“Harry Carney’s baritone saxophone was the anchor in Duke Ellington’s band from the age of sixteen until his death forty-eight years later. I had been doing a series of photo sessions in a studio near the Blue Note and I invited Harry to come in sometime so we could experiment visually with him and his horn. He accepted immediately and we spent a fascinating afternoon discussing photography (he was a fan), politics and the state of music as I moved my camera around Harry and his big horn. He explained the theory of circular breathing and how it enabled him to execute long passages or hold that long note that Duke often ha the baritone sax perform.” – Ted Williams
Extract taken from ‘Jazz by Ted Williams‘ available from the Iconic Store. When Williams died in 2009 at the age of 84, he left nearly 100,000 prints and negatives behind – many of which have never been seen before. Jazz, the first book dedicated to the jazz photography of Ted Williams, will highlight hundreds of these unseen jazz images and will be captioned throughout by his own memories along with commentary from some of the leading jazz historians and journalists working today.