A Tribute to William Claxton
I opened up my New York Times this morning to the news that the great jazz photographer William Claxton had died at age 80. Claxton was one of the great jazz photographers, mainly on the West Coast, and he was most noted for his great, almost obsessive, work in shooting the young Chet Baker. His first jazz photography was in album covers, and he was something of a house photographer for Pacific Jazz Records. In some cases, the value of some of the top collectible records are, in part, a tribute to his innovative and interesting covers. One that comes to mind, in addition to the Baker LPs on Pacific Jazz, is Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West on Contemporary, with Sonny notably dressed in a 10-gallon hat and holster with his tenor slung at his side like a weapon, which it was in Sonny’s hands. Read more