For photographer William Claxton, the obsession started in childhood, long before he was old enough to really understand what show business was all about.
Yet while his childhood playmates were happily drawing pictures of trains, planes and automobiles, Claxton was busily cutting out photos of Fred, Ginger and the Duke.
“I remember spending rainy days putting together scrapbooks stuffed with cutouts of Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway and all the rest,” says Claxton, who eventually became one of the most artful celebrity photographers in the business.
“But as much as I loved those images, I never dreamed that years later I might meet these people, let alone photograph them.”
Perhaps only someone so utterly smitten with the look and the feel of show business in general, and music in particular, could have built a life and a livelihood capturing it on film.
Claxton did just that, and the focal point of his obsession–his stunning photos of America’s jazz legends–is on view at the Harold Washington Library Center on South State Street.
“Jazz: William Claxton” gathers 93 images from a remarkable life’s work, with jazz music as its central riff. Singers, trumpeters, saxophonists, piano players, young lions, old masters, the Duke, the Diz–they’re all there, as if time stood still from the instant Claxton brushed up against them.
As these portraits reveal, Claxton is far more than a celebrity worshiper who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Rather, he helped change the way jazz photography was conceived, though he did it in subtle ways.
Before Claxton began his professional work, in the late 1940s, jazz publicity shots often showed musicians with cigarette in one hand, horn in another and clouds of smoke billowing all around. The backgrounds were generally dark, the air hazy, the mood somewhat illicit, evoking the small and oft-seedy clubs in which these great artists often toiled.
Claxton offered a different point of view, frequently showing jazz stars away from the stage and out in the light of day. By revealing his subjects relaxing in a dressing room or whiling away the hours under the sun, he made them appear less mythic and more human.
Into the sunshine
Consider one of Claxton’s most famous images: a shirtless Chet Baker, the brilliant jazz trumpeter, with his wife, Helima, leaning casually on his knee, the couple bathed in sunlight and warmth. Surely this 1955 photo, taken in Redondo Beach, Calif., turned upside down the rules of jazz photography.
“It’s true that the stereotype (image) at that time was the jazz musician in a dark, dank place, with alcohol nearby–a somewhat sleazy, if exciting, setting,” says Claxton.
“But I grew up in California, where there was sunshine and natural beauty all around, and I didn’t understand why you couldn’t show jazz musicians in that kind of setting too.”
What’s more, Claxton’s photos brought a journalist’s eye to the performer’s art. In other words, if the great photographers who preceded him–most notably Herman Leonard–chose to picture jazz musicians in dramatically charged back-lighting, with smoke swirling around them, Claxton would offer a somewhat less subjective, less romanticized point of view.
“I think all of the great jazz photographers interpreted what they heard differently,” says Leonard, whose work inspired Claxton. “And Bill’s vision was not like mine, with the smoky nightclubs. His was sunlight and, since he’s from California, I think that’s extremely suitable.
“So he got a lot of freshness in his photographs, and a lot of the very natural spontaneity on the part of the people he shot.
“Pictorially, he’s wonderful.”
And yet, even if Claxton’s jazz photos were less provocative than Leonard’s, Claxton’s shots of musical greats such as Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Ben Webster, Dinah Washington, Max Roach and scores more carry a certain allure nonetheless.
“I suppose there always is a degree of glamor in photographs of jazz musicians, and there are at least two reasons for that,” says Claxton, 69.
“On the surface, there are the most obvious visual elements–a shiny instrument, the way the light hits the musician, the fact that they’re performers who operate in a glamorous world.
“But on a deeper level, there’s an essential contradiction about these musicians that’s irresistible: Most of these musicians have two diametrically opposed facets of their personality.
“On the one hand, they’re ingenuous or innocent, eager to please their audience. But on the other hand, they’re phenomenally disciplined, able to do something brilliant on command, at the snap of a thumb or the drop of a baton.
“And that contradiction, their innocence and their artistic skill, makes musicians terribly interesting to us, and to me.”
Shooting the greats
For Claxton, the journey began in his native Pasadena, where as an unusually tall teenager he was able to get into jazz clubs technically off-limits to minors. He soon began shooting pictures of the players, and after graduating from UCLA as a psychology major, he found himself “on the street, unemployed, but aware that I had at least one way of earning money–taking pictures.”
Before long, Claxton was working for several West Coast record labels. During the ’50s and ’60s, he augmented his jazz photography with free-lance assignments, shooting features and news for various publications, including Life magazine.
No matter what Claxton was shooting to pay the bills, however, it was music that inspired him, and his gifts brought him into shooting range of some of the most celebrated artists of the day.
“I photographed (Frank) Sinatra for several record covers, and though he had a reputation for being difficult, he was very kind to me,” remembers Claxton.
“We had a code, in which he’d let me know with a turn of his hat or a flick of his hand when he was ready to have a picture taken, and I wouldn’t shoot unless I got the cue.
“You see, a photographer’s work is based on trust. If the subject trusts you, you can get great pictures, and I’ve always operated on that principle.”
That ability to establish a rapport with a subject also enabled Claxton to capture exquisite images of young Barbra Streisand in the early ’60s, as her star was just starting to ascend.
“It was at the very beginning of her career, in New York, and she was very guarded and very frightened,” remembers Claxton.
“So what I really did with her was try to give her confidence before the camera, and she responded beautifully, like the real artist she is.”
These days, Claxton’s shooting the new crop of musicians, aiming his lens at Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Christian McBride, Jon Faddis and other young titans of jazz.
And to those who assert that today’s young musicians lack the depth or talent of their predecessors, that jazz in the ’90s is but a hollow echo of a more glorious era, Claxton vociferously disagrees.
“Sure, there are differences between now and then; that’s inevitable,” says Claxton, whose work has been documented in several books, most notably “Claxology” (Nieswand Verlag) and “The Young Chet” (Schirmer Art Books).
“For one thing, the musicians are a lot better educated now. They’re also a lot healthier. They may have experimented with drugs, but most of them have landed on their feet.
“But once they start playing music, there’s a communication and a camaraderie going on that’s just the same as it used to be 50 years ago.
“They’re making music, and that’s a beautiful thing to see.”
“Jazz: William Claxton” is on display through June 9 in the Grand Exhibit Hall of the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Claxton will talk about his work at 3 p.m. May 26 in the Grand Exhibit Hall. Phone 312-747-4649.
