Last month, I reviewed Hank O’Neal’s remarkable More Than Music book which contains his colorful stories (along with a countless number of photos) of some of the most interesting musicians and personalities who he encountered through his careers as the founder and head of Chiaroscuro Records, photographer, record and concert producer, manager of his own recording studios, organizer of the Floating Jazz Festival, work on documentary films, and other miscellaneous jobs. Reading that highly recommended book led me to his equally rewarding The Ghosts of Harlem.
The large book (12″ x 9″), which is rather heavy to lift, was published in 2009 but certainly not reviewed enough. Fortunately, Hank O’Neal began this project earlier, interviewing 34 swing era musicians during 1986-87, seven during 1991-96, and a final one (Billy Taylor) in 2007. The original plot of the book was documenting what Harlem was like at its artistic height (the 1920s and ‘30s), and discussing why Harlem steadily declined from the 1940s on to the point that, by the mid-1980s, other than the Apollo Theater, there was very little live music to be found.
