Condon's Town Hall 11apr42 concert ad

Oh, those Eddie Condon's Town Hall concerts for less than a dollar, or a dollar and a few cents at most: James P., Hot Lips Page, Red Allen, Bud Freeman, Benny Morton, Sandy Williams, Zutty Singleton...

Published in the NYTimes (April 5, 1942)

Jam session at Jimmy Ryan's: only for your eyes!

Here's a small treasure for all those who love this kind of jazz and would kill to have been present: a flier for a series of 52nd Street jam session at Jimmy Ryan's, starting on September 27, 1942. Click on it and you'll discover a who's who of jazz in the early 1940s:

Jazz solidarity [1] - Hot Lips Page memorial (Nov. 1954)

Meet Hot Lips Page, the jive exponent

This odd piece was published in The Afro American, October 6, 1945. Oran's perennial smile is well captured in the main picture, but the biographical small ones are funny, at most.

Anatomy of a jam session

© Gjon Mili / LIFE

This photograph was taken in 1943 at photographer Gjon Mili's studio in New York. Apart from the obvious Count Basie and Lester Young, and with the invaluable help of the good physiognomists at the organissimo jazz forums, one can recognize Earle Warren just below Prez, with Mezz Mezzrow on clarinet and drummer Kansas Fields next to him. Jo Jones and Sid Catlett flank Kansas Fields to make sure he does not miss a beat! The older bespectacled man on the extreme left is Pops Foster and the trumpeter up front at the left is the great Hot Lips Page. The saxophonist on the right looks like a 19-years-old Leo Parker on alto, his instrument until he turned to baritone around 1944. The following close-up doesn't allow me to recognize the second trumpet player. Any help 'round there?

© Gjon Mili / LIFE