William P. Gottlieb Collection

Biography (1)

William P. Gottlieb, the youngest child of Sam and Lena Gottlieb, was
born on January 28, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of four
Gottlieb moved to Bound Brook, New Jersey where his father was involved
with the building and lumber business. When Gottlieb was in his early
teens, his mother died and his father passed away shortly thereafter.
Gottlieb was a gifted student, and after high school graduation he
enrolled at Lehigh University as an economics major. His interest in
jazz began through a food poisoning incident in 1936. The day before the
end of his sophomore year, Gottlieb\'s fraternity house served
undercooked pork, which caused him and several of his classmates to come
down with trichinosis. While bedridden over the summer, Gottlieb was
frequently visited by his high school buddy \"Doc\" Bartle, a classical
pianist and an ardent jazz fan. Bartle collected international music
magazines in which he read that jazz was America\'s greatest
contribution to the arts, and he shared his interest with Gottlieb,
often bringing along Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington records when he
visited. Gottlieb was quickly transformed from a Guy Lombardo fan into a
jazz buff.

When Gottlieb returned to Lehigh in the fall, he became a regular
columnist in the weekly campus newspaper and editor-in-chief of *The
Lehigh Review*, a once thriving monthly magazine that is no longer
published. Inspired by Bartle\'s Armstrong and Ellington records,
Gottlieb made sure that jazz and jazz records were covered in each
issue. *Life* magazine was popular at the time, and Gottlieb strove to
emulate its largely photographic format. Illustrations were provided by
fellow students such as Lou Stoumen, who later won two Oscars for
documentaries entitled *The True Story of the Civil War* and *The Black
Fox*.

In 1938, Gottlieb\'s last year at Lehigh, he obtained a position at *The
Washington Post*. The opportunity arose because of a rained-out tennis
match. A school friend of Gottlieb\'s was the nephew of Don Bernard, the
business manager of the Post, and the friend encouraged Gottlieb to meet
with Bernard when he passed through Washington while on tour with the
varsity tennis team. Gottlieb was scheduled to be in town on a Saturday,
and he did not think he would have time for job searching, but he packed
some writing samples just in case. The tennis match was canceled due to
rain, so Gottlieb took a chance and called Bernard, who happened to be
at work on that particular Saturday. While his wife-to-be, Delia, waited
outside in Gottlieb\'s Ford, he met with Bernard (who claims Gottlieb
was still wearing his tennis outfit during the interview). Bernard was
impressed with his work, and recommended him for a position in
advertising. After college graduation Gottlieb began working as an
advertising solicitor for the Post with a salary of about twenty-five
dollars a week.

In 1939, several months after he began working for the *Post*, Gottlieb
offered to write a weekly jazz column for the Sunday edition of the
paper. His request was granted, and he was paid an extra ten dollars a
week to write the column, which became the first of its kind to be
published on a regular basis. Initially a photographer accompanied
Gottlieb while on assignment at local nightclubs and theaters; after two
weeks the *Post* concluded that it could not afford to pay a
photographer. Determined to illustrate his articles, Gottlieb traded in
one hundred dollars worth of records (he had quite a collection since
new albums were sent to him to review) for a 3-1/4 x 4-1/4 inch Speed
Graphic press camera, sheet film, and bulky, non-reusable flashbulbs.
With the help of coworkers in the *Post*\'s photo department and after a
tremendous amount of trial and error, Gottlieb mastered the complicated
camera or \"beast\" as he called it.

By the age of twenty-two Gottlieb was known as \"Mr. Jazz\" in the
Washington, D.C. area. In addition to his position at the *Post*, he had
a half-hour interview show on WRC radio (an NBC outlet) and a
thrice-weekly disc jockey job at WINX, a local independent radio
station. Gottlieb often had musical guests from the Earle Theater or the
Howard Theater and would play music by the featured artists as well as
music by those who influenced them. Other guests included jazz
personalities such as Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun, the sons of the Turkish
Embassador to the United States. Ahmet and Herb Abramson founded
Atlantic records, while Nesuhi became head of the sister international
company. Gottlieb and the Erteguns were good friends, dining at each
other\'s homes frequently. Nesuhi and Gottlieb practiced table tennis in
the main ballroom of the Turkish Embassy and competed in the doubles
competition of the National Table Tennis Championships.

Washington, D.C. was Ellington's hometown, yet the jazz scene was not
especially prosperous \-- at least compared to New York City. The
District was a highly segregated town during the period, and the jazz
venues reflected this attitude; the Howard Theater was a black
establishment while the Earle Theater served a white clientele. Smaller
nightclubs, such as the Silver Fox, would come and go quickly. One of
Gottlieb\'s fondest memories as a Washingtonian is an occasion in which
he orchestrated a jam session between the Count Basie band at the Howard
Theater and the Bob Crosby Orchestra, the leading Dixieland ensemble
that was performing at the Earle Theater. Since both groups were in town
at the same time, Gottlieb thought it would be delightful to bring them
together. The manager of the Howard gave Gottlieb permission to use the
theater after hours for the event. (Gottlieb publicized the Howard
Theater regularly in the *Post*, so the manager "owed" him.) The
collaboration resulted in a powerful band with Basie, Ray Bauduc, and
Bob Haggart in the rhythm section, and Matty Matlock, Eddie Miller,
Lester Young, and Hershel Evans on reeds. Later Gottlieb described the
event as \"simply glorious.\"

In 1941 Gottlieb quit his job in advertising and enrolled as a graduate
economics major at the University of Maryland at College Park (a suburb
of Washington) and taught a few freshman-level classes. "Mr. Jazz"
remained active in the jazz scene, continuing to write his weekly *Post*
column and do radio shows. A group of students at the University of
Maryland asked Gottlieb to teach a jazz appreciation course, either for
or without course credit. The school administration would not approve
the proposed class, however, and Gottlieb learned later that it was
turned down for racial reasons. Disgruntled with the university system,
he obtained a position as an economist with the wartime Office of Price
Administration.

Gottlieb was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1943. He underwent a
series of orientations in Virginia, Mississippi, North Carolina,
Connecticut, California, and Washington, and eventually served as both a
photo officer and classifications officer. He was fortunate to remain in
the United States in ideal working conditions; in fact, he fondly (and
with a certain amount of guilt) recalls listening to the Glenn Miller
Orchestra play in the balcony of the mess hall at Yale University.
Gottlieb continued to submit articles to the *Post* for awhile. He
always carried around his typewriter, camera, flashgun, and tennis
racquet in a crate. Gottlieb said, \"I know down in Gulfport I was still
sending out things to *The Washington Post* and that used to irritate
one of the sergeants. He didn\'t know what was in those letters, and he
would put me on extra KP duty and things like that, but he never would
make an all‑out frontal attack on me because I was too big and kind of
domineering in my own way. So I always got away with this sort of
thing.\"

After World War II, Gottlieb went to New York City to pursue his
journalistic career. One of his first stops was the office of *Down
Beat* magazine in the RKO building of Rockefeller Center. *Down Beat*,
the leading jazz magazine, was headquartered in Chicago with branch
offices around the world. The staff was already familiar with
Gottlieb\'s *Post* column and radio shows and offered him a position as
assistant editor along with Mike Levin, the senior office member.
Gottlieb\'s primary duties were to write concert reviews and to compile
a catchall column of jazz news from around the world. He was still not
paid to be a photographer, yet he became better known for his
photographs than his articles. Gottlieb\'s first assignment was to
review the Glenn Miller Orchestra under the leadership of Ray McKinley
at the Hotel Pennsylvania; his double-exposure of McKinley ended up on
the cover of *Down Beat* and has been widely reproduced since \-- quite
an accomplishment for a first assignment. Occasionally Gottlieb
illustrated articles he didn\'t write, such as Levin\'s article on Joe
Mooney. In addition to working for *Down Beat*, Gottlieb submitted a
monthly piece for *The Record Changer*, a magazine that featured a
listing of records to be bought and sold. Four or five large photos were
included in each issue as illustrations for his regular column, and the
magazine was also brilliantly illustrated with drawings and cartoons by
Gene Deitch. Intermittently, Gottlieb published work in *The Saturday
Review*, *Collier\'s*, and *The* *New York Herald Tribune*.

Most of Gottlieb\'s photographs were taken in clubs on Fifty-second
Street or \"Swing Street,\" a block-long street between Sixth and Fifth
Avenues. The ground floors of brownstone homes were converted into
restaurants and nightclubs, notably jazz clubs such as Club Downbeat,
the Famous Door, Jimmy Ryan\'s, and the Three Deuces. Kelly\'s Stable,
the Hickory House, and Birdland were located a little farther away. One
could coddle an inexpensive drink \-- for maybe 50 cents \-- and go from
club to club all night to hear world famous jazz, ranging from Dixieland
at Jimmy Ryan\'s to more contemporary jazz at the Three Deuces.

Gottlieb joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra on its tour of southern states
in 1948. For nearly one week, Gottlieb served as the band photographer
as it traveled hundreds of miles a day and played a series of concerts.
After the tour, Gottlieb retired from the jazz field. By the late 1940s
the jazz scene in New York, and specifically Fifty-second Street, was
starting to perish due to a recession in the music business and a newly
issued entertainment tax. Bop gained popularity and slowly drove out
old-school jazz fans that supported the clubs. Rockefeller Center
expanded, the old brownstones were replaced with skyscrapers, and
businesses encroached \"Swing Street.\" *Down* *Beat* circulation
declined, and the second leading jazz magazine, *Metronome*, folded.
Gottlieb grew tired of hanging out in nightclubs every night, as he
explained in an interview: \"Most important of all, I was really
something of a square; I had a wife and children, and the joys of
staying out \'till 4 am with musicians, even those who were my idols,
had evaporated\...it was a slightly awkward situation because I was
often the only sober one there. I don\'t drink. I don\'t smoke. Not for
any moral reasons; I just don\'t like the taste of it. And that\'s not
characteristic of musicians at large and the others involved with
it.\"(2)

After Gottlieb left *Down Beat*, he was offered a job at Curriculum
Films, an educational filmstrip company in an office adjacent to *Down
Beat*. His desk was positioned on the opposite side of the wall of his
old *Down Beat* desk. Later he started his own company with Walter
Schaap, who worked for Charles Delaunay as editor of *Hot*
*Discography*. (Schaap is the father of Phil Schaap, a leading jazz
historian and broadcaster.) Gottlieb and Walter Schaap met at Stuyvesant
Casino where Bunk Johnson was playing, and became good friends
afterwards. When Gottlieb\'s new business started, a party was thrown in
the office with James P. Johnson, Fess Williams, Freddie Moore, and Joe
Thomas providing the musical entertainment. At its peak, the company
consisted of about fifteen employees and a few freelance artists, and
produced films for educational and institutional corporations such as
Encyclopedia Britannica Films, D.C. Health, McGraw‑Hill, and Oxford
University.

In 1969 McGraw-Hill took over the company and hired Gottlieb as
president of a division, a position that he kept for ten years. Up to
his retirement, he produced about 1,400 filmstrips, writing and
illustrating about four hundred of them. Five hundred to six hundred
were photographic while the rest were literal or cartoon drawings. The
average filmstrip was approximately fifty frames in length and composed
of a string of illustrations on a strip of 35mm film. Accompanying text
was either placed at the bottom of each image as a caption or
distributed as audio. Gottlieb enjoyed his career as an independent film
strip creator because there was so much variety in his work; essentially
he had to become an expert on a wide range of topics, from internal
sales to astrology. His filmstrips won awards at the Educational Film
Librarians Association. Gottlieb also wrote a number of children\'s
books, including several Golden Books, with sales totaling about five
million copies. Particular favorites are *Science Facts You Won\'t
Believe* and *Laddie the Superdog*, a story of a dog based on the
Superman character.

Gottlieb\'s career as a jazz photographer and journalist can be divided
into three periods, two of which were spaced nearly thirty years apart.
Since his retirement in 1979, he has made a second career out of his
earlier work. More than two hundred of his striking jazz photographs,
along with personal recollections, were published in *The Golden Age of
Jazz* (Simon and Schuster, 1979; Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995). The book
earned an ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers)
Award and is now in its tenth printing. In 1997 *Down Beat* honored
Gottlieb with a Lifetime Achievement Award \-- this was the first time
the honor went to a photographer \-- and the New Jersey Jazz Society
honored him as the non-musician who did the most for jazz that year.
Gottlieb is a member of the American Federation of Jazz Societies,
Photographic Administrators, Incorporated, and Jazz Photographers
Association.

Gottlieb is not active as a photographer, but in the past few years, he
has taken a few portraits of jazz artists. The photo editor of *Modern
Photography* asked him to take photographs of Les Paul as he did in the
1940s; Gottlieb rented a Speed Graphic, lenses, and flash bulbs with
extensions, to capture the jazz guitarist at Fat Tuesdays. He has since
purchased a working Speed Graphic and in recent years has also
photographed Gerry Mulligan and Al Grey. Gottlieb still listens to jazz,
especially Armstrong and \"straight-ahead Benny Goodman period jazz,\"
citing Miles Davis as his cutoff point.

Gottlieb\'s photographs from 1938 to 1948, the golden age of jazz, are
possibly the most widely reproduced jazz images today. The Library of
Congress\' William P. Gottlieb Collection receives much use by library
patrons both on-site and off-site and is accessed regularly by
journalists, book editors, museum curators, artists, and producers of
multimedia documentaries. The photographs have been exhibited in more
than 150 venues in the United States and abroad, including the National
Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. (which has acquired a print of Duke
Ellington), the Library of Congress as part of the permanent American
Treasures exhibit, the Deutsche Bank on Fifty-second Street in New York
City, the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Navio
Museum in Osaka, Japan. Gottlieb\'s work has been featured in countless
books and articles, used as nearly 250 record album covers, utilized in
television documentaries and major motion pictures, and distributed as
posters, calendars, and T-shirts. In 1994 the United States Postal
Service selected Gottlieb\'s portraits of Billie Holiday, Charlie
Parker, Mildred Bailey, and Jimmy Rushing for a series of postage stamps
commemorating jazz singers. National Public Radio recently interviewed
Gottlieb for its popular \"All Things Considered\" show.

Notes

1\. The biographical information cited in this essay has been gathered
from an oral history by Dean Hennie (1995; transcribed by Jeni Dahmus in
1997) and a series of interviews with Gottlieb by Jon Newsom, Morgan
Cundiff, Carl Fleischhauer, and Jeni Dahmus (1997-1998).

2\. The Gottliebs had four children and raised two of Delia\'s
half-brothers and half-sisters; the children were the focus of their
lives. Outside of his family life, Gottlieb was heavily involved in
tennis and the labor movement.