Top of page
Posted by: Pat Padua
In the Muse has regularly featured photographs from the William P. Gottlieb Collection when commemorating the birthdays of jazz greats like Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, and Ben Webster. But that’s not all that’s in the collection. Today, the observed birthday of William Shakespeare, enjoy this photograph, which originally appeared in Down Beat magazine in 1947 …
Posted in: Birthdays, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Afro-Cuban singer Graciela Perez-Grillo passed away in New York on April 7th. She was 94. Born in Havana, Perez-Grillo moved to New York in 1942, where she played bass and sang with an all-female band before fronting the Afro-Cuban orchestra with her stepbrother Machito. See photos of the woman known as the First Lady of …
Posted in: In Memoriam, Jazz, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Billie Holiday, one of the great jazz singers, was born April 7, 1915. She recounted her hard life in the autobiography Lady sings the blues, but despite her suffering at the hands of family, a racist society, and her own addictions, despite the smoky, world-weary voice of her later years, the joy her music brought to …
Posted in: African American History, Birthdays, Jazz, Musicians, Women in Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
Ben Webster, one of the great tenor saxophonists, was born March 27, 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri. Along with bassist Jimmy Blanton, Webster helped form one of the most celebrated incarnations of the Duke Ellington orchestra. From 1940-1942, the Blanton-Webster band recorded such Ellington classics as “Cotton Tail,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and, of course, “Take the ‘A’ …
Posted in: Birthdays, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
There are but a handful of musicians whose innovations changed the way their instrument is played. Among these is guitarist Django Reinhardt, born January 23rd, 1910. Let us remember his centenary with this photo by William P. Gottlieb (whose birthday is January 28th). Listen to Gottlieb talk about Django and this photo session here.
Posted by: Pat Padua
The photographs of William P. Gottlieb (1917-2006 ) are a priceless document of the jazz era in the ’30’s and ’40’s. In the Muse will occasionally highlight selections from this collection. Today we celebrate the birthdays of two legendary jazz drummers. When the Music Division prepared the Gottlieb collection for digitization in the ’90’s, Gottlieb worked …
Posted in: Birthdays, Jazz, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Larry Appelbaum
The discovery five years ago of the Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane 1957 Carnegie Hall concert tapes focused attention on the deep jazz collections here at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-090.html). The tapes, found while preserving the Voice of America Collection, were subsequently issued by Blue Note Records and became a sensation in the jazz world. Since …
Posted in: African American History, Jazz, Special Collections