60 years ago this month, Esquire magazine released its Golden Age of Jazz issue featuring that photo seen there in the Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal. The picture shows 57 legendary jazz musicians gathered in front of a Harlem townhouse in 1958. Now, a new book reveals the story behind that historic image. Have you been back here since that day?
I haven't, not at all. Really? Benny Golson is one of the great tenor sax players, a composer of jazz standards like Killer Joe, a member of the Jazz Hall of Fame.
Golson was also a member of the elite group of musicians who gathered on this Harlem doorstep in 1958. Do you remember this day 60 years ago? I remember it like it was 24 hours ago. Do you really?
I remember everything about it. Goulson, who'll be 90 next week, had just moved to New York to join Dizzy Gillespie's band when he was invited to a photo shoot at 17 East 126th Street. Did you know what you were coming to?
Not really. All my heroes. And then I said to myself, what am I doing here?
You didn't think you were worthy. No! Nobody knew who the heck Benny Colston was. 58 musicians showed up. The photograph would capture the giants of jazz.
Count Basie sitting on the curb. Dizzy Gillespie palling with Roy Eldridge. Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.
Jerry Mulligan and Gene Krupa. Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins. Imagine, said one of the musicians, If everybody had brought their instruments and played. How would you describe this group? Cream of the crop.
So show me where you are in this. I was at the very top. You were way up at the top. At the very top.
Golson is one of two surviving musicians from the photograph. And the only one still performing. I didn't think it was going to make it this far. I'm glad you did. What a surprise.
This picture was your dad's idea. It was. Jonathan Cain's father, Art Cain, was a hot shot young art director in 1958. He pitched the idea of the picture to Esquire magazine for its Golden Age of Jazz issue. The concept here was just really to assemble as many great people as possible. Your dad really wasn't sure on the morning how many people were actually going to be there.
He really wasn't. It was an act of faith. The new book, Art Cain, Harlem 1958, shows frame by frame how the musicians began to gather for the 10 a.m. call time. What was the atmosphere like?
First word that comes to my mind is loaded. Yeah. You never had that many musicians of stature together in one place. Mona Hinton, wife of bass player Milt Hinton, took these home movies that day. There was no money involved.
I don't know if there was catering. I seriously doubt it. There were no stylists? No stylists around. What you really had were 58 brilliant artists who came for the love of their craft.
Kane's vintage contact sheets show there were distractions as he tried to take the big picture. A horse and buggy going by, street peddlers passing, kids on the curb, and the musicians themselves who were all excited to see each other. I think famously my dad rolled up a New York Times into a megaphone shape and started imploring people to please move up into the steps.
Did you have any sense of that day of what a big deal that picture would be? None whatsoever. When the magazine came out... this one. I bought it of course and I turned to the picture and I said boy that's a great picture.
And like all magazines you keep it for a while and I finally threw it in the trash. You did? I threw it in the trash.
But people fell in love with the photograph right away. And over time the the legend of this picture and its impact on our culture has just has grown. It's really taken on a life of its own. Art Kane's career as a photographer was launched that day. His future subjects would include Aretha, Janis Joplin, and The Who.
Benny Golson became a composer and arranger, scoring music for TV shows, including MASH, Mission Impossible, and The Partridge Family. But nothing was quite like the morning he spent on this Harlem doorstep. This was unforgettable. Magnum opus. Sixty years later, how do you feel about being in that picture?
I feel like it was a privilege. On the day we met Benny Golson... The new owner of the brownstone came out to give him a copy of the magazine he'd thrown out all those years ago.
Sixteen years old. Can you believe it? And I'm going to treasure this until I'm dismissed from the element of time. Such a lovely guy, Benny Golson. I should mention the other musician, jazz musician, great, who's still with us, Sonny Rollins, who's 88. I also mentioned that there were 58 musicians who showed up, but only 57 are in the picture.
Because one got tired and sat on a stoop down the street and missed the shot. Can you imagine getting the invitation and deciding 10 a.m. is too early?
They were worried a lot of them wouldn't show, but they were stunned when so many people showed up. And then what, three showed up late? There were three who showed up too late.
Can you imagine? It's a classic.