Say CHEESE!

[Ed Fuqua]

William Claxton signing JAZZLIFE at Strand Bookstore
New York, December 13: William Claxton entertained more than 75 people at Strand Bookstore tonight near Union Square in Manhattan to celebrate Jazzlife. All braved very frigid temperatures to hear the red-hot stories of Bill's travels across the U.S in search of jazz in 1960. It was standing-room-only on the second floor of the Strand where people enjoyed live jazz music, wine and cheese preceding and following Bill's presentation. After, he had a line of people for over an hour waiting to have him sign copies. Many avid collectors had the original edition of Jazzlife for Bill to autograph. It was a wonderful night in The Big Apple.

The " live jazz music" was Dave Marck, Chris Roselli and me. we got a chance to talk to Bill (call me Bill) afterwards and he was very gracious and in a lot of ways just a regular cat. He even knew ERONEL when we played it. His book has some great photos of OP (among others)....

[Craig Garfinkel]

Too cool Ed! The only thing that woulda made that even hipperer is if he had his camera with him and started snappin' away at you while you were diggin'.

I hope you picked up your own autographed copy. It occurs to me that we'll never see that kind of artistry again, now that we have digital cameras and no longer have smoke-filled funky jazz clubs. Thank God we still have smoke-filled funky jazz musicians.

[Ed Fuqua]

The new giant book is 2 bills, and I STUPIDLY forgot to bring my copy of JAZZ SEEN for him to sign. He was nice enough to come over and talk to us before he split and there were some folks photographing for the bookstore and the publisher, hopefully they got some of us hanging out and talking, if I can snag'em, I'll post'em.

[Craig Garfinkel]

Yeah, I see Amazon and Borders are selling the book for $126...still too steep for me right now.

For those of you who are wracking your brains for what to get me for Hannukah...this'd be nice.