Los Angeles: William Claxton,, 1987. I was twenty-two and scared to death! From the collection of the Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts, with his posthumous bookplate: a superb image of Charlie Parker performing with a young Chet Baker at the Tiffany Club in LA in 1952; limited to 50 copies, signed and dated by Claxton at the foot of the image. Claxton, still a student at UCLA, was establishing himself as a jazz photographer and had turned out at the Tiffany to shoot his idol, Bird. "Late that night, in a darkroom he set up in his family's house, Claxton had an epiphany. Staring at the print in the developing tray, he watched Baker's face appear 'like magic'. He called that moment 'a dream'. In a documentary about Claxton, Jazz Seen, by filmmaker Julian Benedikt, Claxton said that he had never known the meaning of 'photogenic' until he took those first pictures of Baker" (Gavin, p.53). For the next five years, Claxton pursued Baker, then widely seen as the "James Dean of Jazz", to rehearsals, on stage and in the studio, assembling a portfolio that goes some way to capturing the fragile toughness that earned him the sobriquet. Parker was appearing at the Tiffany Club in LA for a two-week engagement in May-June 1952 when Claxton captured this ringside shot of Bird in full flight shadowed by an incredibly up-tight and vulnerable-looking Baker. Ted Gioia describes the background of the rehearsal: "At the microphone Bird asks: 'Is Chet Baker here?' Moments later, the response, 'Yeah, Bird, I'm here.' A lanky, baby-faced, twenty-two-year-old trumpeter steps to the bandstand. Parker announces a song and counts in a tempo, and the group is off at a precipitous rate. After finishing the first number, Parker counts in a second. Then he returns to the microphone. He thanks the other musicians for having come. The audition is over. Chet Baker will be Parker's trumpeter during a three-week Southern California engagement... '[I was] twenty-two and scared to death! But fortunately I knew the tunes that he called'". William Claxton indisputably became one of the greatest photographers of the jazz scene, and his sensitive images of artists such as Baker and Bird, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and many others appeared in countless magazines and on record covers since the 1950s. When asked why he liked to photograph jazz musicians, Claxton replied: "First, and most important, I love their music. But I am also fascinated by the diverse qualities they possess. They have ingenuousness, a sort of open, innocent attitude. Yet at the same time they display a strong discipline in their dedication to their craft. And I also admire their individualism: Their difference in character and their musical expression". Silver gelatin print (350 x 280 mm) printed from the original negative in 1987; cream card window mount. Framed and glazed (540 x 450 mm). Claxton's wet stamps on verso and also that of the Terry Southern Collection - Southern had written the text for the photographer's souvenir book of the filming of The Loved One (1965, co-written with Christopher Isherwood and directed by Tony Richardson). Very slight abrasion in dark area of image, light vertical crease on right hand side otherwise in excellent condition. James Gavin, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, 2011; Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960, 1998.
