Jim Marshall had an all-access pass with some of the 20th century’s greatest musicians.
He was the photographer when Johnny Cash flicked off the camera at San Quentin State Prison. He was backstage with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. He toured with the Rolling Stones and photographed the Beatles’ final paid concert.
“He was one of the pioneers of music photography,” said Amelia Davis, Marshall’s longtime assistant. “People have called him pretty much the godfather of rock ‘n’ roll photography.”
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in August, the Woodstock music festival is often, with the benefit of hindsight, hailed as an example of what can go right when hundreds of thousands of young, stoned music fans assemble—in stark contrast to the Altamont Speedway Free Festival just a few months later, where four people died. Here, we round up new, forthcoming, and older releases and reissues, which give adults and young readers a window onto the three-day event in Bethel, N.Y., and the larger culture that gave rise to it.
Publishers Weekly names "Jim Marshall: Show Me the PIcture" to its top-10 art, architecture, and photography books recommended for the fall 2019 season.
Before he was a famous rock photographer, Jim Marshall photographed jazz, covering the festivals in Newport, Rhode Island and Monterey, California in the 1960s and photographing the biggest stars along with their deeply hip audience. Jazz Festival: Jim Marshall, published recently by Reel Art Press in collaboration with the Jim Marshall Archive, collects some 600 of Marshall’s black and white images made between 1960 and 1966, most of them previously unpublished.
Oh yeah - Reel Art Press does it again! The Estate of Jim Marshall is pleased to announce the launch of "Jim Marshall: Jazz Festival" (Reel Art Press, September, 2016). We lost a true hard-working character when Jim died, and we thank Amelia Davis for her dedication to keeping his work out there, and editing such a rich and fabulous book (and for letting me make an edit for this story! Thank you!) The book covers six years of Monterey and Newport Jazz Festivals, on stage and behind the scenes, and is chock-a-block with pics.
The best photographs linger in the mind even after you shut your eyes. It's the same with great jazz songs, whose melodies seem to stay awhile, even after the last note sounds. In both, there's a sense of eternity, which is why the marriage of the two — as in the jazz images of photograper Jim Marshall can seem timeless.
Whenever there’s mention of the work of the late San Francisco photographer Jim Marshall, the first thing most people think of is rock ’n’ roll. A pioneering rock photographer, he was famous for his iconic images of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and many other bands and musicians from the heyday of rock in the late 1960s and ’70s.
