PHOTO REVIEW : History of Jazz Reverberates in UCSD Exhibit

The history of jazz comes to most of us through books. But Bradley Smith doesn’t need them. He has a better, more accurate source of information: his own life.

Smith’s black-and-white photos of jazz musicians, most of them taken between the late 1930s and early ‘50s, are on view through June 10 in a second-floor conference room at the new Price Center on the UC San Diego campus.

Smith, now 78, spent his formative years in New Orleans, catching the waning days of Storyville, the legal red-light district.

He remembers prostitutes beckoning from balconies. He watched as New Orleans music developed from a base of funeral marches, Gospel and rhythms imported from Africa into the stuff we now call jazz.

But music is just one interest from an unusually varied career driven by Smith’s forceful personality.

“I quit school at 12. They gave me the books for the year, and I read them over the weekend,” he said in characteristically self-assured fashion. “There were too many books to read, too many books to write.”

Many of these now occupy the crowded bookshelves in Smith’s studio, a compact, skylighted room in his Mt. Soledad home. There is his book on Japanese art, which he says has sold at least 750,000 copies and may go into yet another printing. It rests next to similar luxurious coffee-table books he has written, along with books on subjects ranging from Harry Truman to horses.

On the walls are many of his photos, including a moody portrait of artist Max Ernst with a cloud of cigarette smoke swirling above his head, and countless knickknacks, such as the primitive masks he collected during his world travels.

Smith, who, with his shaved head, brings to mind Yul Brynner, started to explain the genesis of his jazz photos. But then he got sidetracked, hauling out a couple of his books that heated up the conversation: his history of sex in America, and a collection of the erotic art of the masters, for which he penned the text.

This open attitude toward a taboo subject probably dates back to his adolescence. As he explains in the notes for the show, he learned all he needed to about sex from singer Bessie Smith’s raunchy lyrics and the girls in a New Orleans convent.

Besides his prodigious writing career, Smith was a photographer for Life magazine from 1943 until 1966. His photos also appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Holiday, Look, Vogue, Time and Match. But the jazz pictures were really only a hobby. He hadn’t thought about them much until he pulled out the negatives three years ago and realized how rare they are now that many of his subjects are dead.

“I think of Louis Armstrong as the Mozart of jazz,” he said. “They started composing at about the same age. They were both child prodigies.”

Smith brought out his photo of the trumpeter best known as Satchmo, frozen in an unusually pensive mood.

He spent hours photographing jazz players, mostly at the Onyx night club in New York City. Many of them became close friends, including guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who eventually played at his son’s wedding. Unfortunately, he never kept a detailed diary, and some of the great stories have been lost to the intervening 40 or 50 years of photographing and writing about other subjects.

Smith’s best jazz photos have a fresh, documentary look to them. The quality of the work varies. Several shots are sublime, capturing telling gestures or facial expressions in a full range of tones, from blackest black to whitest white. His mastery of lighting, composition and printing is unquestionable.

Other pictures show the difficulty of shooting live performances. For whatever reason, they aren’t quite in focus, and the nondescript expressions reveal little about the players.

Pianist Art Tatum, bassist Oscar Pettiford, sax man Coleman Hawkins, singer Mildred Bailey, pianist Earl (Fatha) Hines and Count Basie are among the jazz legends included in the show.

Smith used a large-format camera--8-by-10-inch or 2 1/4--which explains why the images hold up well at the large print sizes he favors, ranging from about 11 by 14 inches to roughly 3 by 4 feet.

Some of the most revealing shots are from the streets of New Orleans. There’s a series documenting legendary marching bands such as the Eureka Jazz Band. These groups often played funerals, and that’s where dark songs such as “St. James Infirmary” came from.

Then there are the New Orleans club shots, including one of a small jazz ensemble, horn players pointing their instruments high, the drummer sticking out his tongue in a moment of wild spontaneity. Or one of “Smilin’ Joe,” a short, nattily dressed dancer who takes a graceful turn to the music.

Several photos of old-time New Orleans musicians playing in informal settings are wonderful. The trumpet player Papa Celestin blows his horn on someone’s porch, muting it with a bowler hat as a young boy listens attentively. A guy known simply as Old Sam blows a kazoo, standing in front of the weathered wood doors of a place called the Old Absinthe House. Bassist Slow Drag Pavageau poses outside a well-worn wood and brick building.

There’s also a little something here for San Diegans: photos of San Diego singer Jeannie Cheatham and John (Ironman) Harris, the drummer for Cheatham’s Sweet Baby Blues Band.

A couple of minor flaws keep the show from reaching its full potential.

Chrome frames, which give off distracting highlights, draw the eye away from the work. Mats in a neutral tone would have let the art take center stage. Also, the wall space is insufficient for the 35 images. With only 5 inches or so between prints, none are allowed to resonate with their full strength.

Taken together, the show, titled “Jazz in Motion,” is extremely powerful, especially for those with some knowledge and love of jazz.

As Smith put it, “You stand in the middle and you look around, and you can hear the music reverberate back.

“I think jazz may be good for your heart. It’s very relaxing.”