In preparation to taking pictures of Art Bergman and his wife Sheri in my studio tomorrow morning I have been looking at my extremely thick files on Bergmann. In an envelope marked Art Bergmann at home (no date) I found these. There are also pictures of Art and Sheri in bed that are as beautiful. I thought to myself, "What can I possibly write about them?" I thought of one of my most favourite jazz records of all time, Gerry Mulligan's 1959 What Is There To Say? (with Art Farmer on trumpet, Bill Crow on bass and Dave Bailey on drums) The beautiful song that starts this record, What is there to say? is credited to Jarburg, Duke and it was recorded in New York City January 15, 1959. I cannot possibly write anything about this photograph except to say how lucky I was.
Gerry Mulligan's liner notes:
What is there to say? Actually, there's no need to say very much on cover notes beyond the names of the songs and the players. (I like to see the dates of the recordings also, myself.). But I notice a lot of jazz albums these days (some of my own included) whose notes go pretty far afield, with hardly a mention about what's inside (sometimes no mention at all).
I will now go far afield.
Jazz music is fun to me. All music can be fun for that matter, but what I mean is we usually have a hell of a good time playing and listening to each other.
But some of the people who do the most talking about jazz (that may even be the basic problem, right there!) don't seem to get any real fun out of listening to it. It seems to me that all the super-intellectualizing on the technics of jazz and the lack of response to the emotion and meaning of jazz is spoiling the fun for listeners and players alike.
So if the critics haven't got everyone scared with a lot of high-flown technical talk and Jack Kerouac hasn't got everyone impressed with the beauties of numbness and hipness for hipness' sake, maybe we could launch a little enthusiasm and restore fun to its rightful place in jazz.
Now, inside this jacket is a record (or should be!) into which we (meaning the Quartet and the people from Columbia) put a great deal of work to make as good an album as we could. And at the risk of sounding indecent, I'd like to say we all had a lot of fun making it.
Now we just hope you have a share in our fun.
