Graeme Kirkland

Graeme Kirkland, Parkdale, March 1989

THE PHONE RANG EARLY AND I DIDN'T WANT TO ANSWER IT BUT I DID. It was Graeme Kirkland telling me he wanted to come over and do a photo shoot, right away. I tried to talk him out of it; it was early, I was tired, and I frankly wasn't feeling that inspired on that particular chilly morning caught between winter and spring.

"No, I just got out of the hospital," Graeme insisted. "I got beat up pretty bad at Sneaky Dee's last night by a bunch of skinheads. I want to get a photo of myself like this."

I don't think I thought about it much.

"Come right on over, Graeme."

Graeme Kirkland, Parkdale, March 1989

He was a mess. It's a shame I only shot these in black and white because Graeme's bruises were a really intriguing spectrum of purple and red and blue and yellow. (Colour film and processing cost money and I doubt if I had any sitting around the studio in those early, very penniless days.) I don't know how he saw through eyes that were swollen shut. He had a fat lip and stitches and tape holding his skin together and crusts of blood clinging to his face where the nurses in emergency hadn't cleaned it off.

I set up the light - my only light, probably - to give a stark effect, like a police evidence photo. We shot for two or three rolls - long enough to have Graeme shed his bloodstained jacket and shirt and finally wrap the shirt around his head like a turban. I can't remember whose idea that was. I asked him how it happened and he said that he was drunk and hitting on girls and he probably said the wrong thing to the wrong one and that the skinheads waiting for him by the bathroom at Sneaky Dee's were definitely not drunk and knew what they were doing.

Graeme Kirkland, "Clock Destruction," 1990

I photographed Graeme a lot back when he was the jazz drummer who knew how to get noticed in a city that didn't especially notice jazz musicians in general. He'd do shows like "Clock Destruction" - a performance piece as much as a show where he played in body paint and briefs and set about a big wooden clock with a chainsaw and a flame thrower. The inspiration, he recalls, was all the deadlines he had to deal with managing his own career. "What if I could be free of it?"

Looking back, it's a miracle he didn't burn down a club.

He also took to busking in a big way, and you'd find him out in the streets playing in all weather - like the snow storm where I photographed him in the shot below. Look closely and you'll see a copy of Sleep Alone, the record with a cover featuring my portraits of him after his skinhead encounter, taped to his tom. It wasn't the most audacious thing that Graeme did by a long shot, and those photos ended up being my own ticket to an encounter with the music industry legend that is Michael Alago, but that's a story for another day.

Graeme Kirkland plays in a snowstorm, Toronto, Winter 1992

Graeme Kirkland, Toronto, August 2018

By the late '90s Graeme felt that he was doing more work setting up shows - booking venues and getting grants and finding players and doing publicity - than actually playing music. "I didn't feel like a drummer any more," he told me. "This is marketing. I had become a businessman."

So if playing music had turned him into a businessman, Graeme quietly decided to pursue that path, and got himself an entry-level job at a securities trading firm. Nearly twenty years later he's a senior investment advisor who's been on teams that have managed over $850 million dollars at a variety of banks and firms. I visited him at his new office in a leafy and venerable west end neighbourhood and convinced him to sit for some new photos after over twenty-five years.

"That was always my deepest goal," he recalled. "I wanted to live something so intense that you wanted to die from it. I still have that in me very deeply."

"I had experiences nobody else has had," he told me. "Doing exactly what I wanted to do." The only thing he regretted, if only for a while, was that he'd never gotten an MBA like all the other struggling traders at that first securities job. He hasn't had a drum kit in years.

Graeme Kirkland, Toronto, August 2018

Jazz

Joe Bowie, Toronto, 1988

THE DEATH LAST WEEK OF PIANIST CECIL TAYLOR GOT ME THINKING ABOUT discovering jazz, back when artists like Taylor were still regulars at jazz festivals. Digging through my negative files, I found my shots of Taylor's solo concert at the DuMaurier Jazz Festival - just a few frames at the beginning of a roll, taken on a sweltering summer evening in an intimate, recently opened theatre built out of a former ice house by the lake.

The shutter on my Spotmatic rang out like a gun cocking in the darkened space, attracting dirty looks from audience members. I only barely knew what I was doing, so I'm still amazed my film caught Taylor's shirt sticking to his back in the heat, and the thumb of his outstretched hand targeting a single key of the piano. I had only just discovered the music after several false starts, and I could only barely understand what Taylor was doing, but I was enthralled with all these wild, unpredictable new sounds and intent on capturing as much as I could with my camera.

James Blood Ulmer, Toronto, 1986

Cecil Taylor, Toronto, 1987

I got into jazz in a roundabout way, starting with Charlie Christian's sessions with Benny Goodman's small groups as a teenager, and then the funk-influenced, punk-approved post-Ornette Coleman records of Joe Bowie's Defunkt and James Blood Ulmer. I photographed Ulmer at a mini festival held in a Queen West club like I was shooting a punk band, all harsh flash and kinetic blur slammed together.

Working from recommendations made by my friend Tim Powis and each month's new issue of The Wire, I began listening to a lot of the more challenging artists touring and recording at the time, veterans of R&B groups and free jazz and the New York loft scene. At the same time I tried to play catch up with all of the music that had come before that when artists like Jimmy Smith or Lee Konitz or Clifford Jordan or Dizzy Gillespie would pass through town. I almost always brought along my camera.

Hamiet Bluiett, World Saxophone Quartet, Toronto, 1987

Charlie Haden, Toronto, 1987

Jimmy Smith, Toronto, 1987

It's hard to believe, but the old arguments about "traditional versus avant garde" were still being fought over then, even while the veterans of the free improvisation movements of the '60s were becoming as established and venerable as the musicians who'd made their name playing bop after the collapse of the big bands in the '50s. Sometimes those arguments would be embodied in a single musician like Archie Shepp, who had traded in his dashiki for a tailored suit to play blues, spirituals, ballads and standards.

Archie Shepp & Horace Parlan, Toronto, 1988

Lee Konitz, Toronto, 1989

Abdullah Ibrahim, Toronto, 1990

Oliver Jones, Toronto, 1988

Miles Davis, Toronto, 1990

This was the last long moment when jazz musicians got signed to major labels and jazz concerts were reviewed in daily newspapers. It was serious music, taken seriously, and every major city worth its tourism bureau had a jazz festival sponsored by a major corporation, featuring actual jazz artists and not blues groups, aging pop singers or oddball rock acts. I might have missed the last tours by giants like Ellington and Basie, but there were still legends around, though they could be as inaccessible as rock stars.

I had my obligatory Miles Davis experience, on the trumpeter's last tour before his death. Waiting with the other photographers backstage at Massey Hall to be ushered out to shoot our half song, I heard Richard Flohill, the promoter, warn us that we'd better put on our long lens. I knew what he meant, and as soon as we were in front of the stage Miles retreated to the back, to hide behind the guitarist with his trumpet or stab at a rack of keyboards to puzzling effect. Miles hated the media, and hated making our jobs easier.

Joey Baron, Bill Frisell Quartet, Toronto, 1988

Bobby Previte, NYC, 1990

Ronald Shannon Jackson, Toronto, 1989

Shooting live jazz was never easy - the light was invariably dim, vantage points hard to find, and audience members predictably hostile to a photographer blocking their view or competing with the music with their shutter. (After the Ulmer experiments, I never shot with a flash, knowing how most musicians hated having their concentration shattered with the bursts of light.)

The biggest challenge of all was shooting a drummer - they were at the back of the stage, often in the poorest light, and moving constantly. With Claude Ranger, I worked around this by bringing my own lights and shooting him at a soundcheck. The rest of the time I had to work at the edge of acceptable film speeds and my own competence as a printer to get decent shots of drummers. Some of these shots have only become worth seeing today, with three decades of experience and the wizardry of Photoshop.

Sun Ra Arkestra, Toronto, 1987

Craig Harris, Toronto, 1989

Randy Weston, Toronto, 1989

David Murray, Toronto, 1988

I was on the steep side of a learning curve when I took these photos, both as a photographer and a jazz fan, and every new show was a challenge for my ears and my eyes. I like to think that some of that excitement and energy comes through in these photos, most shot thirty years ago or more, at the last moment when jazz had a place somewhere adjacent to the mainstream of the culture, where it could riff on what was happening there and have its running commentary heard.

Several of these photos ended up on the wall of a gallery - my first group show, organized by the late Paul Hoeffler for the 1988 jazz festival. It was an encouraging moment, and might have had something to do with my decision to pursue photography as a career. I gradually stopped shooting jazz shows, however, preferring to try and get portraits of musicians and not hunching around on the floor annoying other patrons instead of enjoying the show.

It was a long time ago, or at least it seems so today. Looking back, I caught many of these people either during their last stretch of robust personal and artistic health, or not long before they were gone. A deep breath, and here we go...

Cecil Taylor died in Brooklyn on April 5, 2018. Charlie Haden died in Los Angeles on July 11, 2014. Jimmy Smith died in Scottsdale, AZ on February 8, 2005. Horace Parlan died in Korsør, Denmark on February 23, 2017. Ronald Shannon Jackson died in Ft. Worth, TX on October 19, 2013. Miles Davis died in Santa Monica, CA on September 28, 1991. Sun Ra (aka Herman Blount) died in Birmingham, AL on May 30, 1993.

 

Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett, Toronto, May 1993

TONY BENNETT WAS ALWAYS ON THE LIST. I didn't end up photographing most of the people on my list, but in 1993, when I might have described my career as "up and coming," I could still imagine that I'd get access to them one day. So I was pretty thrilled when the chance to do Bennett's portrait came up. I only wish I knew who gave me the assignment, if anyone did; there's nothing in the Big Ledger, so there's every chance that this was something I begged and scrounged into happening, and that these photos might never have been published anywhere until now.

I had photographed Bennett once before, for NOW magazine, live in concert at the old Ontario Place Forum (long since demolished.) I was already a big fan then, thanks to the Jazz compilation Columbia had put out a couple of years previous, when Bennett had re-signed to his original record company after years of struggling with money and drugs. I got a couple of decent shots of Bennett with Ralph Sharon's trio, working the crowd all around him like a pro, and assumed that would be the closest I'd ever get to the man.

Tony Bennett, Ontario Place Forum, Toronto, August 1989

The List was the informal wish list of portrait subjects Chris Buck and I had challenged each other to come up with in the late '80s, sitting around the table in a Chinatown restaurant before he moved to New York City. We didn't imagine we'd have a shot at most of the people on our lists when we were begging for access to bands still playing clubs or counterculture figures passing through town. We had a few names in common, and I think Chris ended up getting quite a few names on his list, but neither of us ever got a portrait of Sinatra.

Bennett was in town doing a benefit for the Variety Club, that much I do know. (His willingness to do charity gigs had long ago earned him the nickname "Tony Benefit.") I'm pretty sure that legendary old school local promoter Gino Empry was present when I took these photos, and though I can't exactly remember where I found this little patch of flattering window light in some uncluttered corner, a tiny stirring of memory is telling me it might have been at the King Edward Hotel downtown.

Tony Bennett, Toronto, May 1993

I loved Bennett's singing. I'd grown up with "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" thanks to the MOR AM radio stations my mom listened to, but when my then-girlfriend was sent a copy of the Jazz compilation to review, I became a huge fan. Years later I'd fall big time for a string of records he released in the late '50s and early '60s (The Beat of My Heart, Tony Sings for Two, I Wanna Be Around, Who Can I Turn To?, If I Ruled The World: Songs For The Jet Set, the records with Count Basie) during the last golden age of the crooner.

The shot above reminds me of the single moment I do recall, when Bennett looked at me through the camera lens and said "Aren't you a bit close?" I don't think he was the first portrait subject to ask me that question, but he's definitely the first one I distinctly remember. I already knew by this point that getting up close to my subjects with a relatively short lens was my best chance to elicit some sense of intimacy in the scant minute - sometimes just a few dozen seconds - I had for these shoots. One day I need to come up with a snappy answer.

Tony Bennett, Toronto, May 1993

After somehow managing to get the access to take these shots, I spent years trying to figure out what to do with them. As long as Bennett remained famous - he is still singing, and still famous, to this day, thanks to a string of duets records he started making in the early 2000s - I knew I had to get them into my portfolio. But anxiety and a typical lack of self-confidence meant that I could never choose the right shot or figure out how to print them the right way. I've revisited this shoot many times, but least two of the frames here are ones that I've never printed before.

The frame at the bottom is my favorite now, a little moment near the end of the shoot when Bennett was probably wondering when his handlers were going to extricate him from my looming camera. Considering that this was probably a shoot that had more to do with begging than an assignment, I can still read the wariness in Bennett's face in most of the shots. And twenty-five years after I shot them, I think I finally figured out how to print them right.

Candido Camero

Candido Camero, Toronto, June 2017

LEGENDARY IS AN OVERUSED WORD, but if you love jazz or Cuban music, it applies to percussionist Candido Camero if it applies to anyone. My friends Jane Bunnett and Larry Cramer have a habit of playing with legendary musicians every now and then, so when I found out that they were bringing 95-year-old Candido to town for a show featuring a conga contest, I knew I had to pull one of the few strings I have and try to get a portrait.

Candido was the conga drummer at the Tropicana nightclub in Havana for eight years before he left for the U.S., where he played and recorded with Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and Al Cohn, among many others. At some point in the '70s he had a few disco hits, and made a record, Dancin' and Prancin', that managed to become influential on the house music scene. He's had a hell of a career, and it's not over yet.

Candido at Lula Lounge, Toronto, June 2017

I showed up at the club for soundcheck and set up my studio in a bag in the little dining room at the front of the club. The soundcheck turned out to be a rehearsal, and I sat and listened to Candido and the band that Jane had assembled around him, which included pianist Hilario Duran, run through most of that night's numbers.

When I finally got Candido in front of my lights, I took a few simple headshots to warm both of us up. While watching him play, I was fascinated by the tape that he wrapped around his fingers - a trick many conga players use to prevent blisters and cracks on their hands. I asked him to bring his hand up to his face, hoping that the white tape and its serrated edges would add some extra visual interest, and provide a cue for anyone who knows percussionists and their ailments.

Candido Camero, Toronto, June 2017

I can't imagine how many times Candido has sat for a photo during his sixty-plus year career, but he was patient and gracious with me as I asked for the tiniest adjustments to his hands in the tight composition my lighting setup demands. Past the midpoint of my own career, I treasure these rare opportunities to get someone like him to sit for a portrait.

On a whim, I'd packed one of my Rolleiflex cameras and a couple of rolls of film that day. I've been scanning old Rollei negatives for the last couple of years for this blog, but it had been well over a decade since I'd run a roll of film through one of my cameras. I put on a close-up filter to get a tighter frame and shot a roll at the end of the shoot. I'll admit that I was shocked at how rusty I felt with the camera - the focus on this frame (the easiest to print without the need to digitally clean up the background) is a bit soft, and would have been unacceptably so back when the Rollei was my main camera. It was fun to use it again, though, just for old time's sake.

Candido Camero, Toronto, June 2017

James Chance

James Chance. Toronto, Dec. 2016

SINCE STARTING THIS BLOG I'VE BEEN REMINDED ABOUT HOW TIME HAS PASSED, and how quickly time is passing. With this in mind, I've become preoccupied with unfinished business, and trying to get portraits of people I've always hoped would end up in front of my camera. Last week I had just such an opportunity.

James Chance has a new record out, and was booked by local music promoting legend Gary Topp to play a show here - once in the early fall, then later in December after that show was postponed. I was a fan of Chance and his bands - the Contortions, James White & the Blacks, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks - long before I ever owned a camera, though he never seemed to pass through town when I was shooting seriously.

I had copies of Chance's records Buy and Off White when I was a lonely misfit high school punk. When most of my schoolmates were into Rush or Springsteen, I was in the basement listening to Chance's punk rock take on funk and free jazz, which sounded like boiled essence of late '70s New York City soundtracking Chance's alternately needy and spiteful vocals. I even went so far as to buy a white dinner jacket and acquire a broken alto saxophone, which I never learned how to play. I didn't make a lot of friends in high school, but I did wear the jacket to the prom.

I can thank Chance for not only giving me an appropriate soundtrack for my slightly retro-oriented teenage angst, but for being my gateway drug to the "challenging" jazz I'd end up listening to a decade later - people like Defunkt, Ornette Coleman, James Blood Ulmer, Last Exit and David Murray, who was briefly Chance's sax teacher. Chance also provided a teasing primer for the American Songbook tunes that would obsess me in the '90s when I (pseudonymously) wrote a column on old jazz for a local weekly.

James Chance live, Rivoli Club, Toronto, Dec. 2016

I arrived early at the club, hoping to get Chance to sit for a quick portrait after soundcheck. It turned out that he didn't do the soundcheck, but Gary talked me up to his guitarist, Tomás Doncker, and I was assured that he'd probably be willing to sit for a portrait after the show. I broke down my studio in a bag again, stuffed it under the soundboard and met some friends for the show.

It was a great gig. Chance has always led a tight band, and I shot a bit from the front of the stage while they did a couple of old Contortions songs, material from his new record, a Gil Scott Heron tune, and encored with James Brown's "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)." With the show over, I collected my gear and waited for a green light from Chance to do a shoot. With some reluctance, he agreed.

James Chance. Toronto, Dec. 2016

I set up on the stage after the gear had been cleared away - my little white folding backdrop and two LED lights bounced into umbrellas. I waited for James to sign CDs and do some business with Gary before he made his way back to the stage and my little studio. He was obviously suffering from some serious back pain, so I got it over as quickly as possible.

For almost half of the frames, Chance has his eyes closed; he seemed to be marshalling what energy he could after a strenuous night. Luckily I really like taking pictures of people with their eyes closed. But when he opened them and fixed his gaze on my lens I was startled at how huge his eyes are, and how fiercely they seemed to look through the camera at me. The shot above is very far from the most intense of the photos I took at the Rivoli that night.

Not wanting to tax Chance further or take up more of his time, I shook his hand and thanked him for the opportunity to take his portrait.

Havana, 1995

Yosvany Terry, Havana, June 1995

I'M GOING BACK TO CUBA TODAY, OVER TWENTY YEARS SINCE THE LAST TIME I WAS THERE. I won't be in Havana, however, which is something of a relief, since I don't imagine a lot of the things I saw happening in Cuba's capitol in the early to mid-'90s have either improved or gone away. (UPDATE: Thanks to Hurricane Matthew, the press trip has been cancelled.)

I've posted photos from my first trip to Havana here and here, when I went with Jane Bunnett to document the recording of Spirits of Havana, probably her most important record. I went back four years later, on my own, to take photos for her follow up, Chamalongo. It was a year after the shortages and economic hardship of the "Special Period" led to something that hadn't been seen much in Cuba for nearly four decades - riots against the government.

It might explain why the city seemed unusually subdued, even sombre. One thing that I couldn't help but notice, though, was that there was a curious absence of stray cats and dogs on the streets. It was on this trip that a friend - someone who worked for the government, no less - warned me to stay away from the Cuban sandwiches.

"I don't think that's pork in them," he said, ominously.

Havana, Cuba, June 1995

I took my cameras out on the street, of course, in the spare time I had during that week, between portrait shoots. For some reason, though, I didn't shoot as much 35mm as I had four years earlier, and most of my contacts were made with the Rolleiflex. It was probably because, by the mid-'90s, I was far more interested in what I could do with medium format film, and had also fallen hopelessly in love with the square format frame. (A love that has persisted until today.)

I was trying to pare down my photos to the cleanest, starkest compositions I could manage, though the photo above of the rooftops of the city, taken from the balcony of a friend's apartment in Centro Habana, isn't very minimalist at all. I tried not to dwell too long on the ruined buildings, as hard as they were to avoid (a whole building had collapsed just before I arrived, I was told) though the photo of the basketball court next to the Malecon - my favorite shot from this trip - gave just enough of a hint of that ongoing decay for me.

Partagas Cigar Factory, Havana, June 1995

I asked my government connection if he could arrange a tour of the Partagas cigar factory for me while I was there. The cigar craze was in full swing by the middle of the '90s, and I'd become an enthusiastic smoker when I could afford it. I probably had some vague ambition to sell some of these shots to one of the cigar magazines when I got home, though how I would have done that I couldn't tell you, then or now.

I shot quite a lot of film at Partagas, colour and black and white, desperate to capture as much of the atmosphere and detail as possible. Looking over the contact sheets today, it's the portraits of the workers that stand out, with these three among the best. I also can't help but notice how thin everyone looks, especially compared to Habaneros four years earlier.

Frank Emilio Flynn, Havana, June 1995

My main reason for the trip was to get portraits of the musicians Jane had played with during the sessions. I'd met Frank Emilio Flynn before, when he'd been on the Spirits of Havana sessions, and when he'd come to Toronto for concerts Jane had organized. He was a dear man, and I felt privileged to visit him at his home in what was once a prosperous suburb of the city near Vedado.

Frank was a legendary figure in Cuban music, who formed a link between the older son traditions and the Afro-Cuban jazz revolution of the '50s. His eyesight had been damaged at birth, and he was completely blind by the time he was a teenage piano prodigy. I tried to capture some of the stateliness of his playing, and his considerable dignity. It helped that the light coming from the street through the big windows of his home was so lovely.

Merceditas Valdes & Tata Guines, Tropicana Club, Havana, June 1995

I had shot Merceditas Valdes for the Spirits of Havana sessions, in which she and her husband, Guillermo Barreto, had played key roles. Guillermo, tragically, had died not long after those sessions, and I could see when I met Merceditas in the lobby of the Inglaterra, my hotel, that she was doing very poorly herself. She was dressed in santera white, and was a real celebrity in the Inglaterra's lobby, basking in the attention of the staff.

We took a cab out to the Tropicana club, one of the few relics of the Batista/Lansky/Traficante era to remain in business under Fidel. Waiting for us was conga player Tata Guines, another legendary figure from the Afro-Cuban music era, who set up his drums by the club's famous fountain.

Tata scared the shit out of me. He had an intimidating reputation, and gave off an air of menace that it was hard to miss even if you hadn't heard any of the rumours or stories that attached themselves to him. He was known as a hard man, even though he probably wasn't as scary as his wife, who once stuck a knife in him.

I posed the two of them together with the fountain in the background, and they quickly began running through a series of practiced poses that they'd probably learned for publicity shots and LP covers back in the '50s. It was touching to see them there, in the middle of this carefully preserved throwback to Havana's less than austere past, and even as I took these photos I felt like I was catching the last moments of a musical era quickly passing. Taken together, everything I shot on this trip had an inescapably elegaic feel.

Yosvany Terry on the Malecon, Havana, June 1995

Not everything I photographed was about the past, however. While I was in Havana, Jane had asked me to take some promo shots for a young saxophonist she was trying to help out. Yosvany Terry was from a musical family, and had come up through Cuba's music schools with a fantastic reputation. I met him at my hotel and walked down to the Malecon, the seaside boulevard, where I wanted to take some shots that hinted at what could become an iconic talent. (Which explains the obvious echo of Dexter Gordon in the photo at the top of this post.)

It's worth noting that the saxophone Yosvany posed with in these shots was broken; even for a talented young player, getting instruments repaired was a challenge, and Jane had set up a charity to help provide instruments, parts and repairs for Cuba's young musicians. Yosvany would, however, overcome this brief setback, and leave the country for New York, where he'd play with major figures like Branford Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Henry Threadgill and Taj Mahal. Today Yosvany Terry lives in Harlem, is a Rockefeller grant recipient, and was hired by Harvard last year as a senior lecturer and Director of Jazz Ensembles.

Merceditas Valdes died in Havana on June 13, 1996.

Frank Emilio Flynn died in Havana on August 23, 2001.

Tata Guines died in Havana on February 4, 2008.