Jazz Goes to High School

Metropolitan Vocational High School, New York, N.Y., ca. July 1947. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb.

Friday we released another batch of images from the William P. Gottlieb Collection to Flickr. This set of images includes figures such as pop singer Frankie Laine (seen posing with a souvenir throw pillow bearing his likeness), blues icon Leadbelly, Latin Jazz legends Machito and Graciella Grillo, just to name a few.  Among these pictures is an image that, as one Flickr commenter points out, features the dramatic lighting and low angle of a classic Gottlieb portrait, but has as its subject an unknown student musician. The photograph was part of a Gottlieb story for Down Beat Magazine on Metropolitan High School, a vocational school for music in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. According to a 1969 New York Times article, the school closed forty years ago. The Lower East Side is a very different place today, but you can still visit Katz’s Deli, and Gottlieb’s images live on.

“An Awful Lot of Notes”—Sketches of Walter Piston

The following is a guest post by Music Reference Specialist Lisa Shiota. “It always makes me smile when the Library of Congress asks me to keep my sketches for their collection. When I get through I don’t have any sketches—they’re all rubbed out. I write an awful lot of notes that don’t stay.” ~Walter Piston, …

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More Gottlieb Jazz Pics

The Music Division has uploaded its latest batch of William P. Gottlieb jazz photos onto our Flickr site. Several are particularly eye-catching, notably the two images of bassist Chubby Jackson: one  with dramatic lighting, the other showing Jackson’s irrepressible personality. There is an impressive triple exposure of bandleader Jerry Jerome, and an unusual shot of …

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A Pair of Kings

On this Feast of Three Kings, celebrate the recent birthdays of a pair of musical kings:  bandleader Xavier Cugat  and rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. Francesc d’Asís Xavier Cugat Mingall de Bru i Deulofeu was born in Spain on January 1st, 1900.  Cugat, was dubbed “The Mambo King” in the 1995 Walt Disney feature A Goofy …

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Good Luck, Tomas!

The Music Division wishes the best of luck to Senior Concert Producer Tomas Hernandez, who retired last week after ten years in the Concert Office. In the Muse chatted with Tomas on his penultimate day in government service. What’s your favorite memory of your time at the library? There have been so many wonderful concerts! …

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