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| UCLA Library Presents Jazz Photography Exhibit "Jazz in Los Angeles: Photos From the Music Library Special Collections, " featuring a selection of images taken by Howard Morehead and Mark Weber, is on view in the lobby of the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA through Sept. 30. Born in 1926 in Topeka, Kan., Howard Morehead trained as a pilot for the Air Corps in the Tuskegee Airmen. After leaving the service in 1946, he moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA, then transferred to Los Angeles City College, where he earned a degree in photography. He also studied journalism at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles) and the University of Southern California, and motion picture photography at UCLA. Morehead joined the staff of the Los Angeles Sentinel in 1950 and freelanced for various newspapers and magazines. In 1958, he became the first West Coast staff photographer for Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of several magazines for the African American market, and his photographs appeared in Ebony, Jet and as centerfolds in Players. He became the first African American staff cameraman for a Los Angeles television station when he joined KTLA in 1970. He moved to KABC a year later and retired in 1991. Morehead photographed many of the great jazz performers; he was an official photographer for the Playboy and Monterey jazz festivals, and many of his pictures appeared in magazines and newspapers and on album and compact disc covers. Among the performers featured in the exhibit are Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Thelonius Monk, and Frank Sinatra. Morehead died in July 2003, only a few months after donating his photographic legacy to the UCLA Music Library Special Collections and the California African American Museum. A native of Los Angeles, Mark Weber studied photography in high school and began photographing jazz performers in 1976. In June 1976, he started writing a monthly column for the jazz magazine CODA, and he also has written poetry, short stories, book reviews and articles for music magazines. He now lives in New Mexico, where he hosts a jazz program on KUNM?FM and operates ZerxPress, which publishes chapbooks and CDs. Weber gave his extensive archive to UCLA in 2004; it documents the jazz and blues scene in Los Angeles during the 1970s and '80s through photographs, slides, notes, clippings, interview transcripts, correspondence, programs, flyers and articles, as well as many additional photographs from after that period, into the '90s, mostly from outside of Los Angeles. Although there are some portraits, the photographs are mostly of musicians playing, setting up and hanging out in the studio, in concert and at home. The exhibit features a selection of photographs from approximately 1976 through 1986, mostly of mainstream performers. Of particular note are many photographs of performances by pianist Horace Tapscott (1934–99) in his own groups and directing the Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra. The Arkestra was central to a substantial arts-based community movement in South Central Los Angeles, the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension. Tapes of the Arkestra's musical performances and manuscripts of compositions and arrangements were donated to the Music Library in 2003 by the Tapscott family as the Horace Tapscott Jazz Archive. Other jazz and blues performers represented in the exhibit include Count Basie, Kenny Burrell, Betty Carter, Albert Collins, Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Billy Higgins, John Lee Hooker, Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, Harold Land, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, Max Roach, Horace Silver and Sarah Vaughan. Among the well-known performance venues or series documented are Carmelo's in Sherman Oaks, Donte's in North Hollywood, the Hi-De-Ho Club in Los Angeles, the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, Howard Rumsey's Concerts by the Sea in Redondo Beach and the Watts Towers Jazz Fest. Admission to the library and exhibits is free. During the school year, the library is open Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The library is closed on Sundays. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |