Bob Willoughby is perhaps best known for his work as a Hollywood studio photographer, shooting iconic portraits of superstars Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor among many others. But before all this, when he was in his twenties, Willoughby was an avid jazz photographer. Listening to the local radio for live broadcasts of shows, Willoughby would rush over to nearby venues with camera in tow. Developing rolls of film at night in his garage, a DIY darkroom, these piercing black and white photographs go some way to documenting the lively California jazz scene of the 1950s.
Jazz: Body and Soul is an elegantly made book that collects together a number of Willoughby’s finest photos from the finest West Coast gigs of that era. Willoughby’s camera goes onstage and backstage, capturing incredible stills of singers and musicians, ranging from Billie Holliday to Miles Davis to Louis Armstrong. It begins with a tender foreword by the late pianist Dave Brubeck, who writes that Willoughby “not only had a good eye”, but “a keen ear, and seemed to know when to snap at an inspired moment”. This is as much a love letter to 50s jazz as it is to Willoughby’s inspired photography.
Willoughby’s photos are primarily focused on the artists themselves, and in truth he does not often take pictures of the crowd, yet when he does they are quite amazing. Open mouthed and frozen in a moment of sheer ecstasy, some hammer the stage with their fists while others look on in astonishment. In one particularly brilliant photo set, Big Jay McNeely rolls around the floor playing saxophone as the crowd simply lose their shit.
Many of the photos are accompanied by some of Willoughby’s own recollections. “This was really something”, he writes alongside the portraits of a sweaty Big Jay. “As I walked in, the concert had already begun, and the hall was rocking on its foundations. I could see the audience on their feet screaming […] To this day I have never seen or heard anything to match it […] He knelt, he sat, he laid flat on his back, playing into the faces of orgasmic girls.”
Willoughby uses the dimmed lights of jazz concerts to great effect. Some of the book’s best photos are of shadowed figures, hunched over their instruments, drenched in darkness away from the spotlight. In one particular portrait of Louis Armstrong’s bassist, Arvell Shaw, a flicker of light shines faintly on his left arm that arches up towards the neck of the double bass. The white of his shirt collar and the outline of his face and ear are all that remain visible amidst the enveloping darkness.
The book closes with Willoughby’s shots of Stuttgart’s jazz festival, taken after he was persuaded to come out retirement in the early 90s. In many ways, this departure from 50s LA is quite out of keeping with the book’s visual narrative, but it works as a sort of postscript, a testament to both jazz’s and Willoughby’s enduring popularity. Combining backstage photos (in one instance, he captures Lee Konitz in the control room playing his alto sax while watching Wimbledon on TV) with foggy onstage shots, they show that times may change, but Willoughby’s skill did not.
Jazz: Body and Soul would be a fantastic Christmas present for anyone interested in jazz’s “cool” age, but the joy and beauty of these pictures will doubtless carry it on beyond the festive season to new generations of music lovers.
Dominic O’Key