The Jazz Loft Radio Series

In this episode, thanks to W. Eugene Smith's tape recorders, we get to experience something audiences rarely hear - the unrehearsed, imperfect, open-ended, overlong, rough-around-the-edges music that jazz players made when they got together to jam at 821 Sixth Avenue. No audience present. Just the musicians playing.

The late vibes player Teddy Charles said it best in an interview:

When nobody's around, and you're just by yourself, that's when the best jazz happens. Really incredible stuff. You take chances on things. The real excitement of jazz is taking chances. Whether you make it or not. You try for something even if it doesn't happen. And that's what makes Jazz really exciting.

Featured in this episode are jam sessions with:

1 - Dave McKenna, piano; Fred Greenwell, sax; Bill Takas, bass; Ron Free, drums2 - Bill Potts, piano; Zoot Sims, tenor sax; Ron Free, drums3 - Paul Bley, piano; Jimmy Stevenson, bass; Roland Alexander, tenor sax; Eddie Listengart, trumpet; Lex Humphries, drums4 - Sonny Clarke, piano; other unidentified players5 - Chick Corea, piano; Jimmy Stevenson, bass; Joe Hunt, drums

Few people in history had as much access to the greatest jazz musicians of our time as W. Eugene Smith. The famous LIFE magazine photographer moved in 1957 to a rundown, bohemian loft on 6th avenue, in the heart of Manhattan’s Flower District. During this time, the likes of Thelonius Monk, Chick Corea and Hall Overton slept here, smoked here, and played here—and Smith captured nearly of all it on a series of unparalleled audio recordings. Those tapes finally resurfaced, more than two decades after Smith’s death in 1978. Producer Sara Fishko first made use of Smith's archive to create these pictures in sound, giving us intimate access to a time and a place long gone.

Before photographer W. Eugene Smith lived in a rundown loft in the thick of New York’s jazz scene, he lived in another world. A native Kansan who earned a scholarship to Notre Dame, Smith was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine -- considered photojournalism's top job in an era when photographers were major stars. What compelled him to leave that life behind?

W. Eugene Smith recorded more than 4,000 hours in his Manhattan loft. Some 139 different personalities—musicians, writers and artists—make appearances. The conversations are one thing, but the impromptu jam sessions, involving remarkable musical collaborations, add to the incredible story of what became known as the Jazz Loft.  

By day, Hall Overton was an instructor of classical music at Juilliard. By night, he was living, teaching, and playing jazz piano at the Jazz Loft. In this episode, some of the musicians who knew him best share their memories of the brilliant, self-effacing man with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lip.

Like many of New York City's most influential artists, most of the prominent jazz musicians of the 1950s came from someplace else. After World War II, returning soldiers flocked to New York, bouncing from clubs to studios to lofts in search of a place where jazz could flourish.

Ron Free, a prodigious drummer from Charleston, South Carolina, was the Jazz Loft’s "house drummer" from 1958 to 1960. Holing up in W. Eugene Smith’s apartment for weeks at a time, he jammed with everyone from Thelonious Monk to Chick Corea. Eventually, Free's personal struggles with drug addiction forced him to leave New York. But Smith’s tapes provide the enduring proof of Free’s musical legacy.

In the early mornings, as each all-night jam session at the loft came to a close, musicians stumbled out into the fragrant air of the surrounding flower shops. For W. Eugene Smith, the Flower District was more than a neighborhood -- it was an obsession, and a subject crucial to his evolution as a photographer and an artist. This episode explores the peculiar harmony of a neighborhood that bustled with flower merchants by day and cleared out by night, giving jazz musicians the place all to themselves.

In early 1959, a genuine stir was created in the loft -- even among the more seasoned jazz players -- when Thelonious Monk turned up to arrange his music and rehearse with the help of drummer Hall Overton. Monk and Overton had a rare chemistry, and the result of their labors made a little history on February 29th, when they took the stage at New York's Town Hall.

The commercial jazz world relied on by-the-hour club dates and recording sessions, but the after-hours loft scene gave musicians the luxury of forgetting time, as they played through long, uninterrupted, all-night jam sessions. In this episode, hear immersive samples of the young Chick Corea and other musicians from W. Eugene Smith's recordings.