That picture had magical properties," says Jean Bach of the 1958 photograph that inspired her award-winning documentary, A Great Day in Harlem. The photograph features 57 of the most prominent jazz musicians of the time gathered on a Harlem street corner. Bach's documentary shares the remarkable story of how these men and women came to be immortalized in what has been called one of the greatest photographs of all time.
The picture originally appeared in an all-jazz issue of Esquire magazine, the serendipitous product of a brand-new art director and a first-time photographer's whims. The former, Robert Benton--now a celebrated filmmaker--originally conceived of the project as a way to win over his new boss, a devoted jazz fan. Benton knew nothing of the magazine business and even less of jazz, so he recruited a more experienced art director, Art Kane, to assist with his plan. Although Kane was not a photographer by trade, Benton asked him to coordinate the photo shoot.
Kane, who had neither expertise nor a studio, suggested they shoot the pictures in front of a Harlem brownstone. The two spread the word for musicians who wished to be photographed to meet at a designated time and place, then sat back and hoped that a few would show. The picture was slated for 10:00 a.m., a time when most musicians were still recovering from the previous evening's excesses. One performer joked that they "didn't even know there were two ten o'clocks in the same day."
Slowly but surely, though, the jazz legends trickled in. The photograph that evolved had a life of its own. Of their own volition, all the drummers stood together. Thelonious Monk strategically positioned himself next to the ladies, so he'd get noticed. A group of neighborhood kids decided to plop down on the curb. Count Basie got tired of standing and joined them. Mary Lou Williams--later a visiting artist at Duke--struck up a conversation with Marian McPartland. The shutter clicked, and history was made.
Harlem recounts the story with the humor and tenderness of an insider. Bach's late husband was a musician who traveled in the same circles as the gang in Harlem, and so when she set out to make the film, tracking down the artists was merely a matter of persistence. No one was paid to appear in the original photograph, just as Bach's documentary was made for artistic, not economic reasons. Documentaries rarely turn profits. Rather, they are produced through the sponsorship of those who sense an urgent need for a story to be told before it is too late. In 1989, as age began to take its toll on the great jazz legends of Bach's youth, she decided that it was time to put their stories on film.
Like Art Kane, Bach had no experience in the media that would one day make her famous. She set out naively to make a film about jazz, not realizing that when you make a movie "you've got to pay for stuff." Harlem took five years to make, during which time Bach says she was "constantly waiting for the next dollar to come in."
Although no one thought much of it at the time, everyone now agrees that there's something very special about that photograph. America was embroiled in a civil rights crisis, but there, on the streets of Harlem, black, white, male and female, were united in the language of jazz. It was a gathering the likes of which New York will never see again: the greatest collection of musical talent ever to wake up before noon. As one among them, Dizzy Gillespie, eloquently closes out the film, "There's a whole lotta people I like on here."
You can catch a special screening of A Great Day in Harlem at the John Hope Franklin center, on Feb. 23 at 6 p.m. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with filmmaker Jean Bach.
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