Harlem Jazz
Posted: May 17th, 2009 | Author: kamau | Filed under: music, photography | Comments Off
Audio-enhanced photo essay by Andrew Sullivan: Harlem Jazz.
Jazz weaves threads of Harlem’s identity. On 125th St., near Hotel Theresa, where Louis Armstrong slept, a clothing store entices shoppers by adding “Jazz” to its name. Street vendors sell John Coltrane and Josephine Baker t-shirts to locals and foreign tourists. Murals of musicians and dancers emerge when shopkeepers pull down decorated security doors at closing time.
Max Lucas, 98, has played his saxophone in Harlem since 1925, when his first gig was a duet with a banjo player in a barber shop. He performed in the Savoy Ballroom as 2,000 dancers covered the floor. During Prohibition and the Great Depression, Lucas worked rent parties, where the hosts had three-piece bands in their homes, sold bootleg liquor and charged 25 cents admission to help pay their landlords. When he joins his son’s band at the Lenox Lounge on Wednesdays, the crowd reveres Lucas as its connection to Harlem’s cultural legacy.
