[Dixielandjazz] "Hollywood Jazz" mural -- Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2013

[Robert Ringwald]

'Hollywood Jazz' Mural Lives On More Brightly
by Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2013
When Los Angeles muralist Richard Wy    att Jr. set out in 1990 to create a gigantic
public artwork paying tribute to nearly a dozen great jazz musicians, he was given
only two specific requests.
"Nat King Cole's widow [Maria] asked me if I would show him wearing his favorite
tie," said Wyatt, 57, as he stood next to his recently restored mural at the Capitol
Records Tower in Hollywood last week.
"And Joe Smith, who was president of Capitol at the time, asked me if I'd please
include Ella Fitzgerald," he said. "Well, I've loved jazz my whole life, so that
was a no-brainer."
The First Lady of Song and Cole -- sporting his signature reddish-pink, white and
blue tie -- now shine a little more brightly since Wyatt set about restoring the
mural in November 2011. But the tribute to jazz, which spans an 88-foot-long, 26-foot-high
south wall of the tower on Vine Street, was never meant to be around this long.
"Hollywood Jazz -- 1945-1972" was commissioned at the request of the Los Angeles
Jazz Society, and paid for by the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts. The colorful
piece, which characterizes nine other jazz musicians including Chet Baker, Miles
Davis and Billie Holiday and lists the names of more than four dozen other jazz heavyweights,
was supposed to grace the wall for only five years. But the mural became an L.A.
landmark of sorts.
"Nobody expected the kind of reaction it got," Wyatt said, noting that it quickly
became a popular signpost in movies including "Rush Hour," TV shows and photographic
tours of Hollywood sights to see.
Over the decades, sun, smog and California's ever-shifting geography left it "horribly
faded," he said, to the point that he could see the original outline marks he painted
to guide him.
For the restoration, "Hollywood Jazz" has been re-created from photos of the original,
this time fired onto 12-inch-square ceramic tiles for longer life: 2,288 of them,
to be precise, Wyatt said.
The restoration was funded by Capitol Records "as a tribute to jazz and a symbol
of Capitol's ongoing commitment to the Hollywood community," according to a label
spokeswoman. "Plus, it's a beautiful work that has enhanced the Capitol Tower and
the city of Hollywood for 20 years, and Capitol wanted to give it the proper restoration
it deserved."
Don Was, the musician-producer who took over in 2011 as president of Capitol-owned,
jazz-centric label Blue Note Records, sees both the beauty of the mural itself and
a larger symbolism in its restoration.
"The fact that it's a jazz mural -- not a teen pop-icon mural -- was very symbolic
of the really broad commitment to music the Capitol group is making," Was said Friday.
That commitment from the parent company, he said, "is being manifested with a mandate
for Blue Note [that has] given us the means to be a real home for authentic music.
Great what's been happening in the last few months."
Wyatt describes the original mural (which took nine months to paint) and the restoration
effort (which took 15 months) as labors of love more than additions to his estimable
portfolio of works that dot the Southern California landscape. He's also behind the
"City of Dreams/River of History" at L.A. Union Station and "Ethnic Diversity" at
the Civic Center Plaza Building in Lompoc.
He grew up in Compton with parents "who both loved jazz, so I would wake up in the
morning to the sounds of John Coltrane."
A sidewalk chalk portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that he drew when he
was 12 for the Watts Chalk-In won $200 at the contest. He now looks back at it fondly
as "my first piece of public art."
Creating the tiles for the new incarnation of "Hollywood Jazz," he said, required
a lot of flexibility because of the idiosyncrasies of the firing process, subtle
differences in paint colors as they went through firing and other variables.
"It required a lot of improvisation," he said. "In that way, it's a lot like jazz."
__________
Photo:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-hollywood-jazz-mural-20130219,0,1467048.story
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-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.” 
Harry S. Truman, 33rd President B: 5/8/1884 – d: 12/26/1972.