[Dixielandjazz] George Pickow--Photographer dies at 88. NY Times

Sun Dec 19 16:49:40 PST 2010

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To:  Pensacola Mencken List;  Musicians and Jazzfans;  DJML

From:  Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

Pensacola Jazzfan  Mike Lynch found this before I did.  Here's the link
below in case anyone is interested in the illustrations.

Article mentions that Pickow was married to Jean Ritchie, folklorist,
folksinger and mountain dulcimer artist.  Besides their home in NYC, they
and also maintained a home in Viper, KY, Ms. Ritchie's birthplace.

Permit me one small anecdote here.  Back in the 60s, I finished my medical
specialty training at the U. of Louisville Medical School and was invited to
join the medical faculty.  There was a medical student from Viper, in the
mountains of Eastern Kentucky.  Knowing that was the home of Jean Ritchie, I
asked if he knew her or the family.  He replied, " Yes, they live just down
the hollow from us.  They were a strange bunch.  At Christmas they used to
go round to peoples' houses and sing songs!"  I let the subject drop from
there.

What's the Mencken connection?  Mencken was interested in various customs in
America.  His column, "Americana" in his magazine, American Mercury,  would
chronicle various items of interest.  Appalachian singing might show up in
his column.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/arts/design/19pickow.html?hpw=
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/arts/design/19pickow.html?hpw=&pagewanted
=print> &pagewanted=print

  _____  

December 18, 2010

George Pickow, Artist Who Chronicled Musical Life, Is Dead at 88

By MARGALIT FOX
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> 

George Pickow, a photographer best known for the thousands of album covers
in which he captured the titans of folk, jazz and pop music - including
Theodore Bikel
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/6169/Theodore-Bikel?inline=nyt-per> ,
Louis Armstrong
<http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/75943518/Michael-Ochs-Archives>  and Lena
Horne <http://movies.nytimes.com/person/871171/Lena-Horne?inline=nyt-per>  -
in their midcentury prime, died on Dec. 10 in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 88 and
lived in Port Washington, on Long Island. 

The cause was respiratory failure, his son Jon said. Mr. Pickow also had a
home in Viper, Ky., the birthplace of his wife, the folk singer Jean Ritchie
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBJJZ96epbg> . 

Working quietly behind the scenes, Mr. Pickow (pronounced PEEK-oh)
documented the bubbling cultural ferment of New York City, and in particular
Greenwich Village, where he and Ms. Ritchie lived after their marriage in
1950. 

For Elektra Records and other labels, he photographed folk singers like Josh
White <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/75943681/Michael-Ochs-Archives> ,
Pete Seeger
<http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/75943674/Michael-Ochs-Archives> , Judy
Collins
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/judy_collins/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per>  and, of course, Ms. Ritchie
<http://www.gillygaloo.net/assets/instr/mtdulcimer.jpg> , as well as jazz
and pop artists like Little Richard
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/little_richard
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , Dizzy Gillespie
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/dizzy_gillespi
e/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , Tony Bennett
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/tony_bennett/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> , Nina Simone and Louis Jordan
<http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3317664/Hulton-Archive> . 

Mr. Pickow, who was originally trained as a painter, also shot many
distinguished visual artists, among them Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh,
Chaim Gross and Edward Hopper
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/edward_hopper/
index.html?inline=nyt-per> , images that have since been exhibited around
the country. 

Some of his most striking photographs, in stark black and white, depict an
array of artisans and ordinary people around the world plying their trades:
women weaving <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3346545/Hulton-Archive>
and churning butter
<http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/50799701/Hulton-Archive> , men binding
books <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3332012/Hulton-Archive>  and making
harps <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3164595/Hulton-Archive>  and pipe
organs <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3331695/Hulton-Archive>  and even
waxwork heads <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3332024/Hulton-Archive> . 

Mr. Pickow, who helped his wife collect traditional songs
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iCkCIBDRyE>  from singers in Appalachia and
Britain, contributed photographs to many of her books, among them
<http://books.google.com/books?id=QsPDM_6NsgoC&pg=PP11&lpg=PP11&dq=%E2%80%9C
The+Swapping+Song+Book%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=bFm16gpRN9&sig=c0GPFDyk_LR3mlp
rSqIk12CIYFU&hl=en&ei=D6MLTcvFIsX6lwf-1ZyPDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&r
esnum=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20Swapping%20Song%20Book%E2
%80%9D&f=true> "The Swapping Song Book" (Oxford University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/oxford_
university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , 1952), a volume of songs from the
Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky. 

Also an independent filmmaker, he was a cinematographer on
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061658/> "Festival" (1967), a documentary film
about the Newport Folk Festival, directed by Murray Lerner
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/99411/Murray-Lerner?inline=nyt-per> . 

>From the late 1970s until shortly before his death, Mr. Pickow ran a small
record label, Greenhays Recordings, which produced several of Ms. Ritchie's
albums, including  <http://www.allmusic.com/album/mountain-born-r273002>
"Mountain Born, <http://www.allmusic.com/album/mountain-born-r273002> "
"High Hills and Mountains" and "The Most Dulcimer." Greenhays also recorded
folk artists like John McCutcheon <http://www.folkmusic.com/> , Mike Seeger
<http://mikeseeger.info/> , Alice Gerrard <http://www.alicegerrard.com/>
and Lily May Ledford
<http://www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/saa79.asp> . 

George Pickow was born on Feb. 11, 1922, in Los Angeles and reared in
Brooklyn. He studied painting at the Cooper Union
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/cooper_
union_for_the_advancement_of_science_and_art/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  and
during World War II made training films for the Navy. 

In 1948 in New York, Mr. Pickow met Ms. Ritchie, who was not yet widely
known, at a square dance at the Henry Street Settlement
<http://www.henrystreet.org/site/PageServer?gclid=CPahzveK9KUCFQJN4Aod302ong
> , where she was a social worker. The next day, for their first date, he
took her along on a photo shoot at the Fulton Fish Market. The result - Ms.
Ritchie perched on the hood of a truck, holding a rather large lobster - was
published in a trucking-industry magazine. 

Perhaps more impressive to Ms. Ritchie was the Appalachian dulcimer
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IBuW1HA5x0>  Mr. Pickow made for her, a
copy of the traditional one she had brought from Kentucky. It proved so
successful that for about a decade, starting in the early 1960s, he ran a
small family dulcimer-making business, located on the Brooklyn side of the
Williamsburg Bridge and presided over by his uncle, a millwright and
cabinetmaker. 

Neither Mr. Pickow nor his uncle was especially musical, so Ms. Ritchie
painstakingly marked each nascent dulcimer to indicate the placement of the
frets. 

Besides Ms. Ritchie, Mr. Pickow is survived by their sons, Jon and Peter,
who sang on many of their mother's albums, and a sister, Lenette, named for
Vladimir Lenin
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/vladimir_lenin
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> . 

While Ms. Ritchie was born to folk music, Mr. Pickow came to it by degrees.
"I was mainly into old jazz and blues then," he told The New York Times in
1980, recalling their meeting, "and thought nothing was any good unless it
was down and dirty. She wasn't Bessie Smith." 

But, he added, "I've learned a lot since then." 