{"id":705,"date":"2006-03-22T15:16:43","date_gmt":"2006-03-22T20:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2006\/03\/22\/an-interactive-day-in-harlem\/"},"modified":"2006-03-22T15:16:43","modified_gmt":"2006-03-22T20:16:43","slug":"an-interactive-day-in-harlem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/22\/an-interactive-day-in-harlem\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interactive Day in Harlem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This famous 1958 photo by Art Kane, <em>A Great Day in Harlem<\/em>, brought together 57 jazz musicians for a group portrait.  Luminaries range from Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins to Charles Mingus and Dizzie Gillespie and Sonny Rollins.  <a href=\"http:\/\/norbizness.com\/archives\/001561.html\">Norbizness<\/a> points to a helpful web page:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlem.org\/\">harlem.org<\/a>, which provides a <strong>clickable<\/strong> version of the photo!  Point to any musician, and it will tell you who they are and provide a brief biography.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlem.org\/\"><img src='http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/uploads\/greatday.jpg.jpg' alt='A Great Day in Harlem' \/><\/a><br \/>\nYears ago I saw a <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0109934\/\">documentary by Jean Bach<\/a> about the making of the portrait, which included many interviews with the surviving musicians (now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000BVNS7U\/\">available on DVD<\/a>).  My favorite part was seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlem.org\/people\/monk.html\">Thelonious Monk<\/a> get ready for the shoot.  You see him strategizing about how to stand out among all the other luminaries.  First he decides to wear black, to look cool.  Then he figures that everyone else will be wearing black, so he&#8217;s going to wear white.  (As it turns out, everyone else had the same thought, so there&#8217;s a lot of white jackets in the photo.)  Finally he realizes that the best thing to do will be to grab a spot next to the ladies, where everyone will be looking first.  And lo and behold there he is, next to fellow pianists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlem.org\/people\/williams.html\">Mary Lou Williams<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlem.org\/people\/mcpartland.html\">Marian McPartland<\/a> (still going strong as host of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/programs\/pianojazz\/\">NPR&#8217;s Piano Jazz<\/a>).  Monk needn&#8217;t have worried; he didn&#8217;t have any trouble standing out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This famous 1958 photo by Art Kane, A Great Day in Harlem, brought together 57 jazz musicians for a group portrait. Luminaries range from Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins to Charles Mingus and Dizzie Gillespie and Sonny Rollins. Norbizness points to a helpful web page: harlem.org, which provides a clickable version of the photo! Point [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}