Jazz Passes Through a Photograph
Hipster Paradise's new label features Billie Holiday and William P. Gottlieb.
Can a photograph have a voice?
Looking at this portrait of Billie Holiday, one can't help but believe it's possible. Parted lips, the light falling on her face, an expression captured somewhere within the song… The photograph is silent, but one can't help but expect the rest of the sentence.
We chose this image for Hipster Paradise's new label. Tracing the name back a bit, we knew the path already led through jazz. Now, Billie Holiday is on that path.
On the other side of the camera is William P. Gottlieb, a man who has listened to and written about jazz for years, and ultimately changed the way we look at it.
The photograph was taken at the Downbeat club in New York. The Library of Congress records the date as approximately February 1947. The venue is located on 52nd Street in Manhattan; it's one of those places that someone interested in jazz history would stop at when they see it on a map.
In those years, this street was often simply called "The Street." The doors of the clubs opened into one another, and the music shifted as musicians moved from one stage to another. Swing was still there in all its vibrancy; bebop was exploring the boundaries of melody, harmony, and rhythm. The periods of jazz that would later have their own chapters in books could be heard together on the same street at that time.
Gottlieb lived through these very years. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday… We owe him some of the images we refer to when we conjure up the face of jazz today. His work from 1938 to 1948 also documented how music looked as it changed.
He actually started out as a journalist. He wrote jazz articles for The Washington Post, interviewing musicians. When the newspaper couldn't afford a photographer for his column, he bought his own camera and learned to take pictures. After the war, he both wrote and photographed for Down Beat magazine. In a way, he was searching with his camera for what didn't make it into his notebook at the end of the interview.
The names here are prone to a slight confusion: Downbeat refers to the New York club where the photograph was taken; Down Beat is the magazine that began publication in Chicago in 1934. We're talking about two separate institutions. In this story, Gottlieb is the one who brings them together: working on the pages of one while overseeing the stage of the other.
We believe that the intimacy in Gottlieb's photographs stems partly from this. It's the gaze of someone who has listened to the musician in front of him, talked to them, and learned what to pay attention to. In his own words, he says that he tried most to capture the personality. Moreover, due to the costs of film and flash, he often had to make do with only two or three frames in a shoot. Considering today's habits of browsing through hundreds of images with a flick of the thumb, it's quite a different kind of viewing etiquette.
In Holiday's portrait, this attention to detail is immediately apparent. The dark background allows light to shine on his face. His expression holds our gaze. The strangeness of looking at a photograph taken while the song is playing is this: the image has stopped, but we continue to think about what came before and after it. What Gottlieb captures here is the duration contained within a single moment.
When listening to Billie Holiday, we also play with time. She pauses a word. She brings the sentence a little behind the beat. Just when we think she's delayed, she puts it in place. The melody is familiar; everything happens again in her performance.
Inspired by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, Holiday thought like a jazz musician with her voice. Her recordings with Teddy Wilson and Lester Young served as a benchmark for singers who came after her. The name "Lady Day," given to her by Young, remains a reminder of this close relationship.
In Holiday's interpretation, the flair is often extracted from the smallest detail: the lengthening of a syllable, the slight bolding of a word, the space left at the end of a sentence. In that narrow passage between speech and song, she can sing words written by someone else as if they were coming from her own mouth for the first time. Knowing a song for years doesn't prevent you from relearning it when you listen to it sung by Holiday.
The weight of this voice in jazz history takes on another meaning in "Strange Fruit." Recorded in 1939 and performed at the Café Society, the song confronted the audience with the violence of lynching against Black Americans. The expectation that beauty would bring comfort is met with a harsh reality in Holiday's voice. Looking at her photograph, one must remember this determination. Behind the face on our label is an artist who had a say in what she said on stage.
The name Hipster Paradise already brought us closer to this world. In the history of the word hipster in jazz circles, there is the listener who closely follows the music, curious about what others haven't heard yet. Lester Young being considered one of the early symbols of this culture makes his partnership with Holiday even more meaningful for our little story. The journey from our shop in Moda to 1940s New York, it turns out, could all fit within a product name.
In this blend, familiar ingredients find their place on a somewhat unusual table: rooibos, coconut, cocoa, and lavender. Warm, round, roasted, floral… The way they respond to each other is as important as how they are individually. Holiday's opening, with subtle time shifts in a familiar song, reminds us of this union. Like lavender coming between cocoa and coconut: it sounds a little surprising at first, then you get used to its presence.
The purple letters on the new label, extending outwards from Holiday's mouth, also stem from this. We've taken the sound we thought we heard within the photograph a step further with the text. It circles around the fine lines; while the portrait remains in its own black and white world, Hipster Paradise intervenes in the conversation from today.
The reason we love this photo is that looking at it makes us want to listen. Gottlieb's patience, Holiday's use of time, the way a song is reconstructed in one's mind... We loved how all these elements touched each other on Hipster Paradise.
We know what we're going to put in the cup. As for the record, this time we can leave the choice to Lady Day.
Photograph: William P. Gottlieb, Billie Holiday, Downbeat, New York, circa February 1947. William P. Gottlieb Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress. Typography and graphic design on the label by Mama Ram.
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