The Golden Age of Jazz - William P. Gottlieb

Steven A. Cerra

“It was, to say the least, a dazzling period. Every time you turned around, particularly in New York, there was something new on 52nd Street or in Greenwich Village: the hectic three-piano boogie-woogie playing of Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson mixed with Joe Turner's blue shouting at Cafe Society; Billie Holiday glowing under the huge white gardenia in her hair; the subtle sound of John Kirby's sextet; the powerhouse bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton; the "weird" concatenations of the emergent beboppers at the Royal Roost, at Bop City, and, eventually, at Birdland.

Bill Gottlieb landed in the midst of all this — intentionally, and with a fan's enthusiasm, as a writer; unintentionally (as he explains) as a photographer. The combination of the two talents put him in an unusual position. There were others around then who were writing on jazz (I was one of them). And there were others who were taking pictures. But no one else was taking pictures and getting the stories at the same time — a combination that gave Gottlieb's approach to his photography a distinctive, storytelling touch.” - John S. Wilson, Jazz Critic for the New York Times

From Washington Post days I learned that I couldn't expect to get staff photographers to cover my music stories; it would have meant their working on their own time, late at night. To get me off their backs, Post photographers taught me to take my own pictures. That's what I've been doing ever since. - William P. Gottlieb, Jazz author, critic and photographer

This piece gets its title from a book published by DaCapo Press in 1979.  It is a collection of 200 of William P. Gottlieb’s excellent photographs with brief annotations by Mr. Gottlieb of most of the important figures in Jazz during the 1930’s and 1940’s.

All of the photographs in Mr. Gottlieb’s book and the remainder of his vast collection has been donated to the Library of Congress and you can explore this treasure trove by going here.

William P. Gottlieb wrote about Jazz for the Washington Post, Down Beat and Saturday Review and his photographs appeared in countless Jazz anthologies. This book presents the best of his work from the 1930s and 1940s [aka “The Hot Music Era”].

How both Mr. Gottlieb’s career in Jazz and his book about the “Golden Age” came to be written are beautifully recounted in the following Introduction by the distinguished Jazz author and critic, John S. Wilson, and in Mr. Gottlieb’s own Foreword.

This is not a “looking back” book. What makes it so special was that Mr. Gottlieb was there to document aspects of the early years of Jazz while these were happening.


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