In April 1957 my father Jerry Dantzic was hired as a freelance photographer by Decca Records to shoot Billie Holiday during her Easter Week engagement at Sugar Hill in Newark, New Jersey. He also photographed her at 43 West 93rd Street in Manhattan, the Upper West Side apartment of William and Maely Dufty, filled with the comforts of a loving family. Bill Dufty was the coauthor of Billie’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, and Maely was one of her best friends. He photographed Billie there with the Duftys and their son, Bevan, her godchild. A few months later, on August 24, Dantzic photographed Billie again, this time while she was performing at the second New York Jazz Festival at Randall’s Island.
It is very likely that the uncredited photograph on the cover of the 1958 Decca album The Blues Are Brewin’ – Billie Holiday was taken by Jerry Dantzic at Sugar Hill on April 18. The original 35mm slide is lost. Dantzic received $25.75 from Decca on September 21, as noted in the ledger kept by his wife-to-be, Cynthia. He shot eleven rolls of 35mm black-and-white film, mostly Kodak Tri-X, but including two rolls of DuPont Safety 9871 stock. He shot with available light using his two Leica M3s with 35mm, 50mm, and 300mm lenses. Interestingly, the negatives and contact sheets show that the numerical sequences of the rolls of film do not reflect the chronological order in which the photographs were taken. Dantzic often changed film and would then reload partially exposed rolls, and thus he jumbled the actual shooting sequence.
Billie Holiday was booked to play Sugar Hill at 913 Broad Street in Newark starting Tuesday, April 16, running through April 21, Easter Sunday. During the week that Jerry shot Billie, he was joined by fellow photographer and devoted jazz enthusiast Bob Parent on April 18. Parent and Dantzic shared a photo studio from time to time in the 1950s. In early 2016, at the invitation of his nephew and archivist Dale Parent, I went to Delaware to visit the Robert Parent Archives and confirmed that April 18 was the date Bob shot both black-and-white and color images. It was the night Billie wore a short-sleeved light-pink lacy dress and a black cameo bracelet on her left wrist.
Given those dates, and after a careful comparison of the vintage contact sheets with new contact sheets, the following chronological order can be surmised. I believe that the photo shoot began on the evening of April 16, 1957, with contact sheet C-176-6, in Billie’s room at the Douglas Hotel on Hill Street opposite City Hall in Newark. Billie is with her new husband, Louis McKay. They had been married the previous month. He is helping her with her dark, strapless gown, dappled with little silvery ornaments and stars, and a shimmering top complete with multiple crescent moons. She appears happy, with a long ash dangling from her cigarette, wearing her wedding ring on her right hand and her favorite watch. McKay looks up at Dantzic in one frame but otherwise focuses on Billie. She then puts on her leaf earrings, a necklace, and a large black cameo bracelet. She sits at a side table in her hotel room holding her compact, fixing her hair, then turning to look across the room at the photographer as she digs into her alligator purse. The scene is shot across her bed strewn with clothes, hangers, a case, a pair of eyeglasses, and an opened envelope.
In the next few frames Billie is now at Sugar Hill, wearing a fur over her dress. She is signing a copy of her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, which she seems to be selling to a fan, given the $5 bill in his hand. The book sold for $3.75 at the time. Bernie Weissman, the club’s owner, is present and there is the shoulder of an unidentified man. Posters on the wall advertise other musicians including “the trio” of Kenny Clarke, Wendell Marshall, and Hank Jones.
The scene then shifts to Billie in her dressing room backstage with her beloved Chihuahua, Pepi. Her dresses, wrapped in plastic, are hanging in the background, a copy of Ebony magazine is visible on her table along with her makeup sponges, matches, a jeweled cigarette case, and comb. She gets a clear hairbrush out of her pocketbook, brushes her hair, and checks her makeup in a small round compact. On the wall adjacent to her table is an “Appearing Nightly” poster for the Paul “Vice Pres” Quinichette Combo.
Next we see her sitting across the table, probably with Louis McKay, at the club as her band, including Quinichette on tenor saxophone, performs without her on stage. Perhaps she is taking a quick bite before she joins them. On her first night she is not wearing a corsage with this particular outfit, which she will wear again later in the week. There are several wall mirrors in the club providing a curious reverse reality that Dantzic occasionally captures. This becomes apparent with the reversal of the name on Bobby “Stix” Darden’s bass drum in some frames and the fact that the bassist, Jimmy Schenck, was left-handed.
Fifty years after the gig, Guy Sterling published the article “Holiday In Newark” in the Newark Star-Ledger and wrote, “Perhaps the engagement would have passed quietly into history with countless other undocumented artistic performances had it not been photographed by Jerry Dantzic.”
Grayson Dantzic
Grayson Dantzic is a photographer based in New York, USA, and the son of photographer Jerry Dantzic. This text is excerpted from Jerry Dantzic: Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill, by Grayson Dantzic, with a reflection by Zadie Smith. Reproduced by permission of Thames & Hudson Inc.
Jerry Dantzic: Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill
Published by Thames & Hudson
$40
