“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 51–70th Birthday Tribute at the Newport Jazz Festival

Our previous post dealt with the numerous ways Louis Armstrong’s 70th birthday was being celebrated on July 4, 1970, usually with Jack Bradley involved in some capacity. The grandest of all tributes, though, would come on July 10 when George Wein turned over an entire evening of the Newport Jazz Festival to celebrating Satch’s 70th–and yes, Jack Bradley would be there again, too.

We covered the backstory of how Armstrong’s Newport tribute came to be in a post from 2020, so we’re just going to dive in and focus on on Bradley’s connection to the event, sharing many of his photos, of course, but also other artifacts he saved from his trip to Rhode Island, including numerous newspapers. For starters, here’s the front page of The Evening Bulletin on July 10, with a photo of Armstrong and producer Wein:

A few hours later, Bradley was at the afternoon rehearsal–when Louis showed up in sweater, shorts, and long, black Jobst support socks, dancing to the sounds of the Eureka Brass Band of New Orleans and New York pals Jack Lesberg, Bobby Hackett, and Tyree Glenn:

Here are two photos of Louis with just the musicians from New Orleans:

After the joyous meeting with the Eureka Brass Band, Armstrong settled around the piano to go over the evening’s plan, alongside music director Bobby Hackett and George Wein; they’re partially obscured, but you’ll spot Captain John Handy and Dizzy Gillespie in the following photo, too:

Louis then held court, breaking up everyone in the vicinity as he animatedly told a story:

As the laughter continued, you can now spot a film camera and sound man over Wein’s shoulders:

Wein and producer Sidney J. Stiber correctly realized the magnitude of the event and had it filmed in its entirety for what eventually became a three-hour documentary. A shortened version was aired on PBS some years back as Good Evening Ev’rybody and some clips are on YouTube. The following clip opens with Armstrong in the den of his Corona, Queens home in late July 1970, talking about “Hello, Dolly!,” but then it cuts to the Newport rehearsal as Armstrong goes over the “Dolly” routine with Hackett, Glenn, pianist Dave McKenna, bassist Jack Lesberg, and drummer Oliver Jackson. It’s a fascinating clip as is but for our purposes, look out for 3:04 and the very end when Jack Bradley can be seen mulling about and snapping photos!

Here’s another one of those Bradley photos, now with Armstrong at the microphone, Wein watching carefully, and Hackett, McKenna and Glenn providing backup (Bradley was spending most of his free time as Hackett’s road manager in this period so he never missed an opportunity to snap a photo of his two close friends making music together):

I don’t have a sufficient story for what’s going on in this next print but it’s still worth a share as it’s a sepia-toned version of the above photo but Bradley–or someone close to him–drew an outline around Louis and the microphone in white ink!

Bradley also brought along some color film and for once in this era, retained his negatives. Here they are opening once again with the foursome of Hackett, Glenn, Armstrong, and Wein:

And here’s a series of beautiful color shots of Pops emoting at the microphone:

Those last two are really gems and it’s worth spending a little more time with them to properly pay tribute to Bradley’s eye. He knew they were good and had (somewhat faded) snapshots made of each, sketching where he believed they should be cropped:

And indeed, he turned them each into lovely 8 x 10 prints:

Before the rehearsal broke up, Bradley snapped one fun shot with some of Armstrong’s New Orleans cohorts–from left to right: pianist Billie Pierce and husband, trumpeter DeDe Pierce; clarinetist Willie Humphrey’s wife; drummer Cie Frazier’s wife; Louis; clarinetist Willie Humphrey; and Lucille Armstrong:

That evening, the formal tribute began with a “Trumpet Player’s Tribute” to Louis, featuring Hackett, Gillespie, Wild Bill Davison, Joe Newman, Jimmy Owens, and Ray Nance. We shared a portion of the audio in our 2020 post (and it’s now available in its entirety at this YouTube link) and will have some video to share momentarily. I assume Bradley photographed the tribute, but those photos did not make it into our Archives; perhaps now is a good time to mention that Bradley’s non-Armstrong photos are administered by his dear friend Mike Persico, who started a non-profit, Classic Jazz Visions, to spread the sights and sounds of Bradley’s photography and the music he loved. Mike recently set up a Kickstarter campaign to help preserve the rest of Bradley’s photo collection and to continue doing live events dedicated to Jack’s memory–if you’d like to donate, click here!

Thus, while we don’t have any photos of the trumpeter’s tribute, we do have Bradley’s handwritten notes, which are very interesting, especially with his informal rating system:

Louis closed the tribute by striding out during “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” and singing a gorgeous version of his longtime theme:

Bradley began shooting from the audience and captured some true gems. Once again, like most of Bradley’s 1969-1970 output, the negatives no longer survive, but the prints that do are all home runs:

The above photo is especially glorious and was used on the cover of the October 1970 issue of Coda, featuring a column by Bradley inside:

The evening was capped off by a memorable appearance by Mahalia Jackson. Bradley was able to capture a joyous shot of the two New Orleans legends, giving it a sepia tone for good effect:

Here’s Mahalia and Louis and Willie Humphrey, who served as the grand marshal of this portion of the concert:

A proud Willie Humphrey guides Armstrong to his final bows of the evening, as saxophonist Captain John Handy and trombonist Benny Morton play in the background:

That is all that survives of what Bradley shot at the concert and rehearsal, but he did make it backstage and had his photo taken with Armstrong. I’m not sure who took it–possibly the late Harriet Choice, who also took a memorable backstage photo of Louis planting a kiss on Dan Morgenstern at this gathering–but it’s a keeper:

The next morning, Bradley raided the Newport newsstands and grabbed up everything he could find that mentioned the Newport tribute–here’s a bunch of front pages and articles Bradley saved:

That concludes our coverage of Armstrong’s 70th birthday tribute at the Newport Jazz Festival, as seen through the lens of Jack Bradley, but we’d like to close with a special video from our Gösta Hägglöf Collection: a two-hour cut of the documentary Wein and Sidney Stiber made that aired on German television in the early 2000s. It has extra footage of the rehearsal and the trumpet player’s tribute, more interview footage of Armstrong and his den, and plenty of glimpses of Jack Bradley throughout–enjoy!