A Great Day in Harlem

A Great Day in Harlem or Harlem 1958 is a 1958 black and white group portrait of 57 notable jazz musicians photographed on a street in Harlem, New York City. The photo has remained an important object in the study of the history of jazz.

Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture around 10 a.m. one day in the summer of 1958. The musicians had gathered on 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem. Esquire published the photo in its January 1959 issue. Kane calls it "the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken."

Jean Bach, a radio producer of New York, recounted the story behind it in her 1994 documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. The film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

The Jazz of the City Atlanta portrait, by photographers Seve "Obasina" Adigun and Gregory Turner, captures on camera in color the next generation of jazz musicians. In April 2007, over 100 jazz musicians surrounded Mayor Shirley Franklin in the Atlanta City Hall Atrium for another historic image mirroring the original.

The photo was also a key object in Steven Spielberg's film, The Terminal. The film starred Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a character who comes to the United States in search of Benny Golson's autograph, with which he can complete his deceased father's collection of autographs from the musicians pictured in the photo.

As of Oct. 21, 2011 only 4 of the musicians are still living. (See starred names in the list below.)

Musicians in the photograph

A Great Day in Harlem

Red Allen Buster Bailey Count Basie Emmett Berry Art Blakey Lawrence Brown Scoville Browne Buck Clayton Bill Crump[1] Vic Dickenson Roy Eldridge Art Farmer Bud Freeman Dizzy Gillespie Tyree Glenn Benny Golson* Sonny Greer Johnny Griffin Gigi Gryce

Coleman Hawkins J.C. Heard Jay C. Higginbotham Milt Hinton Chubby Jackson Hilton Jefferson Osie Johnson Hank Jones Jo Jones Jimmy Jones Taft Jordan Max Kaminsky Gene Krupa Eddie Locke Marian McPartland* Charles Mingus Miff Mole Thelonious Monk Gerry Mulligan

Oscar Pettiford Rudy Powell Luckey Roberts Sonny Rollins* Jimmy Rushing Pee Wee Russell Sahib Shihab Horace Silver* Zutty Singleton Stuff Smith Rex Stewart Maxine Sullivan Joe Thomas Wilbur Ware Dickie Wells George Wettling Ernie Wilkins Mary Lou Williams Lester Young (*) denotes still living members

References

1. ^ Allmusic Bill Crump biography

External links

• http://www.a-great-day-in-harlem.com - about the documentary.
• "Jazz's Most Iconic Photo is Half a Century Old" by Alan Kurtz (Jazz.com)
• Review of A Great Day in Harlem
• http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/Orderpage.aspx?pi=0ALN0013010075&po=75&pc=77. THE JAZZ OF THE CITY ATLANTA 2007 portrait.