“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 54–Friendly Fifty Picnic August 1970

Our last couple of posts in the series were set in early August 1970, when Jack Bradley attended the recording sessions for Louis “Country and Western” Armstrong and the resultant photo shoot for that took place in Central Park. Bradley had spent much of the previous year in Cape Cod, serving as Bobby Hackett’s road manager, but now he was firmly back in Armstrong’s orbit and he had one more epic hang planned with Pops before he had to head back to New England.

The occasion was the annual picnic of the “Friendly Fifty” social club, an organization that began in the late 1950s made up of jazz musicians over the age of 50. There’s surprisingly very little on the history of the Friendly Fifty– whose motto was “Keep Our Jazz Culture Alive”–which seems like a missed opportunity since so many jazz greats were members (and I’ve seen videos of gatherings as recent as 2015). If there are any Friendly Fifty historians out there, please write in!

The 1970 Friendly Fifty picnic took place at Mount View Lodge in Nyack, New York. Bradley never wrote down a date but he wrote down the directions on the same slip of paper that had various notes about the Country and Western session and photo shoot so it was definitely August. My guess is it was Sunday, August 16, for reasons that will be shared below. Also, Bradley shot the 1968 picnic and dated those photos as being from August 18, 1970, a Sunday, so the third Sunday of the month makes sense. And though Armstrong isn’t in the photo, here’s one of those 1968 images, followed by Bradley’s handwritten identification of the musicians:

Though Armstrong had been out of the hospital since May 1969 and had made several television appearances, he had mostly remained off the scene since 1968. Thus, his stopping by the picnic was a big deal to the musicians, some of whom were under the impression that he had left the hospital to be there. For example, in the book Hot Jazz: From Harlem to Storyville, trumpeter Harvey Davis recalled, “I am Secretary of the Friendly Fifty Club; Louis Armstrong was honorary member of the Club, he loved the Club. In fact, he came out of the hospital the August before he died. He said that he had to see his men, so Jack Bradley and an attendant from the hospital brought him to the Friendly Fifty picnic.”

We don’t really have any specific stories or anecdotes from the Friendly Fifty picnic, but we do have photos–here’s Louis with the whole bunch!

As they used to say at baseball games, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard; using Bradley’s notes, I’ve attempted to identify the musicians in correct order, adding their instruments when known. The back row consists of, left to right, drummer Floyd Morris, saxophonist Johnny Russell, drummer James “Rip” Harewood, reedman Carl Frye, Micky Meeks, saxophonist Harold “Hoggy” McFerran, saxophonist Frank Powell, trumpeter Bob Williams, saxophonist Irving “Skinny” Brown, Isaiah (Ike) Bland, saxophonist Clarence Grimes, Charlie “Baby” Rector, trumpeter Harvey Davis, saxophonist Greely Walton, bassist Louis Thompson, pianist Don Donaldson, and saxophonist Irving Taylor

In the front row, left to right, that’s saxophonist Mike Hedley, bassist Johnny Williams, saxophonist Eddie Williams, Pops, reedman Bingie Madison, trumpeter Bernard Flood, pianist Leon Battles, saxophonist Les Carr, and drummer Bill Beason. Armstrong must have especially been glad to see Greely Walton, Bingie Madison, Johnny Williams and Bernard Flood, each of whom played with his big band in the 1930s and 40s.

Now that you know the participants, here are some more group photos in both color and black-and-white:

Somehow, the group originally attempted to take a few photos without Armstrong, which Bradley shot in black-and-white:

It didn’t take long before Armstrong was brought over and the fun really began:

Eventually Bradley himself was invited to be a part of the photo! I’m assuming his friend Jay Andersen took this one:

Bradley made a close-up crop of that shot:

And here’s an even better one, in beautiful color:

There was actually another attempt at a color photo that came out blurry and crooked but the joy still comes shining through so it’s worth a share:

Jay Andersen met Bradley in the 1960s and the two became lifelong friends; Andersen passed away in 2015 and Bradley arranged for his record collection to go to the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Bradley treasured this color print because he appears in it, and noted on the back that it was taken by Andersen:

In addition to Bradley, that’s Bernard Flood, Don Donaldson, Johnny Russell, and Bob Williams in the background of that photo. Bradley took a few color photos of the speechmaking portion of the picnic (too bad he didn’t record the audio), but had issues with the results. Though they’re on the darker side, they’re still worth sharing:

Bradley ended up taking multiple photos of Armstrong hobnobbing with many of the musicians present. I’ve been able to identify many, thanks to Bradley’s annotation of the group photos above, but this man doesn’t appear in any of those photos and as you’ll see, he must have been someone important because Bradley shot him and an unidentified woman–perhaps his wife–multiple times (I’ve zoomed in on a high-res file of his name tag and honestly, though grainy, it looks like it says “Jack Shit”! That was either an obvious joke or it’s too blurry to make out accurately and it’s “Jack S….”):

Bernard Flood eventually replaced the woman in this next photo:

Here’s Louis and Bill Beason:

Armstrong enjoys a cold, tasty beverage, with the mystery man in the background:

Here’s Flood, Louis, an unidentified, somewhat “handsy” woman (Lucille wasn’t present!), Louis Thompson, and, according to his nametag, Edward Scott, who also didn’t appear in the group photos:

Here’s Louis Thompson, Bingie Madison, and two women I’m assuming were their wives, alongside Louis:

Naturally, Louis was asked to sign some autographs, on what looks like the back of a paper plate:

The Friendly Fifty picnic eventually came to an end that day, but the members of the club were thrilled that Armstrong was able to join them. On September 9, Friendly Fifty President Les Carr wrote a note to Jack Bradley to personally thank him:

And just to put a punctuation mark on it, after Louis passed away in July 1971, Carr sent Lucille Armstrong a condolence letter on behalf of the Friendly Fifty club:

With that, our look at the events of the Friendly Fifty picnic come to a close, but now, it’s time to spotlight an old familiar face that was an integral part of this series for so long but hasn’t been seen in quite some time: Jeann “Roni” Failows. To briefly recap for any new readers, Failows was a jazz advocate and member of Armstrong’s circle of friends–entrusted with helping him answer fan mail–who began dating Jack Bradley in 1959, soon introducing him to Louis and changing his life forever. Bradley and Failows dated for nearly ten years–many friends thought they were married–but broke up in late 1968, the same time Failows had a mental breakdown of some kind, ending up in a Veteran’s Administration hospital. We chronicled Failows’s problems back in this post, and even shared an encouraging letter Louis wrote to her in February 1969.

What we didn’t share was another letter Louis wrote to Failows on July 7, 1969, shortly after he got out of intensive care for the second time in a year. It’s an inspiring letter on its own as Armstrong talks about being “straight with the man upstairs” and stresses “As long as one is still breathing–Hmm–they still have a chance. Right?” But he also praises Failows, tells her he’s “always in your corner,” and asks repeatedly about her health, insinuating something was wrong but had not been identified yet. Here’s the 1969 letter (actually not part of the Jack Bradley Collection and donated to our Museum by Jeann’s nephew Steve Failows in 2020–thanks, Steve!):

After receiving that letter, Failows disappears for a year from our Archives for a year, only resurfacing in July 1970 with a 70th birthday tribute to Louis that she penned for the “Montrose Recoverer,” the official newsletter of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Veterans Administration Hospital in Montrose, New York:

Though they were no longer a couple, Failows sent a copy of the above to Bradley, who wrote back with a kind note, summing up his activities of late–including seeing Louis at Newport–all written on the back of a musicians’ contract:

To return to the scene of the Friendly Fifty, I was able to determine the date of the gathering based on the following document: a Western Union message sent from Louis to Jeann Failows on August 15, 1970, asking if he and Jack could visit her in the hospital the following day. Whoever transcribed Armstrong’s message obviously couldn’t understand “Red beans and ricely yours,” writing it as “Rees Anne Ricely”!

The photos from the Friendly Fifty share a roll of film with the photos of the visit to Failows’s at the Roosevelt V.A. Hospital (plus everyone’s outfits are identical), thus, it makes sense that the Friendly Fifty picnic would have taken place on that Sunday, August 16, 1970. I’ll admit, for a long time I thought the following photos were also taken at the Friendly Fifty picnic, especially since Jay Andersen is there and we know he was at the other gathering, but upon closer examination, that’s the Roosevelt V. A. Hospital in the background. Obviously, Failows wasn’t cleared to travel from the hospital and Armstrong and company either visited her on the way to or back from the picnic.

As Armstrong and Failows reunited for the first time in well over a year, Armstrong let Failows wear his hat as she planted a kiss on him; Failows would use a cropped version of this image as a holiday card in later years:

The other two people in the photo are Jay Andersen and his girlfriend (who looks a bit like the late Harriet Choice but Harriet was based in Chicago at the time so I don’t think it’s her; if I’m wrong, let me know!). Here are some more images Bradley took of this part of the gathering:

Andersen can clearly be seen taking a photo in that last shot; it’s not known what became of his photos but I assume many ended up in Bradley’s collection. Bradley most likely handed his camera over to Andersen so he could be in a photo with Louis–also wearing’s Louis’s hat–though the results are a bit blurry:

Bradley had been on quite a run with Armstrong in recent months, shooting him at home in April, at the Louis Armstrong and His Friends session in May, at the Dial M for Music television taping in June, at the Newport Jazz Festival in July, and now the Country and Western sessions and Friendly Fifty picnic in August. He probably never could have imagined that he wouldn’t see Louis again until the following June–and that would be the last time he would ever see him alive. We’ll have those photos and the stories leading up to them in our next post.