American Musicians

4.5/5 ( ratings)

Foreword by Joel Dorn.Interviews with Ruth Brown and Steve Lacy.

A more delicious gift for fans of postwar American music--that's all of us, isn't it?--would be hard to imagine. Richard B. Woodward, Salon Magazine, Friedlander's lush, luminous photographs of gospel, bluegrass, country, R&B and jazz musicians give the strong impression that American musicians have pretty much cornered the market on soul. Time Out, New York, ...a stirring, soulful album of musical greats. Entertainment Weekly, This informal but vast survey--514 images!--may be the best look yet at a half century of American Music. Malcolm Jones Jr., Newsweek, I can't imagine fans of jazz or blues being more pleased with any book this year than Lee Friedlander's wonderful American Musicians... Charles Taylor, Newsday
In the 1950s Lee Friedlander arrived in New York and began work as a house photographer for Atlantic Records. Over the next two decades, he would create some of their most famous album covers, and his picture style -- including portraits of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ruth Brown, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and countless others -- became forever associated with that golden era of American music. This book is Friedlander's tribute to the great musicians of the post-war years. It includes work from his trips through the Deep South, where he met Delta Blues musicians like Mississippi Fred McDowell, New Orleans marching bands and Nashville performers such as Johnny Cash, the Carter Sisters and Flatt & Scruggs. There are photographs of unknown bluegrass guitarists in Appalachia, photographs from tours with Count Bassie's Orchestra, and images of Jazz geniuses like Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and Yusef Lateef. Interviews by Friedlander with R&B legend Ruth Brown and modern jazz pioneer Steve Lacy are included along with an introduction by music impresario Joel Dorn.