Sisters and Flatt & Scruggs. There are photographs of unknown bluegrass guitarists in Appalachia, photographs from tours with Count Bassie's Orchestra, and images of Jazz geniuses like Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and Yusef Lateef. Interviews by Friedlander with R&B legend Ruth Brown and modern jazz pioneer Steve Lacy are included along with an introduction by music impresario Joel Dorn.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Of all the great modern photographers, MacArthur "genius grant" winner Lee Friedlander is probably the hippest to music. Inspired by a Charlie Parker record at 16, he left Aberdeen, Washington, and launched his career alongside ambitious friends like Diane Arbus. Arbus had a cold eye, but as this book of photos he took for Atlantic Records from the 1950s to the '70s proves, Friedlander's eye was warmly empathetic, at one with his subjects' emotions. (He has compared himself to the guy in the Joe Turner song who's "like a one-eyed cat peekin' at a seafood store.")

A first-rate visual extravaganza, American Musicians captures the country's virtuosos in some of their most candid moments: Aretha Franklin getting respect in 1968, Mahalia Jackson wailing on her knees, Ella in her heyday, on the road with Count Basie, Miles Davis actually looking the viewer right in the eye the year of Bitches Brew. Friedlander was a great discoverer--he found the discarded 1917 photos of New Orleans' Bellocq (immortalized in the film Pretty Baby), and one of his own early nude models was the unknown Madonna Ciccone. He helps people bare their souls to the camera, and the souls in this book are of historic importance. American Musicians also includes Friedlander's interviews with Ruth Brown and Steve Lacy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The design, by Katy Homans, puts as many as 10 pictures on the page and forgoes the conventional and pretentious coffee-table look in favor of a practical, lap-size square format. The result conveys a new and exciting understanding of Friedlander, one of our most important contemporary photographers. -- The New York Times Book Review, Andy Grundberg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891024337
• ISBN-13: 978-1891024337
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,746,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's Heroes, April 6, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Musicians (Hardcover)

It seems that the quality of the pictures is almost secondary to the collection themselves - an arrangement of America's best delegates of expresssion. As the market place of American music seems to fall further and further away from the proliferation of substance and artistic value, Frielander's "American's . . . " serves as a shouting out for the need of education of the youth to the lives of these real American heroes. When asked of his taste or distaste for record sampling as a modern recording technique, Ray Charles expressed his fears that the sources of the sound bytes used may go unexplored thus squandering any hope of education. Prophetic? Perhaps. Frielander has assembled a striking visual dictionary that could be instructive in opening another dimension to musics that have gone undiscovered by the youth of today as well as remindind parents that the fire in music, captured here, transcends generations and may be a point of departure for cross-generational, cross-sexual, cross-racial summits to be convened.