PARKER, Charlie, & Chet Baker - CLAXTON, William (photo.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Limited edition signed studio print of Charlie Parker and Chet Baker. From the collection of the Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts, with his posthumous bookplate: a superb image of Charlie Parker performing with a young Chet Baker at the Tiffany Club in LA in 1952; limited to 50 copies, signed and dated by Claxton at the foot of the image.Claxton, still a student at UCLA, was establishing himself as a jazz photographer and had turned out at the Tiffany to shoot his idol, Bird. "Late that night, in a darkroom he set up in his family's house, Claxton had an epiphany. Staring at the print in the developing tray, he watched Baker's face appear 'like magic'. He called that moment 'a dream'. In a documentary about Claxton, Jazz Seen, by filmmaker Julian Benedikt, Claxton said that he had never known the meaning of 'photogenic' until he took those first pictures of Baker" (Gavin, p.53). For the next five years, Claxton pursued Baker, then widely seen as the "James Dean of Jazz", to rehearsals, on stage and in the studio, assembling a portfolio that goes some way to capturing the fragile toughness that earned him the sobriquet.Parker was appearing at the Tiffany Club in LA for a two-week engagement in May-June 1952 when Claxton captured this ringside shot of Bird in full flight shadowed by an incredibly up-tight and vulnerable-looking Baker. Ted Gioia describes the background of the rehearsal: "At the microphone Bird asks: 'Is Chet Baker here?' Moments later, t

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